Wednesday, 22 May 2024

WEDNESDAY, 22 MAY 2024

WEDNESDAY, 22 MAY 2024

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

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

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

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

CLERK: Petition of Erin Tiplady on behalf of Northcote Intermediate School Room 3 requesting that the House urge the Government to thoroughly inspect and survey the wreck of the RMS Niagara in the Hauraki Gulf for any oil that should be removed from it.

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

CLERK: Government responses to the reports of the:

Petitions Committee on the petition of Hāwea Flat School Board

Education and Workforce Committee on the petition of Amanda Drumm

Petitions Committee on the petition of Maggie Ross.

SPEAKER: I present the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment entitled Going with the grain: Changing land uses to fit a changing landscape. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. No select committee papers have been presented. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and especially today’s announcement that the Government will fund $24 million to Gumboot Friday, enabling them to deliver counselling sessions to more than 15,000 young people. I do want to thank the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, for his tireless advocacy for securing this funding—[Interruption] that’s right—ensuring that Kiwis with mental health challenges can access support earlier. We know community organisations, like Gumboot Friday, can do so much more to solve the big societal challenges we have in New Zealand, and we’re going to keep devolving to the grassroots to get better results for every single New Zealander when it comes to mental health. This is a Government that’s walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If the purpose of scrapping First Home Grants, as his Government announced today, is to increase social housing, why is the Government spending less on new social housing places than it’s saving by scrapping the grants?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I discussed with that member yesterday, we’re going to increase the amount of social housing in New Zealand and we’re not afraid to make tough choices. The choice that we’re making is to invest in 1,500 new social housing places for Kiwi families, and that will mean that some of those families are out of Labour’s motels.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did the announcement by Chris Bishop today indicate that the Government will be spending $105 million less on new social housing places than it will be saving by scrapping the First Home Grants?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Look, I’d just say to that member that we are determined to build more houses in this country. We have more supply needed in the social housing piece, we have more supply of rental properties needed, and more houses that need to be built. I’m very proud of this Government actually spending and investing money to make sure we get 1,500 more places in social housing. It’s important.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order. Both of those questions were quite specific questions about the difference between two numbers—the amount of money they’ve announced today that they’re spending on new social housing places and the amount of money Chris Bishop announced that he was saving by scrapping the First Home Grants scheme. The Prime Minister has addressed something that’s entirely different, but he hasn’t addressed the question.

SPEAKER: Well, I don’t think it’s entirely different. The question is about social housing.

Hon Chris Bishop: Is it correct that the announcement made today regarding money for social housing places continues on into the out-years, so it is correct to say that every single dollar saved by discontinuing First Home Grants funds social housing?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely, and I want to thank the member for his leadership in this space and making sure we actually get more houses built.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Is it correct that the Government’s $2.9 billion tax breaks for landlords would pay for up to 580,000 First Home Grants?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I want to say to that member that we got exactly the same advice that he received when he was Prime Minister and he was in Government, and that was that interest deductibility would put downward pressure on rents. We are serious in this Government that we want to make sure we expand the rental supply of houses, and so we’re restoring interest deductibility, we’re pulling back the brightline test, and we’re balancing up the tenancy laws.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How much does he expect the average renter to save as a result of the $2.9 billion in interest deductibility changes that the Government has introduced?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, that will depend, but what I would say is that it’s important that we put the policy ideas—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. How can it possibly be acceptable for the Prime Minister to not answer a question and then go on to talk about something else? Saying, “Well, that will depend”, and then talking about something entirely different isn’t addressing the question.

SPEAKER: Well, I think you’ll find if you have a look at the telecast later, the Prime Minister had barely said two more words past the previous statement, but I think the Prime Minister may like to think about what you’ve just raised and continue with his answer.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I was going to have a fulsome answer, but I didn’t get a chance to do it before the point of order. But, I mean, the point I’d say to the member is that it does depend, because it does depend on what people are actually paying today, and what we’ve got to do is put the conditions in place. So, actually, unwinding interest deductibility, lowering the brightline test, making sure that we get the balance right are good things—it will put downward pressure on rents. We got the same advice that the member got, and it said that dealing with interest deductibility would actually put downward pressure on rents.

Hon David Seymour: How would the Prime Minister characterise the policy settings and circumstances of the housing supply in New Zealand when it was sworn in, and what does the Government plan to do about that situation?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I thank the member for their question, because we inherited a situation where house prices had gone up 50 percent, rental prices had gone up $180 per week, and the social housing register had quadrupled. That was after six years. Well, you had your go, and they didn’t actually achieve any outcomes.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Has the number of building consents for new houses issued increased or decreased since he became Prime Minister?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: They’ll have gone down because of the economic cycle, because of the market, but I would say to you that this is a Government that is going to open up more greenfields. And I just encourage the member: why doesn’t he support our fast-track legislation? Because we based it on inspired thinking from David Parker, who would make a great leader of the Labour Party one day, but he had inspired thinking and we’ve built on it, and I encourage the Labour Party to support our fast-track regulations legislation.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How is it that his Government is prioritising $2.9 billion in tax breaks for landlords whilst cutting a scheme that ensures that a number of New Zealanders can actually buy their first home?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, I just say to the member: we are a Government that is not afraid to make tough choices. We have inherited a fiscal situation left behind by the previous Government. What I don’t understand is how the masterminds that brought us KiwiBuild ended up increasing house prices 15 percent, added $180 to average weekly rents, and four times more people on the social house waiting list. I thought the Labour Party cared about low and middle income, working New Zealanders.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If house prices were going up by a massive 50-plus percent, wouldn’t a saver seeking to buying a house have to be saving that way as well, and does he know anybody who can do that, including anybody in the Labour Party who can do that over there?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Not that I’m aware of—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order. First of all, what was the question? But, second of all, how is the Prime Minister in any way responsible for the views of the Labour Party?

SPEAKER: The first point I’d make is that if you’re asking what the question was, you can’t possibly have a view about the rest of it, but, as it happens, I didn’t actually hear the question either.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thanks for the chance to clarify it. If savings were going up by a massive 50-plus percent, wouldn’t it mean that a person aspiring to buy their first home would have to be saving at that level as well—that’s 50-plus percent—and does he know anybody in this House that can do that, at that speed, including anybody in the Labour Party sitting over there with all their bright ideas?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely not. But what I can tell you is that we have a Government here that is absolutely determined to deal with our housing crisis. The Labour Government had six years to deal with it and failed to achieve anything.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order. First of all, the question was clearly out of order, and, second of all, allowing the Prime Minister to then use a completely out-of-order question to attack the Opposition flouts your previous rulings in a number of different ways.

SPEAKER: Well, there are two points that I’d make. The first is that the question asked, “Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?”, and so that does open a question up quite widely eventually, not only to the Opposition asking the question but to Parliament itself. And the second point is that, while you say it’s out of order, I did hear the Rt Hon Winston Peters reference bright ideas of the Labour Party, and I don’t think it was a political attack. Now, you might disagree with me. You may disagree with me—

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

SPEAKER: Sorry, where’s the call?

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: It’s a point of order.

SPEAKER: Ah, point of order.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If the Deputy Prime Minister is allowed to ask the Prime Minister questions about the financial capability of Labour members, are we allowed to ask the Prime Minister questions about the financial capability of National Party backbenchers, for example? That is a pertinent topic this week.

SPEAKER: That’s a very good point—a very good point. And I think the Prime Minister clearly had no responsibility for any of the financial capability of anybody in this House, and, on that basis, perhaps I should have been a bit quicker to rule it out—[Interruption] I beg your pardon? Are you going to stand up and take a point or just chip from the side?

Hon Damien O’Connor: Point of order. I just think that the Prime Minister does have responsibility for the backbenchers on his side of the House.

SPEAKER: With all due respect, he doesn’t have responsibility for their financial prowess at all, but he’s very good at picking them. Can we now move on to question No. 2.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, I do, and especially our announcement today that we will fund 1,500 more social housing places from community housing providers. The track record from the last Labour-Greens Government was abysmal: billions of dollars spent only to peddle misery with more children growing up in motels and sleeping in cars. We have a comprehensive strategy to fix that mess. We’re fixing the rental market, we’re fixing Kāinga Ora, and we’re funding more places for community housing providers so that Kiwi kids can grow up in a house, not a motel.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does the Prime Minister agree with the Ombudsman on the Fast-track Approvals Bill that “When you get a bill like this that creates enormous executive power, there is ever more need to have a check and a balance unless it’s matched by oversight and accountability. I think democracy itself is the loser.”?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I’d say to that member, and we’ve had this conversation many times before, is that we need modern, reliable infrastructure in New Zealand. That is how we will make this country more prosperous. We need to get things done, and that means cutting through the red and green tape that’s getting in the way, it means making sure that we take David Parker’s inspired thinking around a fast-track law and we build it out so that we can get things done. And so I just say to the member we welcome the Greens’ support so that we can get renewable energy projects built quicker.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he stand by the statement made on behalf of the Minister responsible for RMA Reform on 9 May that “within the Fast-track Approvals Bill you see various protections for taiao”; if so, what are these protections?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What I’d say to the member is the bill is before a select committee. You’ve heard the infrastructure Minister say himself that he is open to sensible suggestions to improve it. We are going through that process, we will digest that feedback, and we’ll take that on board.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he agree with the Taxpayers’ Union, who said that “The Bill places the decision-making authority with the joint Ministers. This places them at the centre of major investment decisions. Effectively, the Bill asks politicians to pick winners. This is never a good arrangement.”; if so, will he commit to removing Ministers as the decision makers?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I don’t know how to be any clearer: the bill is before a select committee; the infrastructure Minister has said himself that he’s open to sensible suggestions. What I would say is we have proposed an independent expert panel that will judge conditions including the environment, including social benefits and economic benefits, the whole lot, and we’ve actually proposed that in the select committee. If you’ve got thoughts about it, make those points now. But the big point is this: we are going to stop the talking and we are going to get things done in this country. I make no apologies for that; it’s what the people of New Zealand expect us to do. It’s what we’re expected to do if we’re going to deliver on our climate change goals—we need to get things done and built. And I’d just say to the member, again, please support the bill. If you care about the environment, if you care about climate change, you’d back our fast-track legislation.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Will the Prime Minister undertake, here and now, to have regard to all the comments on the 17 precedented fast-track projects of the last Government when he’s considering the fast-track process in this Government—remember what the Greens said back then—and will he have regard to it when he’s going forward?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I thank the member because, again, it was inspired thinking from David Parker, who invented a fast-track process. We’ve taken that, we’ve put it on steroids so that we can get things built.

Hon Marama Davidson: Will he, in light of his request for the Green Party’s support, commit to no new coal mines, not reopening oil and gas drilling, protecting the conservation estate from mining, and no extinction of native species through his Fast-track Approvals Bill?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I just say to the member: on this side, in this Government, we are deeply committed to delivering on our climate change goals and commitments. But, again, what we saw and what you—in the discussion that we had last week—[Interruption] Would you like me to complete? What we saw was that we actually have some energy security risk in this country. Why? Because there was a banning of an oil and gas ban from the Labour-Greens. There was no follow-up plan to it. It was a bunch of bumper stickers, headlines, and Post-it notes, and, actually, what was needed is we need gas as a transitory energy source so we can keep our energy security in place.

SPEAKER: The House is extremely lively today. I just ask people to think, just before they sort of get into some barracking, about exactly the value to the public that barracking is.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he stand by his statement on 8 May, “support our reversal of the oil and gas ban, support our fast-track legislation, and let’s go get renewable energy built in this country.”, and, if so, is he confused about the difference between oil and gas and renewable energy?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I absolutely stand by that statement and just continue to encourage the Greens to support us.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: What does the operating balance excluding gains and losses (OBEGAL) measure?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): The operating balance excluding gains and losses—commonly known as the OBEGAL—is the difference between total Crown revenue and total Crown expenses, before gains and losses. Gains and losses arise from changes in the value of the Government’s assets and liabilities—for example, changes in market prices of equity investments. OBEGAL is a total Crown measure, so it includes the financial results of Crown entities and State-owned enterprises.

Tim van de Molen: Is the OBEGAL in surplus or deficit?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The OBEGAL is in deficit and has been since 2019. It is in deficit because Government spending has increased markedly. Now, while some spending increases over recent years were temporary—for example, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the North Island weather events—there was a permanent increase in other areas. So, after stripping out large, one-off expenses, and adjusting for the economic cycle, the Treasury estimates a structural operating deficit of around 1.5 percent of GDP in the current financial year. A structural deficit, members, is not sustainable in the long term, as it requires continual borrowing to cover expenses, leading to a never-ending accumulation of public debt—a debt spiral. That is the mess our Government is cleaning up.

Tim van de Molen: What is the Government’s response to this situation?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Fiscal consolidation is required over time to bring revenue and expenses back into balance. As set out in the Budget Policy Statement, the Government is committed to reducing core Crown expenses as a proportion of GDP, and returning the OBEGAL to surplus. These fiscal goals have become harder to achieve as economic forecasts have deteriorated. I can tell the House that the forecasts have continued to deteriorate even since the Budget Policy Statement. None the less, the Government remains committed to its fiscal strategy and will set out a plan to return to surplus.

Tim van de Molen: When will the OBEGAL return to surplus?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: That will be set out in the fiscal projections and forecasts released as part of the Budget. But what I can tell the House is that in the current economic circumstances, if we continued with the future Budget operating allowances in the half-year update, which was set by the previous Government, there might not be a surplus posted in New Zealand until 2030-31. As a responsible Government, we will not be doing that.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by her answers to oral questions on Tuesday, 21 May?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Well, yes, and I particularly stand by my statement that “I happen to believe that one of the greatest things we can do for productivity is send New Zealanders the message that there will be reward for their hard work.”

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she stand by her statement “These savings and revenue initiatives are the same as those in the National Party’s tax plan, with some adjustment to reflect coalition agreements.”; if so, where in the coalition agreement does it say that first-home grants will be scrapped?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In answer to the first part of the question, yes. In answer to the second part of the question, the member should’ve listened to the rest of the answers, in which I said, “Tax relief in the Budget will be fully funded through savings and revenue initiatives. These savings and revenue initiatives are the same as those in the National Party’s tax plan, with some adjustments to reflect coalition agreements. There will also”—[Interruption] and the members should listen, because, clearly, members didn’t listen yesterday—“be other savings in the Budget. These savings will be directed towards Government priorities, including front-line public services.”, including social housing for our most vulnerable New Zealanders.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why has she chosen to support landlords with a $2.9 billion tax break but cut the funding to help first-home buyers?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: We have chosen to support renters because we don’t want to see the acceleration in rents they faced under that Government, and we are taking policy actions to put downward pressure on rents.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she stand by her statement “These savings and revenue initiatives are the same as those in the National Party’s tax plan.”; if so, can she rule out a foreign buyers tax?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, and yes—and I can’t wait to show you what this Government has done next week.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Are there any new revenue initiatives not contained in the coalition agreements or the National Party tax plan that Kiwis can expect in the Budget?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Eight more sleeps.

Question No. 5—Housing

5. PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn) to the Minister of Housing: What announcements has he made regarding social housing?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Today, I was proud to announce that the Government is investing in social housing for New Zealanders who are most in need of a warm, dry home. Budget 2024 will allocate $140 million in new funding for 1,500 new social housing places to be provided by community housing providers, not Kāinga Ora, thanks to savings found by ending the First Home Grant. As the House has discussed previously, funding for new social housing places under the previous Government ends in June 2025—another fiscal cliff we’ve had to confront. These places will start to become available from July 2025, giving the sector much-needed certainty about the pipeline, allowing them to plan for the future.

Paulo Garcia: Why are these places going to community housing providers and not Kāinga Ora?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, as the House discussed yesterday and as I announced on Monday, the independent review into Kāinga Ora reveals that it’s not financially sustainable in its current form. And until we have received, as the Government, and approved a turnaround plan from the refreshed board, we will not be giving any new social housing places to them. The community housing sector does an outstanding job of housing people in need—currently over 13,000 social houses around New Zealand. They’ve got the capability, expertise, and desire to grow further, and this Government’s going to back them to succeed.

Paulo Garcia: How will you pay for these 1,500 places?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: As I said before, funding for the new social housing places ends in June 2025, and we are filling in this fiscal cliff by ending the First Home Grant. Budget 2024 is about tough decisions, and we have made a deliberate choice to reprioritise low-value expenditure to more important policy priorities. At a time when the wait-list for social housing is over 25,000 applicants, we have made the tough call to prioritise support for them. The First Home Grant provides a median of $5,000 towards a house deposit, but it is an expensive and inefficient way to support first-home buyers. We are doing the right thing and focusing on supply side solutions to our housing crisis.

Paulo Garcia: What support for first-home buyers will the Government be retaining?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: We’re retaining the First Home Loan scheme, which is effective at supporting buyers over the deposit barrier. This allows first-home buyers to purchase a home with a deposit as low as 5 percent. We’re also retaining the ability for KiwiSaver members to withdraw funds for a first-home deposit. The First Home Loan helps thousands of Kiwis into their first homes every year. It’s more effective at supporting New Zealanders over the deposit barrier, and this is the right thing to do to support New Zealanders in need.

SPEAKER: Supplementary question—the Rt Hon Winston—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Will the Minister please deal with the—

SPEAKER: I can’t even get your name out.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Pardon?

SPEAKER: You’re off the mark pretty quick. I hadn’t even said your full name. You want the nation to hear—supplementary question, the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Modesty prevents me saying anything, Mr Speaker. Can I ask the Minister: could he possibly deal with the question that came by way of objection but is the specialty of the member who shouted it out, Rachel Boyack, when she shouted out “Rubbish”?

SPEAKER: No, we’ll let that one go.

Question No. 6—Housing

6. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: Is it correct, as reported yesterday on Newshub, that the Government intends to scrap grants to first-home buyers?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Yes.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does the Minister agree that many first-home buyers have relied on the First Home Grant to purchase their first home, including 10,000 last year?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, actually, last year—the member’s wrong—7,800 people received the First Home Grant, so the member’s wrong on that. The second point is that the evidence suggests that it brings forward the purchase of a home because it provides money towards the deposit, but it doesn’t actually make the difference for most people between buying a house or not buying a house and that is one of the reasons why we have reprioritised it to higher-value expenditure.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he stand by his statement on 28 March this year that “The Government is determined to see more New Zealanders in homeownership.”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Absolutely, which is why we have a comprehensive five-point plan to fix our housing crisis. I’m happy to detail it for the member in response to that patsy, but the member’s heard it before, which is about opening up land supply at the edge of our cities and going up inside our cities; fixing our infrastructure funding and financing system; actually doing what Phil Twyford promised to do five years ago, which is smash the metropolitan urban limit in Auckland; focusing on building and construction changes being led by Chris Penk; fixing the Resource Management Act; delivering better social housing; and fixing the private rental market.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does the Minister agree that if there are fewer first-home buyers purchasing a home, then there will be more people renting?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I mean, look, I can’t believe the member is now literally—literally—stating truisms in the House. Yes, it is true, obviously, that if the number of first-home buyers goes down, most of those people will be renting. Homeownership in New Zealand is at record lows. It is down to 63 percent. That is part of the crisis we’ve inherited from the last Government. But, actually, that goes back 20 or 30 years, which is why we have, as I just said, a comprehensive plan around land supply, infrastructure, incentives for councils, lowering the cost of building consents, fixing our planning system, fixing our private rental market. We are determined to focus on the underlying problems afflicting our housing market, which is not demand side measures, like first-home grants, but supply side measures. Because as the member, I think, is learning, unless and until you fix the supply side of the market, everything else is tinkering. We are fixing the underlying fundamentals.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Are first-home buyers, therefore, justified in feeling like they’ve been kicked in the guts when the Government has given landlords a $2.9 billion tax cut, but he won’t keep a $60 million scheme that helped them buy their first home?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: As I said on the bridge on the way here, this will not be a decision that is popular with people who are looking to buy a first home; I freely acknowledge that. But government is about doing the right thing and making the tough decisions. So I appreciate that this will not please everybody, but, actually, government is about doing the right thing, and the last Government lapsed far too easily into thinking that the solution to every problem was to throw money at it. Actually, when it comes to our housing crisis, the solution is supply side reforms. We are doing the right thing and reprioritising the expenditure to New Zealanders who need it most. I appreciate that first-home buyers won’t like it, but I tell you what else, I’m sure the member doesn’t like—and I’m sure every member in this House doesn’t like—25,000 people in severe and urgent need of housing on the wait-list who need a warm and dry home—

Hon Peeni Henare: So build more.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: And the member says “build more”—that is what I announced today, Peeni Henare. That is what I announced today; the member needs to listen up.

Question No. 7—Children

7. MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister for Children: Does she stand by all her statements and actions in relation to the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Yes—especially my statement that “Every child deserves the same level of care and support based on their needs, and their safety and wellbeing should always come first.”, and also my statement that “I want our system to ensure that every child in this country is raised in a loving and stable home that sets them up to succeed for life, regardless of race or culture.”

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Does she accept that the repeal of section 7AA is a repeal of the relationships Oranga Tamariki have made with iwi, hapū, and kaupapa Māori organisations, and, if not, what will her approach be when “entering into further strategic partnership agreements with iwi or Māori organisations”?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: In answer to the first part of the question, no. In answer to the second part of the question, I don’t know how much clearer I can make it: I have said over and over again in this House that strategic partnerships will not change and that I will continue to make sure that if these programmes are working well and in the best interest of our young people, they will continue and more will be created if that is what’s best for our children.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Does she agree with her statement that “This Bill does not stop the consideration of cultural wellbeing of children and young people in the care of Oranga Tamariki.”, and, if so, can she provide examples of what consideration of cultural wellbeing will look like without section 7AA?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: In relation to the first part of the question, yes.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I was seeking some examples and they didn’t show up—excuse me.

SPEAKER: You’ve put two legs in the question; the Minister chose to answer one of those. [Interruption] If you don’t mind, it’s supposed to be a point of order. So—when the House is quiet—it’s always been the rule that if there are two legs to a question, the Minister can choose which part to answer.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: If the ACT Party “wants to make sure the wellbeing of the child is the paramount consideration of Oranga Tamariki”, what reassurance can she provide to tamariki Māori now that she has committed the further severing of their connection to whakapapa and sense of belonging?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: This is not an ACT Party decision; this is an all-of-Government decision, because, as a Government, we are committed to making sure that our young people have every opportunity to the best start in life.

Hon Tama Potaka: Is it expected that credible iwi and kaupapa Māori providers who are working with Oranga Tamariki already will continue to engage with Oranga Tamariki to support tamariki Māori?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Absolutely, and I have spent the first few months since becoming Minister for Children going around the country and speaking to those iwi and strategic partnerships to make sure I’ve made it very clear that I’m looking forward to working with them in the future, for the betterment of our young people.

Question No. 8—Children

8. Hon NICOLE McKEE (ACT) to the Minister for Children: What reports, if any, has she seen on section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): I have seen reports of cases where social workers may have used section 7AA to justify decisions on care arrangements for Māori children which may not have been safe or in their best interests. For example, the members of this House will know about the case of a young girl referred to as “Moana”. After suffering trauma and neglect, Moana was placed with a safe and loving foster family. After a number of years with her foster family and being in a safe environment for the first time, Oranga Tamariki suddenly decided to uplift Moana, because her foster parents were Pākehā and Oranga Tamariki didn’t think they could provide for her cultural needs. Cultural needs can never be at the expense of the safety and wellbeing and best interests of our children.

Hon Nicole McKee: What other reports or statements has the Minister seen on section 7AA?

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Because that wasn’t one.

SPEAKER: Look, just calm a little bit.

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I have seen a statement claiming that if section 7AA was around when I was a child, I would have been “raised Māori” and would have been connected with my whakapapa and would have known my Māoritanga. The statement goes on to say that I was raised Pākehā with a “disconnection and disdain” for my own people and that my experience is exactly why we need section 7AA. I’m not going to stand here and justify how I was raised—

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Well, you are—yes, you are. That’s exactly what you’re doing.

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: —but I am also not going to let anyone else, especially Te Pāti Māori, think that they can tell my story for me, especially when they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: That was her own report.

Rawiri Waititi: She said it herself.

SPEAKER: Just when everyone’s settled.

Hon Nicole McKee: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Will the repeal of section 7AA mean the end of strategic partnerships that Oranga Tamariki has with iwi and Māori organisations?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I have been very clear, throughout this process, that Oranga Tamariki should continue with strategic partnerships, and I will continue saying that over and over again until people listen. Where these are delivering positive results and better outcomes for our young people, they will continue. Oranga Tamariki currently have 10 strategic partnerships, and I have directed officials to continue with these and enter into new partnerships when and where there are good reasons to do so. I have also received advice from officials that makes it very certain that repealing section 7AA will not prevent Oranga Tamariki from continuing to work with existing strategic partners or entering into new strategic partnerships.

Hon Nicole McKee: Does the Minister agree with the statement that “The repeal of Section 7AA is a targeted extermination of our babies … exterminating any ounce of culture, identity and any sense of Māori selves.”?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: No, I don’t. As I’ve said consistently, this is about ensuring Oranga Tamariki puts the safety, wellbeing, and the best interests of children, not race, at the forefront of social-work practice and decision making. I can’t understand how anyone can think there is anything more important than the safety and wellbeing of our children. Repealing section 7AA is not about disregarding the whakapapa of Māori children; section 7AA places duties on the chief executive that are at odds with the agency’s primary purpose, which is to support the wellbeing of our most vulnerable and at-risk children.

Question No. 9—Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence

9. Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) to the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence: Does she agree with the omission of a reduction in family violence from the Prime Minister’s Public Service targets?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): No, because family violence is not omitted from the Government’s nine targets—it is part of the “Reducing violent crime” target. I am proud to be part of a coalition Government which is committed to restoring law and order and putting victims first. This is why we have a series of targets that will focus the public sector on achieving improved results in this area, including reducing crime, with a target of 20,000 fewer people as victims of assaults, robberies, and sexual assaults by 2029. This Government is committed to, and has already announced, a range of measures that help the victims of family violence, including bringing back three-strikes legislation with the addition of the new strangulation and suffocation offence, and backing police to crack down on gangs.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How does she think victims of family and sexual violence will respond to the knowledge that this Government will only develop targets that are “responsive” to Government intervention?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Just because family violence is not a stand-alone target among the nine Government targets does not mean it is not a priority. This Government considered a range of targets and measures and settled on nine measures that it believes will best focus the public sector on achieving better results.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does she agree with the advice of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet that developing a specific target for family violence was not suitable as “family violence victimisations are unlikely to change over a three- to six-month period and therefore it is not specific enough to drive delivery.”; if not, why not?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I received a range of advice on this topic and I also received advice from officials that a stand-alone family violence target was not suitable for a number of reasons, including that an increase in reporting can be seen as an improvement as more people seek help, and currently, under successive Governments, the key measures regarding family violence are not well suited to the setting of or reporting against quarterly targets.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Can the Minister just restate that, please: that she did not record a family violence target because it would go up as more family violence interventions were reported?

SPEAKER: No, I don’t think that’s—ask a question.

Hon Ginny Andersen: I’ll reframe it; sorry. Is it the Minister’s view that she did not think it—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Sorry. There was a question being asked, so, please, ask it again. The House will be quiet.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Is it the Minister’s view that it was not necessary to develop a specific target for family and sexual violence because it would show an increase in reporting of instances of family and sexual violence?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: No, that’s not what I said. What I said was the advice was we could seem like we have achieved something when we actually haven’t. The advice may see that an increase in reporting could be seen as an improvement, when, actually, it just means more people are reporting—doesn’t mean that we’ve made successes in that space.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does she think it’s acceptable to only develop targets that are easy to measure and easy to achieve, and, if so, where does this leave victims of family and sexual violence?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: As I’ve travelled around the country the last couple of months, talking to NGOs and community organisations on where they see the gaps and where they see the Government can help them in this space, I realise there is a lot of work to do and we have to make sure that we’re actually listening to the people on the ground and making a real positive difference in this space rather than reactionary legislation and targets that don’t make a damn bit of difference.

Question No. 10—Housing

10. TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Housing: Does he believe everyone in New Zealand should have a secure home; if so, how does he reconcile this with his Government’s intention to make it easier to evict people from their homes?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Yes, I believe everyone should be able to access a warm and dry home to live in. The intent of our tenancy policy changes is to encourage more landlords into the market so that people can access those homes.

Tamatha Paul: Does he accept the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) advice that evidence is uncertain that no-cause evictions will put downward pressures on rents but that the evidence is clear that security of tenancy for renters will be negatively impacted?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, that’s the official advice from HUD. What I do believe, as I’ve heard from many landlords and many people out there who work with vulnerable tenants, is that bringing back no-cause evictions will enable landlords to take a chance on often quite vulnerable tenants who are trying to access rental properties. That is a good thing for New Zealanders.

Tamatha Paul: Does he agree with the president of the Canterbury Property Investors’ Association, who said about no-cause evictions, “Instead of getting maintenance, they get a 90-day notice to end their tenancy.”, and, if not, why not?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I haven’t seen the quote from that particular individual in its full context, but, generally, I disagree with that.

Tamatha Paul: What does he say to one renter who told us that they remember their “mum crying because we received a 90-day notice just days after we filed a healthy homes report because my room was completely covered in mould, there were slugs entering under doors every night, and none of the walls were insulated”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The Government supports the healthy homes standards, and I would say to that renter exactly that. It is also illegal to do that on the grounds of what the member is talking about. I would say more generally the whole thrust of our housing policies, as I discussed with Manawatu Tenants’ Union and a whole range of people working in this advocacy space this morning, is to improve homeownership for New Zealanders and improve the lives of renters by putting downward pressure on rents. It is too expensive to own houses in New Zealand. It is too expensive to rent in New Zealand. We are fixing the underlying issues in our housing market that have caused that to be the case.

Tamatha Paul: What does he say to one person who told us that “My elderly grandfather was kicked out each year for three years in a row, from three places, and it was so sad seeing him shuffled along every year. It was such an ordeal moving him. He wasn’t eligible for funding for a place in a rest home and didn’t have enough money to pay for one.”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I have every sympathy with people in those situations, but I can’t comment on those individual circumstances. What we are trying to do is get the balance right between tenants and landlords, and also make it clear that landlords that wish to provide properties to people who they might otherwise have turned down are willing to take a chance on people. The member needs to appreciate that the policy intent is positive not negative.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) to the Associate Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made regarding coastguards and lifeguards?

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Associate Minister of Transport): Last Friday, I announced with the Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, the Hon Simeon Brown, that through Budget 2024 the Government would be providing an additional $63.6 million over four years to fund Coastguard New Zealand and Surf Lifesaving New Zealand so that these NGOs can continue to deliver their essential front-line water safety and rescue and prevention services across New Zealand. Heading to the beach, lake, or a river for a fun day of activity in the water is part of the Kiwi way of life, particularly in the summer. With that comes inherent risk, and these front-line organisations do critical work to help ensure people can head home safe.

Catherine Wedd: How much funding will each organisation receive?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Coastguard New Zealand will receive $19.5 million over four years, while Surf Lifesaving New Zealand will receive $44 million over the same period. This is operational funding to help address cost pressures faced by these organisations. This will ensure they’re able to continue to deliver their essential front-line water safety, rescue, and prevention services across New Zealand. Coastguard New Zealand and Surf Lifesaving provide an essential public service that benefits the health, safety, and wellbeing of New Zealanders. The Government is committed to ensuring that these services continue to prevent harm and save lives on our beaches and in the water.

Catherine Wedd: Why is the Government funding these organisations?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The Hon Matt Doocey.

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Oh, thank you. I just thought I’d wait for you to call me.

SPEAKER: It’s strange; it’s not election year.

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Surf Lifesaving and the Coastguard are both experiencing increased demand for services at a time when costs are increasing due to the cost of living crisis. Costs for wages and equipment continue to rise, as do general operating costs such as electricity, insurance, and rates. This Government is committed to eliminating wasteful spending and getting money out of Wellington and into the front-line services that are delivering. This funding will ensure that our current levels of services are maintained and ensures that they can meet the increasing levels of demand. Costs are rising across the board for these organisations, with services delivered almost entirely by volunteers. Funding will cover operational expenses for both organisations, as well as rescue equipment, facilities, and maintenance.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary question.

SPEAKER: Catherine Wedd.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What sort of a system have you got here?

SPEAKER: You know, they get through.

Catherine Wedd: What other announcements has he made regarding lifeguards?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: Last night, I was pleased to present the 2023 New Zealand Search and Rescue Awards at Parliament. These awards are presented annually in recognition of outstanding achievements. Forty nominations were received in 2023, with two gold awards and 10 certificates of achievement being awarded at this year’s ceremony. A quick count of the support category recipients last night revealed they have over 170 years of search and rescue experience between them. I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the people at Coastguard, Surf Lifesaving, and other organisations working in search and rescue for their dedication and commitment to ensuring New Zealanders’ safety.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the Minister as to whether he’s received accolades and congratulations for this policy, belatedly so, because it was part of the coalition negotiations which failed at the time, but which they’ve now come around to seeing as a brilliant idea?

Hon MATT DOOCEY: As the Deputy Prime Minister says, this was a coalition agreement very similar to the other coalition agreement we announced today with $24 million for Gumboot Friday—two examples of this coalition Government getting money out of Wellington to grassroots organisations.

Question No. 12—Children

12. Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister for Children: Does she stand by her expectation of Oranga Tamariki “that the best interests of our young people are at the forefront of all their decision making”?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Yes.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How is it in the best interests of children and young people to add specialist legal work to Oranga Tamariki social workers, work that they are not trained for, and in an organisation where they are already 160 social workers short?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: One of the premises of the consultation document is lifting performance and accountability across the organisation, whereby functional leads would have sole responsibility for delivery in areas that they own. As a result, Oranga Tamariki proposed that legal services should focus on their core court-related roles and for some other functions that they are doing to be led and delivered by those who are responsible and accountable for them. Every part of this is still a proposal and no final decisions have been made.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Does she agree with the Law Society that Oranga Tamariki lawyers and social workers have distinct specialist front-line roles, and that the services these lawyers provide cannot simply be carried out by others in the organisation—for example, social workers who already face complex and heavy workloads—and, if not, why not?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: No, I don’t agree, because “front line” has been defined—the advice is that front-line staff roles are considered to be children’s workers, as defined in section 23 of the Children’s Act, and the definition of “front-line service” is an operational matter for Oranga Tamariki. I’m advised that Oranga Tamariki considers front-line services to be those provided by staff directly to children and families. While Oranga Tamariki solicitors provide valuable support to social workers in carrying out their statutory functions, they do not provide direct services to children or their families.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Does she agree with the family law section of the Law Society, who say that they hold significant concerns about the potential consequences for the safety and wellbeing of whānau and vulnerable tamariki, should there be a reduction in either of those roles, as well as the proper functioning of the Family Court?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Can I just make this very clear: this is still a proposal and no final decisions have been made.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How is it in the best interests of children to slash the Safety of Children in Care team, which reports on children abused while they are in care?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: There are many departments that the work will still continue, they’re just being consolidated under less managers so that the managers can get out of the way so they can make better decision-making.

Hon David Seymour: Is it the Minister’s leadership style to see the staff that work for her department as capable and worth backing, rather than running them down before a review is even complete?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I believe and I truly appreciate the hard work, and every member who goes out there and works on the ground with our young people deserves to be applauded. What we are doing is making sure we are resourcing those workers on the ground every day, doing that hard work, rather than resourcing more managers in the back office.

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

STUART SMITH (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): I move that the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. Budget 2024 is going to take—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Mr Smith, we’re going to stop and we’re going to start your time again, because some people seem to think that the conclusion of question time is a good time to start conversations all over the House. It’s not. We’ll start again—I’m calling Stuart Smith, the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

STUART SMITH: Do you want me to move it again?

SPEAKER: Yes.

STUART SMITH: I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2024.

Budget 2024 is going to cover three key themes: prioritise investment in the public services that matter most to New Zealanders, deliver personal income tax reduction for working Kiwis, and deliver durable savings to support investments today and to get the Government books back into balance. It is a fact that we are in a significant downturn in New Zealand. Our books are taking much longer to get back into good shape. Our deficits are much stronger than in other countries of comparable means to us, and it’s going to be very tough for us to get it back in shape.

We run a structural deficit that is the second-worst in the developed world, and we heard today that that’s expected to be 1.5 percent. The country that has the highest structural deficit is the United States, which has the reserve currency. We can’t afford to run structural deficits at that level. We are in a significantly difficult position, and that’s thanks to the mismanagement of the previous Government, quite frankly.

Government expenditure has got completely out of control. We have the official cash rate (OCR)—which was confirmed again today—at 5.5 percent, which drives interest rates, which is a significant impost on household incomes, or disposable incomes. What I think we all have to remember is that once we did come out of that COVID era and we had inflation getting a little bit out of control, the Reserve Bank kept the funding for lending programme going at the same time that it was tightening the OCR. That is, effectively, making it cheaper, on the one hand, for banks to lend money, and, on the other hand, trying to make it more expensive for banks to lend and drive interest rates up. One foot on the accelerator, one foot on the brake, and when we asked the Reserve Bank Governor about that, his response was that he had a moral contract with the banks to continue that funding for lending programme going. My question is: what about the moral contract that the Reserve Bank has with the taxpayers of New Zealand? Because they are the people who are feeling the effects of that.

So inflation has driven rents up, as we’ve heard today, to an increase of $170 a week from 2017. That is a significant impost on household incomes. The Minister of Finance told us this in the select committee. When she was asked about whether we had a tax problem and that perhaps we weren’t raising enough tax, she pointed out that in 2011, the median-income earner was paying 15.5 percent of their salary in tax, and today, that figure is 20.6 percent. So we don’t have a tax problem. What we have is an expenditure problem, and we have to bear in mind that only 40 percent of taxpayers pay net tax. So that is a very difficult position for us to be in, and I think, as the famous former chancellor of the exchequer for Louis XIV said, the art of taxation is plucking the goose with the minimum amount of hissing. I would postulate that we are getting quite a bit of hissing, and so we need to focus much more on our expenditure.

The Minister of Finance also committed to keeping the operating allowance to less than $3.5 billion, and she confirmed that yesterday, in question time, and here, today. However, the previous Government had locked in $2.3 billion of that spending, so it’s very little to come and go on. We wait with bated breath to see what the Minister is going to do next week, but I’m sure it’s going to be well worth the wait.

She also said she was going to set a clear direction on debt, and she made it very clear that debt needs to come down as a proportion of GDP. She has committed to reduce it to less than 40 percent; in fact, she wants to operate it in the range of between 20 and 40 percent. Now, some pundits call for a much higher level of debt, but that is not actually suitable for New Zealand, because we suffer from quite regular shocks, be they natural disasters or other things, so we need to have that buffer to move on. The Minister indicated that she didn’t have an issue with debt, provided that debt was for infrastructure that would drive productivity—that is, getting a good return from that investment.

So, in short, the Minister emphasised that it’s results that the Government is looking for, not money out the door, and I think the best example of that is one of the pre-Budget announcements, on school lunches. That is a saving of $104 million, and it’s still going to feed, actually, more than the same number of children. It’s going to feed 10,000 additional children between the ages of two and five. It just shows how you can find wasteful spending right across the Public Service, I’m sure, just by looking at doing things in a different way, and I think that’s a great start for our Budget. Mr Speaker, I don’t know about you, but it certainly didn’t do me any harm at school—having sandwiches and a piece of fruit, rather than butter chicken—and there are many more savings to be made in other places.

But I want to move on to other Budget announcements, such as Gumboot Friday, which was mentioned here today. That’s $24 million over four years going to I Am Hope to deliver mental health services. I think that that’s a fantastic initiative. We have to trust and give an opportunity to those in the private sector to deliver services, and I’m sure that they are able to do that in a cost-effective way.

Surf Life Saving and the Coastguard—I was at the event last night, and it was great to see one of my constituents get an award for the Coastguard. I think that they’re a very worthy cause, and it’s not a large sum of money, but it will go a long way and make a big difference to those services: $63 million.

Of course, our defence forces also got a mention in pre-Budget announcements, with $571 million going to back our Defence Force. In the uncertain times that we are in today, we have to be mindful of those services and of how much they deliver for us in New Zealand. So that was a very good announcement.

We also had the corrections announcement of a $1.9 billion investment to enhance public safety and rehabilitate offenders—another great announcement. So we’re actually delivering more for less, I believe.

But I think that one of the key things for me was the education announcement on structured literacy: $67 million. That has gone down incredibly well out there, I think. All those people who are out and about, talking to the schools—there’s been great feedback on that, and so that’s a really good announcement. Then we had $153 million for charter schools. I’m really looking forward to seeing those take off, because I know what difference they make, and, actually, often they take on the children with the most difficult learning situations and get fantastic results. So I think that’s another good announcement.

Then, there is $429 million in savings from the Ministry of Education to redirect funds to the front line. Again, this is getting money out of the back office and into the front office. Then, of course, there is the Pharmac announcement, with the largest ever Budget of $6.294 billion, and we do know—we canvassed this well—of the fiscal cliff that was left by the previous Government.

So, in short, we have a Budget that is about sensible spending. It’s about delivering results for New Zealanders, and it’s about delivering tax relief for hard-working New Zealanders. That is long overdue. Fiscal drag is a terrible way to try and raise more taxes. It’s doing it by stealth. We’re going to get rid of that, and I think that that’s long overdue. So, with pleasure, I commend the select committee report on the Budget Policy Statement.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I want to acknowledge the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We are a quite a constructive select committee and it was important that we spent the considerable time having a look at the Government’s Budget Policy Statement.

We heard from a number of submitters, both orally and who’d written in submissions, as to the impact and the effect and what they wanted to see in relation to this Budget Policy Statement. And I’ve got to say, the submissions were varied—varied. I’m going to go take some time a little bit later in this contribution to be able to go through some of those submissions and what some of those submitters said in relation to the trade-offs that were going to be made through this particular Budget. We have, as the chairperson said, one of the Government’s overarching goals for this term, as set out in the statement, “To build a stronger, more productive economy that lifts real incomes and increases opportunities for New Zealanders.”

But what we have heard in the last 24 hours is something called “killing the Kiwi Dream”—killing the Kiwi Dream of being able to own your own home. That is what we’ve heard in the last 24 hours from this Government. And they’ve had to clearly stand up and address that because it had been leaked from their Budget Policy Statement. And this is what the concern is on this side of the House—that we’re going to see a lot of smoke and mirrors between now and the Budget, and then in the days after that. Because they probably weren’t going to say that out loud—that they were removing the first-home grant. They were probably going to be requiring for that information to come out a little bit later or for others to find it. They weren’t going to be transparent with Kiwis and put that in their PR, saying, “We’re going to get rid of the first-home grant.”

It’s very similar to a situation that we saw in previous years under a National Government, when the training incentive allowance was removed by stealth as well. Nothing in the PR around the training incentive allowance basically being cut, by the National Government, back then, by stealth—basically, it wasn’t until the Opposition highlighted it that that smoke and mirrors was revealed and it was revealed that the training incentive allowance, just like the first-home grant, was going to be removed. So I want to ask the members on the other side of the House, when you do that PR, be really clear about what you’re going to cut. Because if you don’t want to be clear about what you’re going to cut, New Zealanders won’t be fooled. And in the time after the Budget, when this side of the House starts to go through every single detail, we will bring it to Kiwis’ attention what you are doing to cut the choices they want to make in order to get ahead.

The other thing that they’ve decided to do is to cut a lot of the things which would have helped right now for Kiwis. They have removed the free public transport fares. They were free for those who were 12 and under, we made them half price for those under 25, and they’ve removed them. They’ve also introduced a new car tax, an additional $50 with road-user charges to Kiwis. They’ve said, time and time again, and right through the Budget Policy Statement, that they have a laser-like focus on the cost of living; that that is one of their targets. But they’ve actually removed some of the measures that help everyday Kiwis in the hand today. And yet if you actually go on to the National Party tax calculator—because they keep saying, basically, the tax cuts are going to help—well, some of our lowest-paid Kiwis are probably only going to get $2 in the hand, according to their calculator—$2 in the hand each week. How does that help when the rent is going up?

The chairman referenced the Monetary Policy Statement today, and there are two very sticky things that are basically refusing to bring down inflation. One of them is increases in rents—apparently there’s going to be downward pressure on rents. I haven’t seen that since this Government has come in. The second thing that’s basically making inflation difficult to bring down is around rates. It’s great for Auckland that they’ve got a deal, but what about the rest of the country? I’ve heard 33 percent up in Northland, we’ve got 17 percent in Porirua, and then it’s 8 percent the next year. That is something that needs to be dealt with in order to bring inflation down. But we don’t have a solution so far from this Government.

The chairman also referenced the Monetary Policy Statement and one of the other things that was basically set out in the Monetary Policy Statement today was around insurance. That is another reason—increasing insurance premiums is another reason why inflation is not coming down. But what is the Government doing to support them through the Budget Policy Statement? It says they’re going to try and make things more productive, and yet what we have again seen—again through smoke and mirrors and basically through digging through some of our media—is that they’ve removed the national resilience plan. The national resilience plan—the funding for that was to support local regional councils to basically mitigate the climate change impacts, and that was supposed to help with bringing down insurance premiums. But we’re not seeing that action from this Government. Instead, what we are seeing are smoke and mirrors where they are cutting one thing, choosing another, and then not saying anything about it.

But that’s the problem here—Kiwis are not dumb. They are not dumb. They will see right through it. They may not see it on Budget day, but, by golly, this side of the House will go through the detail and show Kiwis the cuts and the choices that the Government is making that will basically impinge on their ability to get ahead. We have seen it already with first-home buyers. Interest deductibility—so, straight away, landlords—$2.9 billion—will be able to outbid them at auction because they will be able to have that tax break behind them. But what does this Government do? They remove the first-home grant.

So I now want to, basically, echo the voice of some of the people who submitted to the select committee, because even though the other side of the House won’t agree or basically listen to what I say, what about the people who actually read the document and want to be able to contribute and say to the Government and plead with the Government to change what they’re doing? If we look at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers, they say “we acknowledge the fiscally challenging environment in which the Coalition Government is currently navigating, yet we raise our concerns about disinvestment in public services whilst maintaining intentions or personal tax reductions. Such an approach, we believe, is likely to further compound social inequities and lead to disadvantage for many New Zealanders.”

But you don’t believe the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers? Maybe you’ll agree with CCS Disability Action, a group that represents our disabled community, who again have seen a cut from this Government, who have seen criteria tighten so that their carers cannot get respite, so that some disabled people cannot access the support to help them, enable them, to live a good life. We’ve had meetings and rallies across New Zealand and a lot of people are absolutely upset with this Government for what they are doing to the disabled community. So if you don’t believe this side of the House, maybe CCS: “We have significant concerns about the priority areas as well as the short-term goals laid out in the Budget Policy Statement. We are also disappointed to see that disability is absent.”

And you know what? The disabilities community isn’t the only group that’s absent from the Budget Policy Statement. Where is the child poverty reduction? Where are the climate change actions? This Government has, basically, removed the ability to focus their accounts and, basically, the funding that hard-working taxpayers in New Zealand require them to do. Again, if you don’t believe the CCS Disability Action, how about you might believe Disabled Persons Assembly (DPA) NZ? “DPA is concerned that the proposed tax cuts and funding of tax rebates for landlords will have a negative impact on the government’s ability to provide essential services that disabled people rely on across health, education, welfare and support services.”

But maybe you don’t want to agree with the Disabled Persons Assembly or CCS or the Association of Social Workers; maybe you just want to agree with a person, an individual, who took the time out of their day to submit to the select committee because they thought it was so important that they did. From Emma: “A budget policy statement that neglects to address social policy is woefully incomplete.”

Or maybe, if you’re a bit of an environmentalist, the Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand: 43 groups with a concern for environment. They are, “disappointed that the Budget Policy Statement has lost the acknowledgement of the natural environment, responses to climate change, and wellbeing aspects of the environment.” Time and time again during those submissions, we heard people that said, “Do not give us tax cuts, but fund the public services that we depend on for us to have a good life.”

We have seen over the last 24 hours this Government using smoke and mirrors to basically disguise their cuts and we will hold them to account in eight days’ time.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. We are, of course, debating the Budget Policy Statement, and much has been made—particularly by the finance Minister—of the fact that there’s still “eight more sleeps” or so until we get to the Budget itself. But, none the less, we have here, in the Budget Policy Statement, some clues as to what will be in the Budget, although not the operating allowance—breaking from convention there.

Government Budgets are values statements, and we have actually on the record a former National Party Minister of Finance and then Prime Minister who once said in a quip in an election debate that people “can’t go shopping with your values.” So let’s talk about this Government’s values and how they’re making it harder for regular people to go shopping. On those values, as the Hon Barbara Edmonds just noted, within this Budget Policy Statement, there is no reference whatsoever to climate change—climate change, which by the way was mentioned in the briefing to incoming Minister, the Minister of Finance, as one of the greatest threats to financial stability in this country.

We also saw that one of the first things out the door from this Government, under its first 100 days, was a repeal of smoke-free legislation, which no one had asked for and no one had campaigned on except for the tobacco lobby. But guess what! It’s given the Government an extra half a billion dollars in revenue to pay for their much-foreshadowed trickle-down tax cuts and, of course, their $2.9 billion in tax cuts to landlords.

Within this Budget Policy Statement, it says that the Government wants to—and I quote—“build a stronger, more productive economy.” So the question has to be asked: stronger for who? More productive for who? What do those words actually mean? Well, we know that it will be stronger for the landlords in this country who have $2.9 billion handed to them. It will be stronger for the oil and gas companies, who will see more profit going offshore and lining their pockets. It will be stronger for those who are opening coal mines in the conservation estate, and it’s stronger for the tobacco lobby.

But on that point of productivity—and we’ve had a lot of debate about this, back and forth, in the likes of question time and other debates over the last few months—we have had not only Treasury officials in many hearings in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee but also the likes of the International Monetary Fund and the OECD saying to the Government that one of the most important things that it could do, if it really cared about the productivity of this economy, is to fix the tax system.

I know that the Greens go on about this somewhat, because it is a fundamental piece to fixing the way that our economy operates. We’ve got a pretty good clue into how it operates, out of the IRD and their high-wealth individuals report at the beginning of last year and some great subsidiary papers from Treasury which broke down wealth distribution in this country. There we found that the top 311 families in Aotearoa hold more wealth combined than the bottom 2.5 million New Zealanders. That is not an accident; it is a consequence of a tax system that has consistently entrenched inequality and sees the average New Zealander pay an effective tax rate of less than half of those at the top. Those are political decisions.

So we also heard from the chair of our select committee about the mental health announcement today, and I think that there has been quite ample discussion about procurement processes, which, of course, we’ll leave for another day. But, to that effect, I just wanted to reflect, actually—because this Government seems to be intent on and tells us a lot that they care about return on investment and value for money. Well, in 2018, we had He Ara Oranga, the report of the mental health and addiction inquiry, tabled in this place, and it told us what, effectively, all of the international research does, which is that all of us have genetics which predispose us potentially towards the greater or lesser manifestation of mental ill health but that it is fundamentally our environment, the opportunities that we have access to, the stability that we experience in our lives as a result of having affordable housing or not, the ability to belong—all of those things are the greatest determinants of mental ill health manifesting or not.

To put that another way: stable housing is suicide prevention, decent incomes are suicide prevention, and belonging and acceptance in our communities are suicide prevention. And if we are solely, as a Government or as a Parliament, talking about funding mental health treatment while not talking about addressing the causes of mental ill health, then we are missing a massive trick and putting far too many New Zealanders in pain and suffering that they do not need to go through.

I also just wanted to pull through some of these pre-Budget announcements that the Government has put out there, because, frankly, this Government is gaslighting New Zealanders with all the more oil, coal, and gas. They’re telling us that they’re making decisions for renters. But how are they doing that? By handing $2.9 billion to landlords, which, by the way, the financial policy statements from the Reserve Bank said, is going to increase house prices in this country by increasing the valuation of properties from those who already own.

They tell us, on the one hand, that they are making decisions for the wellbeing of kids in State care by shredding laws that those who grew up in State care, the Children’s Commissioner, and the Waitangi Tribunal are pleading with them not to shred. They tell us that they are making decisions for reaching our climate goals. And how are they doing that? By passing laws to fast track coal mines and seabed mining. And, in fact, as I’ve just alluded to, climate change is not mentioned once in this Budget Policy Statement. And that is despite it being one of the greatest risks to financial stability in this country and, indeed, in the world—

Sam Uffindell: I didn’t hear it from your new MPs in their maiden statements.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: This is one of the really important things that I think it’s important to unpack, especially for members of the National Party heckling just now, as to why the Green Party cares so fundamentally about the inextricable connection between social and environmental wellbeing. Climate change exacerbates inequality. So if we can take a second here to unpack that, it is the case that we know, based on domestic and international evidence, that those with the most means contribute the most in terms of climate-changing emissions. Yet they are also those who have the means to continue moving further and further up the proverbial hill from rising seas—that is, further and further away from the impacts of a warming climate. So who is hit the first and the worst by climate change? It’s those who have the least and have contributed the least to those climate-changing emissions.

So what’s the Government’s response? Not only to knowingly plough ahead with policies that will increase inequality based on the data, the evidence, and their own official advice but to say that they are no longer going to use the emissions trading scheme revenue directly for reducing carbon emissions in this country but for generalised tax cuts. Tax cuts do not trickle down.

So, for all of the hot air that we hear in here, for all of the rhetoric that we hear from the Government—that they care about people, that they care about the planet—there’s the evidence that bears out completely the contrary of that—that their decisions will increase inequality, they will increase house prices, and they will increase homelessness. When it comes to climate change, well, my many parliamentary written questions to the Minister for climate show that he’s not even asking, so we can only conclude that he doesn’t care.

Then there’s the experiences of everyday people, who, out there, removed from this place, will tell you that they are exhausted. This Government campaigned on the cost of living, yet, so far, all we can see is that that cost of living continues to go up. More people are losing their jobs and will under the economic track that this Government has decided to pursue.

We are also seeing climate progress being shredded. And when I pressed the Prime Minister a few months ago on whether he could name one thing that they had done which would lower the cost of living in this country, what did he point to? Removing the regional fuel tax, which will remove hundreds of millions of dollars for critical infrastructure in our largest city. And there is next to no guarantee that the fossil-fuel companies won’t just fill the gap.

So, in conclusion, this economy that we’re always talking about and debating in this place, it isn’t set in stone; it isn’t this deity that was handed down to us on stone tablets. The economy is all of us—the stuff that we create, the planet that we live on, and the rules that we put in place which show our priorities and the things that we value, the kinds of outcomes that we want to work together in society to create. And the message from the Greens, here—that we want New Zealanders to hear—is that we can make decisions that prioritise, fundamentally, the wellbeing of people and planet, not the austerity trickle-down nonsense that we are hearing from this Government.

I also just wanted to point out, finally, the deep inconsistency that we hear from this Government that they are going line by line through expenditure and cutting wasteful spending, yet none of their Ministers take responsibility for any of the job cuts.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to add to what others have said about this Budget Policy Statement report from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I would give some responses to what Barbara Edmonds said, but, to be honest, I can’t remember any of it already!

I was interested in some of the things that Chlöe Swarbrick said, and I know it’s unparliamentary to refer to a member’s absence, but you’ve got someone who is actually doing her best impression of the woman who wasn’t there. It’s almost as though she wasn’t part of the last six years, where the Greens backed up the Government. She says, “We need more affordable housing. We need more affordable rent.” She was part of a Government where the average house price went up $250,000, or 30 percent. She backed a Government where the average rent went up $200 a week. Then she comes along and says, “Oh, isn’t it terrible. Give me one more chance and I won’t screw it up as bad next time.” I mean, the Greens have got to take some accountability. This Government and the New Zealand people are inheriting a huge mess, and they created it. And no amounts of catnip clips on Instagram are going to make your rent cheaper. They’re not going to make the economy better; they’re not going to make your job more secure. All they’re going to do is maybe boost someone’s following on Instagram. I think this country has fallen for that formula before, and look where it got us.

Where it got us is that we’ve got a Government inheriting an extra $100 billion worth of debt. The interest on that debt will soon be $10 billion per year. We’ve got a Government that is inheriting inflation that is 5.8 percent domestically, even as tradable inflation from the rest of the world falls. We have a Government that is inheriting an official cash rate of 5.5 percent, a level of interest that flows through into people’s mortgages—and yes, their rents. We’ve got a Government that is inheriting a structural fiscal deficit. What does that mean? It means that, when you wash out the cycles and the ups and downs in the economy, at the end of the day the Government policy settings that we inherited meant there was not enough money coming in to meet the commitments to spending that the previous Government made. That is the basic inheritance of the Government. But enough about us. What about the people up and down New Zealand?

Let me tell you some of the stories that I’ve heard from people just in the last few weeks, and what we’re trying to do about it. I’ve spoken to real estate agents who tell me the number one reason people are selling is because of relationship breakdown because of years of financial stress through the COVID period and the inflation period and everything else that the previous Government did for us. I’ve talked to people who say, “You know what, the toughest thing about running our retail store is that people are on edge. They’re stressed and they abuse us because the price rises are getting to them, because they’re constantly checking their account to see if they can afford the next thing they need to do.” I’ve talked to people in construction who say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, because there’s no more work after a certain point in the future.”

Things out there are grim, and they’re grim for New Zealanders because, fundamentally, while New Zealanders were tightening their belts, Grant Robertson, the former finance Minister, was loosening his endlessly. And, as a result, we now face the fiscal circumstances that I describe, where the Government insulated itself from the challenges of debt by just borrowing some more. We now need to tighten our belts as a Government, just like firms and farms and families have been having to do for years of Labour’s fiscal abuse. And that means that, in this fiscal policy statement, we make three commitments. One is that we are cutting back the wasteful spending. The fact is that there has been too much waste under the previous Government. These guys never saw a problem that they didn’t think could be solved with borrowed money! Some of the expenditure that now lives on in folklore was just extraordinary. A classic is the $50 million on designing a bike bridge they didn’t actually build. In what sort of fantasy can you afford to do that? The New Zealand Government did it.

We’ve just had a report from Kāinga Ora. This is a doozy. These guys over there—Kieran McAnulty and Arena Williams and all of them—supported and were part of a Government that actually decided to set up Kāinga Ora in such a way that it loses half a billion dollars a year. Every day, Kāinga Ora loses a million and a half dollars. This is what we’ve inherited, and people need to see this reality—the Kāinga Ora model. They were supposed to bring about affordable housing, but they were so inefficient. For all that money they’re losing, they managed to pay over the odds for the land, over the odds for the builders and the materials and the project managers. I mean, get this: the Labour Party tried to make housing more affordable and they were so inefficient they actually managed to make it more expensive. It’s actually difficult to exaggerate how clownish that Government was in its execution.

The result of all of that is that the amount of money spent per person after inflation—let’s not even talk about that for now—was 30 percent more in 2023 than in 2017. They managed to spend 30 percent more money on you, after inflation, and actually get worse results in just about everything from education to housing to health. They say, “Oh, but there was a pandemic.” Yes, there was a pandemic, but the rest of the world had moved on by 2022-23. Only New Zealand was still labouring under a Labour Government that used it as an excuse for just about everything. They’re still using it as an excuse now. It’s kind of interesting that, by 2023, they were still blaming the former National Government that went out in 2017. I predict that, in 2026, Labour will still be blaming things on COVID!

The facts are that if we don’t get this spending under control, we are doomed. So that’s why we make no apology, and I’m proud to be part of a Government that is cutting wasteful spending, reducing bloated bureaucracy, reducing expenditure funds that took people’s money, gave it to someone else, and didn’t actually get a good result. Yep, we’re cutting waste, and, yep, we’re cutting taxes. That’s the second thing in this Budget Policy Statement. And I’ve heard people say, “Oh, $10 or $30 a week or a fortnight—that’s nothing to me.” Well, actually, to the people on that side of the House, over with Labour and the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, when you’re earning $160,000, it might not mean much to you. But I can tell you that to those people that I talk to, people on the main streets of places like Waiuku, actually, when things are really tight and you’re checking your account all the time and you’re taking things out of the trolley, this tax relief will be welcome. I can assure you because that’s what people are saying to me.

Then, finally, we are actually going to do more and better in the areas that matter most. I’ll just give you a few examples. The Healthy School Lunches Programme wasn’t funded past the end of this school year. Next school year, if Labour’s Budget figures were taken seriously, it would have ended. We had to either borrow another $340 million, tax another $340 million, or find $340 million of savings elsewhere to make it happen next year. Do you know what we’ve actually done? A little bit of option 3, but we’ve also made the scheme $104 million cheaper while feeding more children at the same time. And that is, I think, the emblem of what this Government is doing. After years and years of Labour doing less and less with more and more, this Government is doing more and more with less and less—just as households and firms and employers and farmers have had to do for the last three years of the cost of living crisis. The Government is now living by the same values and applying the same discipline as they have had to.

So roll on the Budget next Thursday, which will finally show that some adults are back in the room, some responsibility and some accountability is being taken for the Government’s finances, because, as a great woman once said, when the Government takes a bigger slice, there is so much less cake for everybody else. This Government is shrinking its slice so there will be more cake for the rest of hard-working New Zealanders.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Budget Policy Statement, and I just thank the last speaker, the Hon David Seymour, for his experience in laying out the content around the previous Government’s spending and situations that we are now facing as a country going forward. Much of the Budget Policy Statement 2024 is focused on setting out the new fiscal strategy—and I would highlight that: the “new” fiscal strategy. There is a new Government; there is a new way of thinking, and we went through an election with this new strategy and we are now here to deliver it through the Budget Policy Statement.

The Budget Policy Statement also sets out the new short-term intentions of the Government and the new long-term objectives. What I would say, as a first time in this House over the last six to seven months, is learning the processes as we go through—and looking forward to next Thursday to the Budget. That’s going to be a real highlight of actually seeing how that all comes together. But this Budget Policy Statement, the Minister of Finance came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee that I sit on and she was able to explain the vision going forward, and she put forward what the Budget Policy Statement was all about, and then we were able to question. It was actually quite an interesting time hearing the Opposition criticise a lot of what was actually said in this Budget Policy Statement. But to me, it was quite clear we are looking at this new direction.

What we did hear then—and we have heard from the other side of the House today—was a number of submissions, and those submissions were varied. But what I must say is probably a lot of the submissions that were put forward to the Budget Policy Statement were basically really not looking at content. They were actually looking at it from an individual’s point of view, from their organisation’s point of view, and going, “Hey, look at me. Make sure that we aren’t forgotten in the Budget.”

Until we actually hear the Budget next Thursday, we won’t actually know that content around some of that spending. But what I would say is we did have the Taxpayers’ Union and we did have a number of submitters that did come forward and go, “Actually, this strategy is the right way and this is a good way; a good step forward.” They could actually see going into the Budget that this will actually comply. There were a lot of different questions around the Public Finance Act, whether this complied with that Act—and, yes, it does.

So, as we just heard from the last speaker, the Budget Policy Statement sets out the key overarching goals of the coalition Government. We’ve heard it’s about building a stronger, more productive economy that lifts real incomes and increases opportunities. We’ve seen that on the side of the House already in our intentions around primary industries, to increase production. We’re looking at increasing and doubling some of that primary industry in the next 10 years. We’re seeing our foreign affairs Minister and our Prime Minister offshore promoting our country and opening avenues for us.

Another key overarching goal was to deliver more efficient and effective and responsive public services. We’ve heard through the election campaign, time and time again, around restoring law and order. This is something this side of the House will do. We’ve heard about improving health outcomes, and we’ve all got the stories to tell when we go to the hospital—about trying to get someone to see you, and the wait times. We are going to make sure that that service is more effective and more efficient. Educational achievement: we’ve heard again how we’re going to lift the achievement around education.

Another overarching goal in this Budget Policy Statement is getting the books back in order and restoring discipline to public spending. The five priorities in the Budget, what has been forecast, is delivering tax reduction. We’ve heard a lot about tax reduction in this House, and the constituents that are in my area are thrilled with the idea that they’re going to be getting a tax cut. They can actually see some money in their pocket to actually pay for the cost of living.

Identifying enduring savings: this Government is doing that, and through the lunch programme, like we have seen, we can do that programme but actually save $100 million. That is incredible savings. We’re improving the public services—I’ve just touched on that—and keeping tight control of Government spending. But, importantly, what I would like to highlight is that there is also a focus on developing a sustainable and long-term pipeline of infrastructure investment. What I would like to highlight in this document was the multi-year allowance that has been increased to $7 billion, and infrastructure in this country is something that we need to make sure we’re putting more investment in. And this document signals that.

It’s also important to consider—and Stuart Smith, in opening, outlined the context that this Government actually finds itself in. Critically, the New Zealand economy is in a much weaker situation than we previously thought. The level of GDP in this document, the economic scenario is showing a $42.8 billion lower forecast in the forecast period—that’s $42.8 billion less in the nominal GDP. We’re also looking at Crown tax revenue reducing by nearly $14 billion. So this Government, on this side, we have to make allowances and actually adjust our budgets for those scenarios. So the continued revisions to the country’s economic outlook are having a negative impact on the Government’s fiscal positions, and we realise that and we are actually signalling that in this document.

The difference, also, is, I think, the attitude of this Government compared to the last. The difference between the Government’s revenue and the Government’s spending has been in deficit since 2019-20 and it has been driven by an increase in the core Crown expenses. What I would like to say is it’s a bit like running a household. Once you realise your expenditure is exceeding your income, you’ve got to adjust—and the last Government was far too slow in doing that. This Government will get our spending back under control.

The Government also sees debt as only necessary in three situations. It can be used as a smoothing device to allow automatic fiscal stabilisation such as a tax revenue and unemployment benefit spending to operate across the economic cycle or as a buffer in events of an economic shock. We understand around climate change, that is actually what that’s saying: that in situations of a shock, we actually will use debt. It’s also to fund the high-quality investments that provide benefits to New Zealand over time.

It is great, I think, the announcements that have already been made. We’ve had those announcements around the Coastguard and the Surf Life Saving, around that $63 million; the Defence Force spending, around $571 million; Gumboot Friday, $24 million. We heard about those savings that this Government’s already making in the school lunch programme—over $100 million. But what I would like to highlight so far was the Corrections announcement of $1.9 billion.

So there is this document—it’s the first one for this Government; the first one for our new Minister of Finance. She has set out a strategy, a programme, going forward. I think it is a good way of looking forward. I’m personally looking forward to the 2024 Budget package. We have a good foundation, and that’s what this is about—setting the foundation for the Budget next Thursday. It has the information that we require. Most importantly, it’s setting us up to take back our country, and that’s what New Zealand First has set out to do. Thank you very much.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Otirā, tēnā tātou e te Whare. I’d also like to just acknowledge the opening statements made by the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Stuart Smith—a fine committee, I must say, as a representative on that particular committee—and also the sentiments he shared in regards to the three bullet point goals and objectives.

I sympathise with my Green colleague Chlöe Swarbrick, in that there is no mention of climate change, but there’s no mention of Māori in here at all, either, or low-income earners, and so this is not a Budget that is going to help those who are struggling here in Aotearoa. I’ve heard, you know, the “cost of living”. It’s like the “cost of death”, to be quite honest, in any Budget for those who are really struggling out there to put kai on the table, to pay the bills. We’ve seen an increase in unemployment, we’ve seen a decrease in people employed by the Public Service, and so we’re seeing just cuts, cuts, cuts everywhere, and we’re haemorrhaging everywhere, and this is what this Budget is showing.

So my three - bullet point contribution to this Budget is: the first bullet point is that this Budget Policy Statement 2024 is in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, once again, article 1, as Māori have been excluded from developing and managing our own Māori budgets. Not surprising; this has been consistent for the past 184 years of oppression and assimilation. Kāwanatanga was supposed to be over your own people, not over mine, and that was reinforced in article 2, which is the second bullet point. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 is in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in article 2, as Māori have not been given our right to self-determination, to be undisturbed—to be undisturbed—and the budgets pertaining to the protection of the land, forest, fisheries, and other taonga that article 2 protected in terms of our pre-existing rights. Again, another breach: protecting the pre-existing rights of Māori for as long as we wish to retain them—as long as we wish to retain them.

Now, if the Minister would read Te Tiriti o Waitangi, he would know that those two bullet points have been breached. And the third: the Budget Policy Statement 2024 has also breached article 3. We were supposed to be given the same access and opportunities for education, employment, health, housing, social services, and trade for the last 184 years as per the agreement with Kuīni Wikitōria.

The Budget Policy Statement 2024 is in further breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as there is no Budget funding that will address the significant inequalities directly and indirectly related to historic breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This was to be guaranteed the same rights and duties as British subjects. Again, this Budget Policy Statement does not reflect any of that and gives us no choice but to talk about this and ensure that our people understand that this is not a Budget for our people. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that this Budget—I don’t see anything in there where it would have made life a lot easier for our people right now. Supporting my member’s bill taking GST off kai would have done that. Income tax for whānau on low incomes would have done that. Those who are on $30,000 or less—that’s 2.2 million people in this country who are paying tax on $30,000 earnings. That’s cruel that any Government continues to do that. We’re talking about beneficiaries, we’re talking about superannuants, we’re talking about those who have contributed to this country at 65 years old. There’s no increase in take-home pay for 98 percent of the whānau. And we heard some of the tax discrepancies here in Aotearoa. Many are paying between 24 and 30 percent tax; 2 percent of this country are paying 9.4 percent but they control 50 percent of this country’s wealth, and that is not reflected in the Budget Policy Statement.

Next week, we will see the entrenchment of poverty in this country—we will see the entrenchment of poverty in this country—and we will see those who are well off. We will see homeowners well off. Many of our people don’t own homes. We’ve got 50 percent of the social housing waiting list are Māori. We only own 31 percent of homes here in Aotearoa—31 percent of our people own their own home, and they’re intergenerational houses. We cannot get into a new home. You’ve taken that ability away from us. And this is what this Budget policy is telling us: huge Treaty breaches and that there is no hand-up for those who are struggling. Low-income earners and Māori are absent from this, the whenua’s absent from this, those who are unfortunate are absent from this, and we will not be supporting this. Kia ora tātou.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I’m really pleased to be able to speak to this Budget Policy Statement today. I want to focus on political choices. That’s what every single Budget Policy Statement always is and always will be. Political choice is about what we value—whether we are going to value those who have been doing it tough the most, for generation after generation; whether we are going to continue to allow for those who have been given more support than they will ever need, and whether they are going to continue to see more support, like landlords receiving $2.9 billion worth of tax cuts when they do not need them. Those are political choices.

We have, in Aotearoa, everything—let me say that again: everything—that we need to ensure that everyone lives good lives; to ensure that we are protecting our environment for generations to come; to ensure that we are taking the strongest action for a stable climate, for mokopuna, that we possibly can. We have everything in Aotearoa, and the Budget Policy Statement, along with the analysis of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, outlines where this Government is making clear what their choices are.

If the Greens were in Government and were actually controlling and running the Budget, we know that we would prioritise and make the choice to end homelessness. Now, we can actually clear the public housing register in five years—clear the public housing register—if we choose to scale up and invest in public housing—in public housing—and actually clear the public housing register. Because investing in ending homelessness has generational positive impacts.

This National Government has made it quite clear that they will continue to support houses being used as capital investments to build more wealth for people who are already wealthy. That is what this National Government is choosing to prioritise instead of massively, massively ramping up and scaling up public housing—public housing. We could choose to end poverty in this country—we could choose to end poverty. Instead, this Government is choosing to introduce more sanctions that will push more hardship upon the people who have the least. So instead of choosing to end poverty, this Government is going to make it worse for people who are struggling the most.

So I really wanted to point out that there are political choices. The Greens know that we have what we need for free dental, for ending and clearing the public housing register, for a guaranteed minimum income to make sure that everyone has what they need, to make sure that people can go to the doctor and the dentist and get healthcare when they need without having to worry at all about their financial situation. We could choose to continue the funding for Jobs for Nature, where, as I’ve been hearing from around the country, we finally were able to see hapū, iwi, marae, and communities working with their young people, reconnecting the hearts of young people and their local communities to what they love, being able to sustain an income by protecting their wetlands, their waters, their bush health, their soil health, by protecting ecosystems for biodiversity, and the look on the rangatahi faces and how much they are enjoying and growing from that mahi. We could choose to continue funding those things.

So I want to be really clear, this Budget Policy Statement is about what this Government values—they value landlords. They value landlords who already have more than enough—$2.9 billion—and they are trying to make out like the few dollars that they are going to afford those on the lowest incomes is of benefit, when, really, the benefits are going to those who already have enough. That is the choice of this Government. The Greens know that people deserve far more than that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): I rise with great pleasure to speak about the Budget Policy Statement, as we prepare for the 2024 Budget in just eight sleeps. As we’ve heard from our Minister of Finance, this Budget is going to be all about strengthening our economy and investing in our front-line public services. We will cut wasteful spending, get money out of the back office and into the front office, invest in infrastructure, and deliver tax relief for hard-working New Zealanders, who haven’t had any tax relief for the past 14 years.

Our tax relief package will increase the taxed take-home income of 83 percent of New Zealanders 15 and over, and 94 percent of households across this country. This is what the New Zealand public voted for, and this is what, on this side of the House, we will deliver. It is what we need to rebuild the economy and beat inflation. It is what low and middle income - earning families need to get on to top of the cost of living crisis. It’s what the Government needs to get the books back in order to rebuild the economy, restore law and order, and deliver public services. On this side of the House, we respect hard-working New Zealanders. They are not a bottomless ATM machine, where there are more and more tax withdrawals. It is time for them to keep more of what they earn, and spend it how they want to spend it, not see it wastefully frittered away by bureaucrats who think they know best. It is time to get Wellington out of farming, and out of growing, because our farmers and our growers deserve the respect.

They work hard from dawn till dusk to make a living, and we’re going to stop treating them like villains, and be aspirational for our primary producers, who are the backbone of our economy, and we will make sure we get this economy driving forward. Our Government is all about the action, delivery, and outcomes, and we have been busy already with a raft of actions in just the few months that we’ve been in Government. We started by cancelling the ute tax last year, and now we are slashing through the fields of red tape, modifying, delaying, and cancelling a raft of rules and regulations, including freshwater, winter grazing, or slope rules for all those farmers. We’re also putting together an extensive infrastructure pipeline—yes, infrastructure—eliminating the bottlenecks to growth which have had the brakes on our businesses across the country. These actions are significant for my home region of Hawke’s Bay, which is a huge export region, and will play a big part in helping us double the value of our exports in the next ten years. This Government’s plans for infrastructure will be life changing for people across our Hawke’s Bay region. Building the four-lane expressway will create efficiency and drive more productivity.

Our actions so far are already restoring business confidence, and confidence on the farm, where inflation has been at record highs. I’ve been out talking to businesses across my electorate, and talking to farmers, and there is aspiration, once again. It’s early days, but inflation has come back to 4 percent from its peak of more than 7 percent. Food inflation has dropped to just 0.8 percent, with fruit and vegetable prices falling from this time last year. Average mortgage rates are slowly showing signs of softening. But, let’s be real: it is tough out there. We have a lot of work to do to get the books back in order.

We’ve achieved billions of dollars of savings across Government agencies, which is going to make a real difference. We’re committed to guiding Kiwis through the current economic challenges, and already we’ve made practical amendments and actions. We’ve announced $1.9 billion in investment to enhance safety and rehabilitate offenders. And also, as we’ve already heard, we’ve invested in education—$67 million into structured literacy, because we know if we’re going to drive this country forward, we need to invest in education, in our children, and lift performance in the classroom. It’s been going backwards, and we need to ensure we are driving forward.

We need a more productive economy, with higher living standards and more opportunity. We will achieve this through many of the things that we’ve already announced: a country where Kiwis can return home in search of a better life, instead of leaving in pursuit of higher incomes overseas; public services delivered and evaluated through the lens of social investment—getting in early, funding distributed to communities, so Kiwis achieve their potential, leading to better lives.

Our Government has just announced today a boosting fund for Surf Lifesaving New Zealand, and Coastguard, as we’ve heard earlier—$63.64 million over the next four years. This is the type of thing on our front-line services which will make a real difference. I would be a strong advocate for that, because in my region of Hawke’s Bay, the Hawke’s Bay Surf Lifesaving played a critical role in Cyclone Gabrielle, saving hundreds of lives through the Pakowhai communities and the Eskdale communities. It’s these types of investments which will make a real difference—putting funding into the front line across the country, putting funding into our communities, moving it out of the back office and into front-line services.

And there’s a comprehensive response to climate change, on track to achieve our ambitious emissions targets and resilience to the challenges of more weather events like we saw in Hawke’s Bay. In my electorate of Tukituki, Hawke’s Bay, we have so much potential to grow. Just last week, I visited one of our largest indoor strawberry growers, with 14 kilometres of strawberry plants which they supply to the local markets. They had plans to export this as well, to Asia, where they can fetch a premium. I was out with ExportNZ Hawke’s Bay recently, meeting a delegation from South-east Asia, and they were so pleased to see our Prime Minister, our Minister for Trade, and all our Ministers out there, around the world, facilitating relationships, building relationships, and creating market access opportunities for our New Zealand products, because we need to drive more innovation, technology, and more capital investment.

That is what this Budget Policy Statement is all about—productivity. We want our country to be a better place to do business, to invest, to innovate, to take risks, to build things, to make things, to hire people, to grow, and to raise our children. We will responsibly deliver these lower taxes for low and middle income - earning families by fully funding a tax relief package where there are careful savings and targeted revenue measures, because this is what is going to make a huge difference in a cost of living crisis. We’ve already heard about our housing crisis in the House today; we have seen rents go up by $170 a week in the past six years. We need to drive those down again. That’s where we are investing in practical solutions, like restoring interest deductibility, and bringing the brightline test back to two years. We are stopping the wasteful spending, we are going to fiscally manage this economy a lot better, and not drive this country into more and more debt—over $100 billion. Interest on that is more than we spend on education. We need to drive more focus into our front-line classrooms, with our children and our hospitals, with our nurses and doctors and patients; on the front line with our police where we’re making a real difference in this country. I’m pleased to say that this Budget Policy Statement will ensure we’re getting this country back on track.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): The Budget Policy Statement is an opportunity for the Government to set out their goals and their objectives to guide the decisions that they’re going to make in their forthcoming Budget. That is the purpose of a Budget Policy Statement. By convention, Ministers of Finance not only set out the strategic framework that will guide the decision making for the forthcoming Budget but they also set out what the operating allowance is going to be, how much is going to be spent in the forthcoming Budget. This is a long-held convention. It is not required by law, but it is a convention that has been held, including at times of changes of Government.

Now, we traditionally hold elections and form Governments towards the end of the year. This is inconvenient around the budgeting process, but it is something that incoming Governments of all stripes, up until this year, have dealt with. We had Bill English in 2008, in the midst of the global financial crisis, issue a Budget Policy Statement and an operating allowance. We saw the incoming Government in 2017, formed very late in the year, not only deliver a Budget Policy Statement with a stated operating allowance but also a mini-Budget in that period.

So this Government has to explain to the New Zealand public why it has broken that longstanding convention. It is not unreasonable for New Zealanders to know the strategic framework in which the Government is making Budget decisions and the amount of money that will be spent. It is where the short-term fiscal intentions are spelt out. It is where the long-term fiscal objectives are signalled if they’ve been changed from previous strategic statements around expenditure. We did, indeed, see that in the Budget Policy Statement that was put out by the Government. This was something that the Finance and Expenditure Committee spent a large portion of time discussing. Part of that is around what the Budget is going to achieve.

I think one of the things that stood out not only for Labour members on the committee but for a number of submitters is the difference between those objectives between last year and this year. Because in terms of what the priorities for this new Government with its first Budget are, we can see that Māori and Pacific people have been removed as a priority in terms of what is in the Budget Policy Statement. We see that child poverty is no longer listed as a priority—that has been removed. We see a transition to a low-emissions economy gone—not a mention of decarbonisation or climate change. Not one single mention in the entire Budget Policy Statement put out by the Government.

I think one of the things that we can say is that this Budget Policy Statement indeed stands as a very true and accurate testament to the priorities of this Government. It spells out very clearly that they will prioritise landlords over first-home buyers. It spells out the strategic intent to make sure that they do rip out and cut the funding for any climate measures that were in place.

Then we have members opposite—members who sit on the committee and sat there and listened to submissions, such as the member who has just sat down, Catherine Wedd—trot out something that simply is not correct, that New Zealand is on track to deliver on its emissions reduction targets. That member, if she was paying attention at the committee would have heard a number of submitters, including a discussion with the Minister about how we are indeed not on track to deliver on emissions budgets. In fact, there are big gaping holes—in emissions budget two, a 4 million tonne hole left by scrapping the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund, and a further hole in emissions budget three, and a Government that has absolutely no plan, no vision, and no idea of how it will achieve closing the gaps on it.

This is a Government that is intent on taking our country backwards, and nowhere is it more plainly spelt out than in the Budget Policy Statement. So when they say the country is back on track, it’s back on track and slapped into reverse, because that is where we are going—backwards fast, with no vision and no plan for the future. If we have a look at the kinds of other things that are starting to seep out that indeed are enshrined in the objectives of this Budget Policy Statement, we can see what we’re seeing coming out around housing in the last 24 and 48 hours, that we have a Government that is prioritising tax cuts for landlords over helping first-home buyers into their first home. They are making bad choices and choices that will have ramifications for decades.

What we are seeing is that the National Party is laying very clear that they object to expenditure on building public houses. We’ve seen this smokescreen sham report that has come out and object to the kinds of investment that needs to be made if we are going to solve our housing crisis. But, no, what we have is a Minister and her minions that trot out that what we will see is by bringing back interest deductibility, we will see a lowering of rents for renters. By how much? Nobody can tell us. It’s not something that is ever answered. “It depends” is the answer. The sophisticated economic modelling that sits behind the National Party’s backwards thinking—it depends. Well, front up and tell us how much better off they are going to be.

New Zealanders were promised in the election that this Government would deliver a Budget that would help them with the cost of living. Most New Zealanders are expecting $250 a fortnight in tax cuts, so I guess, in eight sleeps, New Zealanders will know whether or not the National Government is going to deliver on that election promise of up to $250 a week—not the few cents that many of them will get while they are paying more for rents, while they are paying more for insurance, while they are paying more for so many other things. In the midst of this housing crisis of slashing the number of State houses that would have otherwise been built and making sure that they are prioritising investors over renters, what are they doing? They’re bringing back the ability of landlords to kick tenants out for no reason, with bringing back no-cause evictions.

This is a Government that is indeed making its priorities clear. It is also a Government that is borrowing for its tax cuts. Throughout the submissions and the analysis that we heard on this Budget Policy Statement, we heard from a number of submitters—and this was something that was canvassed very fully. We discussed the analysis that had been carried out by Westpac and the economists at Westpac, which outlines that the Government will need to borrow up to $15 billion over the next four years, and that is close to the publicised cost of the tax cut programme outlined by this Government.

It is not radical economics to say that if you weren’t spending 15 billion bucks on tax cuts, you wouldn’t need to borrow $15 billion. This is a Government that says, out of one side of its mouth, it wants to pay down debt, but yet its actions are showing that it is going to borrow $15 billion over four years to pay for tax cuts, and this is in addition to the $2.9 billion it will be delivering to landlords while making sure that first-home buyers are locked out of the market.

We have an opportunity in the Budget Policy Statement to have good and constructive debates about operating allowances and we will, across different parties, have different views on what they should be, but in order for that to happen, we need a Government that is transparent enough, with a finance Minister that is transparent enough to actually tell the public how much that operating allowance is.

NANCY LU (National): I’m grateful for the opportunity to stand and add my contributions about the Budget Policy Statement (BPS), which reflects our commitment to restore fiscal discipline, revitalise our economy, and redefine Public Service efficiency in New Zealand. The National-led Government is very clear about what it wants to achieve, as the Budget Policy Statement sets out our overarching goals are to build a stronger, more productive economy, to deliver more efficient, effective, and responsive public services, and to get the Government’s books back in order.

Under the stewardship of finance Minister Nicola Willis, this year’s Budget Policy Statement outlines our approach to navigate through economic challenges with prudent fiscal management and strategic investment. It marks a pivotal shift from the last Labour Government’s policies because it requires us to be prudent and responsible with New Zealanders’ hard-earned money and taxes that they pay. It steers us towards sustainable economic health and ensures long-term benefits to all New Zealanders.

In 2023, our Government was elected on the promise to rebuild New Zealand’s economy. Kiwis voted for the National-led Government to fix the economy because they are suffering and they know it will have to be a National-led Government to be prudent with the taxes that they pay and a National-led Government to reconnect New Zealand with our existing trading partners around the world, and also connect with new regions and new countries to create new revenue opportunities for Kiwis.

The 2024 Budget, in eight sleeps, will be a blueprint for delivering on this promise. And the core of our strategy is to cut the Government’s wasteful spending, stimulate growth while improving public expenditure and improving public health to reduce the burden on our future generations.

The New Zealand economy is at one of its worst and its weakest, with the double-dip recession, with this structural deficit, with a continued high official cash rate. It doesn’t need economists or experts or data analysts to tell us that our economy is suffering. Just simply talk to people around us in our community up and down the country and ask about how they feel about the economy, about their living, and about their cost of living in New Zealand right now. Ask them for some examples with what they face when they have to pay at the supermarket checkout, when they have to juggle between the children’s expenses and how much more they have to pay for their rent or their mortgage interest, how much more they have to pay for transport costs simply to get between places.

So our economy is not good—period. Our state of the nation is not good—period. Our Kiwis are suffering—period. I have received so many questions and messages from constituents who have asked me about the status of our country, and they asked, “Really, how bad are we? How come New Zealand has so much debt now? How is it possible that the Government now pays more on finance costs?” And on this, I must share the shocking, shocking financial data again, which I repeatedly shared during the Finance and Expenditure Committee and also to many of the constituents that I met in the community—that the New Zealand Government now pays $1 billion more this year than the spending that we give to Defence, Police, Corrections, and Customs combined. We pay more on finance costs, simply to service our nation’s debt, more than these four combined.

I’ve also been asked by so many people about structural deficit. It’s a word that we constantly used in our select committee, and I’ll take this opportunity to explain it for you. It means our country’s expected revenue is consistently below its expenditure. That means, even in the periods of economic growth, our Government does not generate enough revenue to cover its spending. [Interruption] It also means, for the members opposite, for you to understand, that our Government’s ability to respond to future crises is limited because we have committed spending to our country but we have less fiscal headroom to address the unforeseen events such as economic downturns, such as natural disasters, such as public health emergencies without further increasing debt.

So the National-led Government is laser-focused on rebuilding our economy by cutting down wasteful Government spending, enhancing revenue, investing in growth, and implementing structural reforms. And by focusing on these areas, this is how New Zealand can actually shift from a structural deficit to a fiscal surplus, improving the country’s long-term fiscal sustainability and economic resilience.

Since becoming an MP, I have had many opportunities to hear from Kiwis from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, literally. I’ve been in communities, held public meetings, knocked on business doors to ask them one question: “How are you going?” There is one consistent theme and repeated words: “hard”, “tough”, “doomed”, “challenging”, “expensive”, “pressure”.

I remember speaking to a motel owner in Invercargill, and he said, “Business is hard and people are not travelling. Hiring staff is hard because the last Labour Government have raised the minimum wage too high.” I asked a business executive in Napier, and he said, “I’ve just returned from overseas on business trips and things are buzzing out there. Businesses are active, people want to trade, productivity is high, new technology, new energy. But coming home back to New Zealand was hard because things are expensive, we can’t afford to export, and our products are more expensive and losing our competitiveness.”

I asked a tourism operator in Rotorua, and he said he’s never been under so much stress because international tourists are simply not coming back enough, even compared to before the pandemic; whereas many other countries in the world are simply crying out for having way too many tourists. I also asked international students in Auckland, and they said they’re very disappointed with their experiences in Auckland. So many shops are permanently closed, it’s more expensive to travel within New Zealand than to travel to Australia. They have no confidence in finding a job in New Zealand that will give them a clear pathway to residency and finally calling this country home.

I have so many more stories that I can share from day to day Kiwis who are struggling in the state of the economy we are in right now. And everyone that I spoke to has asked me one question: “Can you please fix the economy and fix it fast? I don’t know how much longer we can hold on to this.”

So I see the BPS as hope. The three main takeaways from the BPS for me—and I’ve always been sharing this with the communities outside of this Parliament building first—the Government will deliver meaningful tax reduction, responsibly and affordably. Tax thresholds have not been adjusted for 14 years. New Zealanders are suffering with cost of living pressures, so tax relief is coming. Tax relief will be funded from within a new operating allowance for Budget 2024, and we won’t be borrowing extra for tax relief and will not be adding to inflationary pressures.

Second, we are putting a strong focus on supporting and expanding front-line services that day-to-day Kiwis desperately need, like health, education, and law and order.

Thirdly, the mess that the last six years of Labour Government created for New Zealand will take more than one Budget to fix. It will take several Budgets. This is because there need to be structural changes to cut red and green tape to turn around the ship that has been sailing in the wrong direction, and soon make it right again.

We also need to rebuild New Zealand’s economy because special economic and tax forecasts prepared by the Treasury for the BPS showed that Treasury has downgraded the expectations of economic growth for New Zealand. This has a flow-on effect into forecasts of tax revenue and the ability for New Zealand’s economy to rebuild.

So our response is that the Budget Policy Statement is more than a fiscal document. It is a declaration of our Government to uphold fiscal responsibility, stimulate economic recovery, and restore the prosperity of our nation. So thank you for the opportunity for me to speak in support the BPS, and to all New Zealanders, hope is coming.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): I hope New Zealanders see this blue document from a blue Government that is so wrong, a back-track Budget Policy Statement. On page 1, it says, “Government’s overarching goals … Build a stronger, more productive economy that lifts real incomes”—what it doesn’t say is “for some”— “and increases opportunities for”—and it doesn’t say “for selected New Zealanders”, because that’s what it is going to do. It says it will “Deliver more efficient, effective and responsive public services to all who need [it]”. It won’t be for people with disabilities; it won’t be for people who need a roof over their head.

If ever there’s one day that summarises the lack of empathy for all New Zealanders, it’s today, because, on this day, $60 million that was a little bit of help to first-home buyers has been taken off the table, because it has to pay for a $2.9 billion subsidy, tax cut, tax break, for the landlords and the people who they will have to rent from. But that’s not it. That $2.9 billion is on top of the $2.8 billion that taxpayers pay to landlords in accommodation supplement. That is a direct subsidy to those people who own properties. And those people who are trying to buy a property—and the Government had $60 million—a mere $60 million—to help them with a little step up to get their foot in the door, and this Government has chopped off their feet. It is absolutely outrageous. We are seeing encouragement for landlords, support for landlords, subsidies for landlords. And what are we seeing for the rest of the country? The people who Norman Kirk said need a home, need something to eat, need a job, and need something to hope for. The only thing they’ll have hope for is a change of Government in two years’ time, because I’ll tell you what, it is going to be a pretty sad state.

The other thing about that subsidy for landlords is that it comes on the day that the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament came out. And I hope that New Zealanders read this document to see why there’s no empathy for people renting in this country. Do you know why? Because on that side of the House, it’s full of people who have rental properties. That’s who they empathise with; that’s who they are subsidising. [Interruption] Subsidising—oh, that member over there doesn’t like the word “subsidy”. If I said “subsidy” for agriculture, he’d be up in arms. Subsidising his landlord mates is what this Government, this National-led Government, is doing. It’s outrageous. And I suggest people go and look.

A lot of New Zealanders might have voted for National, because they were promised a $250-a-fortnight tax cut, $250-a-week tax cut. Now, that’s pretty significant—that’s pretty significant. And for low-paid New Zealanders, if they were to get the $250, that would make a huge difference. But I hope they’re not holding their breath. I hope they’re not holding your breath for a $250-a-fortnight tax cut. Let’s wait and see who gets the tax breaks. But if we look at the number of landlords in this country and we take $2.9 billion and spread it among them, it’s a hell of a lot more than $250 per fortnight.

This Budget Policy Statement clearly states that there will be benefits offered through the Budget, but they will go some New Zealanders, to a selected number of New Zealanders who are looked after by a Government that has no empathy for people on low wages. They say “hard-working New Zealanders”. I’ll tell you who’s hard-working: stay here till 12 o’clock and watch the people come in and clean this place. They’ve probably worked another job somewhere else, and how much will they get in tax cuts? Well, I’ll tell you what, I bet it won’t be $250 a fortnight. Now, this is an outrage. This is a classic Tory Budget Policy Statement from a back-track Government that will further divide this country.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time has expired.

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier): There has been some outrageous crystal ball - gazing from the other side of the House. It is remarkable how many things they think they know when it is not possibly true. Unlike the member who’s just sat down, the Hon Damien O’Connor, I have in fact actually read this document, and it outlines some quite amazing things, like goals and priorities. Because I can tell you that we are an enabling Government, and this Budget Policy Statement sets out really nicely the way that we intend to do what we’re going to do. I can tell you that after six years of letting this country go down the tubes, it is not going to be fixed in one Budget. So what I’m going to do is talk to each of these points because I think it’s important to highlight how we are going to enable this economy to rebuild.

So you know what? Goal number one: build a stronger, more productive economy. We cannot lift incomes for people if we don’t do that. So all of this stuff is miraculous, symbolic gesturing, because none of it works without a strong economy, and we have to do these things to rebuild it. We have to do these things to lift people’s incomes, to increase the opportunities that we so want. I talk about Wairoa all the time as one of my favourite places in my electorate. I want people to not have to leave Wairoa for those opportunities. They need to have access, and that is what we are doing with the priorities in this Budget.

The next point is fundamental: efficient, effective, and responsive public services. None of this stuff is possible if we start sprinkling around money here and there without a focus and a strategy.

Tom Rutherford: Spray and walk away.

KATIE NIMON: Quite right: “Spray and walk away” is a really good point—I’m going to get to some clichés soon.

Now, most importantly—and we campaigned on this last year and we are absolutely bringing it all in—restore law and order, improve health outcomes, and educational achievement. None of that is possible if you don’t focus on the fundamentals. We have talked at length about this being a “basics, brilliantly” Budget—and that is what we are here to do. And to do that, you have to restore discipline. You cannot do that by throwing money at everything. All of this stuff is about the fundamentals. We need to restore discipline to achieve those, so let’s get into the priorities.

Meaningful tax reductions. This is all about cost of living relief. Members opposite went on and on about the cost of living.

Sam Uffindell: Tax relief.

KATIE NIMON: Absolutely. Do you know what? You do that through tax relief, and it has not been done for 14 years. Other countries around the world, their tax rate adjusts with inflation, unlike ours, and we’re going to do something about it. So you can talk all you like about what you think is going to happen. But, actually, like I said, there is no crystal ball. We will show you in eight sleeps’ time, and it will be brilliant.

Next we have identifying enduring savings. We’ve talked all the time about these savings that we’re going to do and we’ve been doing. We need to make them last, and this is exactly what it is that we are going to do. So what we need to do now is shift the spending to high-value areas.

Now, I’m going to get to these clichés I was telling you about, Tom Rutherford. I could go on all night. Bang for buck; rifle, not a shotgun approach; return on investment; spray and walk away—I love that one, Tom Rutherford. We need to make sure we are focusing on what gets return on investment; what is going to help Kiwis the most, and that is doing the basics right: healthcare, education, law and order, fix the cost of living. We need to get money fed back into people’s back pockets and we have been saying it until we’re blue in the face. Now is our time to show it.

Prudency, focus, and a high bar for Government funding. All of that stuff is discipline, it is focus, it is doing the right things first, and all of this has to be long term—long term and sustainable. To be long-term and sustainable, just like our infrastructure projects, we need a pipeline—you cannot plan for infrastructure work without having a pipeline. No one’s going to come and invest in New Zealand if we don’t show that we’ve got a plan for 30 years.

None of this is ever going to be done if we don’t do it, basically, and do it right. Now, that is the point—that if we do this well and we get the basics right, we then leave room for those urgent cost pressures and the policy commitments that we have talked about every single day since we’ve been here. The fundamentals done right allows us to do that, and that is what every member opposite has completely omitted in their speeches. The basics allow us to do those extra things that we have been talking about. You spend it all now and there is nothing left to do in the next three years, 12 years—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time is expired.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. Well, that last speaker, Katie Nimon, just rabbited out the usual lines. But I’ll tell you what this document is: this document is recession by design. This is a Budget of austerity. They say that—[Interruption] You know, they can guffaw, but the first thing they did was to take the mandate away from the Reserve Bank to consider employment. And what do we have? Rising unemployment.

And they complain about the tax base while their own policy erodes it. Taxes are paid by working people, and this document reduces the number of working people in New Zealand. The projections are out: we’ll see another 26,000 people on the dole. That is by design. That is a choice. That Government is choosing to put people out of their jobs. Not just the people in the health sector, our Customs officials who protect our borders, people in the education sector—not just those people who are working for us but all of the knock-on effects, all of the other businesses. We’ve seen the construction industry is grinding to a halt because the confidence in the economy—under this document—has been gutted, so it’s no wonder we’re seeing falling consents.

Now, that Government over there—and you heard the language, the language of business. They’re talking about “return on investment” and “getting back to basics”—that is the language of corporate New Zealand. We know already that this document looks after corporate New Zealand. We saw the billions of dollars in tax breaks for landlords. Those billions of dollars have to come from somewhere. We heard Ms Lu talking about working New Zealanders and their wages. This is a Government that saw minimum wage New Zealanders go backwards by giving them a 1.5 percent pay rise in the face of 5 percent inflation. That is a pay cut. That’s what this Government is interested in: looking after their mates. That’s what we’re going to see. This Budget Policy Statement basically outlines a Budget for the few—a Budget for the few.

We know that these tax cuts are coming—Nicola Willis has staked her job on it. She said she will deliver the tax cuts that she promised in the election—$9.6 billion of tax cuts is what she promised in the election. And how is she going to do that? Again, we heard Nancy Lu talk about borrowing and how much we’re borrowing and what the interest costs are. Well, these tax cuts—these tax cuts for landlords—are going to be borrowed. There’s $8 billion of borrowing coming because of the tax cuts that we’re seeing. There is no economist—there is no economist—who says that this is a good idea. It’s the wrong time. The idea, the suggestion, that giving people tax cuts in this economy isn’t inflationary is madness. It cuts across everything we know about how the economy works. Where else is the money coming from?

We talk about, you know, being sensible spenders. Well, tell that to the people whose disability benefits got cut—that it’s prudent to stop the support we’re giving to carers. Tell that to the staff in Oranga Tamariki protecting our most vulnerable children, who are being laid off their jobs. Tell that to the police, who are being told to get out there and crack down, and, at the same time, the people who support them are losing their jobs. Tell that to the health workers who do the scheduling to make sure people can make their appointments and that resources are used as effectively as possible—tell that to those as well. So far, 4,500 jobs have been slashed—people who look after New Zealanders. That’s where the money’s—oh, there’s a few other places the money’s coming from, of course. The other thing we saw straight out of the gate was tax cuts for tobacco companies. We saw the excise tax frozen—a coalition promise so that the New Zealand First Party could look after big tobacco. That’s how they’re going to pay for these tax cuts for landlords—with people’s lungs. That is shameful. I’m absolutely ashamed that that’s part of our Government.

So this is a recession by design—saying you’re doing one thing with one hand; giving tax cuts and pretending it’s not the other hand that’s slashing the economy, throwing us backwards and throttling the lives of ordinary people those people who have been saving up, looking forward to buying a home. Today, they were peremptorily told that that helping hand, the very helping hand that Nicola Willis criticised the Labour Government for not giving enough money away—they had the rugs being pulled from under their feet. They’ve been sent backwards. This is a Government which is happy to see people stuck in rentals, trying to save but not being given the lift that they need.

The suggestion that in some way that’s going to Kāinga Ora is fatuous. We’ve seen what’s happened with Kāinga Ora. Already in Christchurch there are builds that we’re concerned are going to be put on hold. That is because of the so-called reset of Kāinga Ora. Of course Kāinga Ora has debt—because it costs money to build houses. It’s a great thing that we’ve spent billions of dollars on homes for vulnerable families. To suggest that it’s a failure to deliver warm, dry, social housing is madness. This is a Government that is going to abdicate its responsibility as part of its Budget policy—its Budget policy—of austerity. Fundamentally, that’s what it is.

As for a productive economy—a productive economy where more and more people are out of their jobs, where wages are frozen or falling, where there’s no confidence in the construction industry. Only last night, I was talking to a scion of the infrastructure industry who said, “There is no confidence.”, that their projects have been ditched and nothing new has been started. So people are looking elsewhere; they’re taking their talent and they’re taking their capital and there’s going to be a gap in New Zealand. This is exactly what happened last time National was in Government. They turned off the New Zealand economy, and all of that top talent left the country. It took the Labour Government a long time, along with its apprenticeship programme and a whole lot of capital works—

Cameron Brewer: Turn the microphone off.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —to get it going again. I can hear Cameron Brewer yapping away there. He really should go on a holiday to the Gold Coast. I hear he likes them—google that one.

As for a structural deficit, of course, if you’re going to give enormous tax cuts, there’s going to be a deficit. So what we need to do is actually get back the New Zealand economy, to realise that full employment is the best thing we can do for the New Zealand economy, that helping people own their own homes is a good idea, and to stop gutting critical services in the Public Service under some kind of idea that people who aren’t face to face with the New Zealand public aren’t doing meaningful, productive, and important work. The suggestion that there is a back office and front office, and the back office is worthless—well, firstly, the division isn’t real. What we’ve got now—and I know this for a fact—is police officers spending hours of their day answering emails and doing admin. That’s something that a person with an entirely different skillset should do. A police officer is trained to do policing, not emails and scheduling. So this whole idea that the back office is not worthwhile—it’s a trope, and it’s vile because it undermines the good work that skilled people do to help New Zealanders.

So this Government has a Budget policy: recession by design. It’s absolutely shameful, and I know we’re going to see worse next week.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to give the final call on the debate on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—a wonderful committee—on the Budget Policy Statement. I’ve sat through all 13 speeches, listening to the different members, and I felt like I was in a bit of an Orwellian novel there as I saw history being revised by former Government members, as they went through all of the things that are wrong with New Zealand like the last six years didn’t happen; like they had no part to play in the pain and misery that they have inflicted on New Zealand businesses, on New Zealand households.

We come into Government in a situation where structural deficit is at 1.5 percent. We have the second-worst structural deficit in the developed world. We have interest payments that will be up at around $10 billion per annum. We have house prices that have risen significantly, rents that have increased $170 per week; the pain that this has inflicted on New Zealand households and New Zealand families is significant, and I see members over there shaking their heads like they had nothing to do with it at all. Well, you did have something to do with it, you had a huge amount to do with it, and you had six years to try and make a better New Zealand and you made a significantly worse New Zealand. I am very thankful that we have excellent Ministers, we have Nicola Willis in finance, and I am looking forward to the Budget coming out next week. There is a huge amount of work for our country to do and we’ve got many hard-working Ministers working very hard in this space to make it happen.

We heard a lot, as well, about how we are the party for wealthy people, and I find that absolutely baffling coming from a former Government that oversaw one of the biggest wealth transfers in New Zealand history. That is the reality. Through your inability to run a country, you oversaw a vast transfer in wealth from the lower and middle income segments of New Zealanders to capital-rich households in this country. That is the reality. You can’t run away from it, and the people of New Zealand need to always remember what you’ve inflicted upon them.

Construction sector is grim. I walk around and I talk to construction, I talk to businesses, and I get the same stories all the time that the revenue they are getting is down significantly, that the construction sector is coming to a halt and they are worried that all of their workers are going to disappear to Australia and when things come back online they are not going to have the workers there.

We look at the official cash rate; we inherited this at 5.5 percent. Now, that is high and that is really, really hitting hard. Kiwis don’t have the disposable income anymore and you go out and you talk to your local cafe, you talk to your local business: are people spending? And they say, “They’re not really coming in, and when they do, they’re just buying a coffee. They’re not getting a cake; they’re not getting anything else. My revenue’s dropped. I’m having to lay off staff; I want to keep them around.” And you hear this story over and over again, and I look at other hard-working electorate MPs—because most of them are on our side of the House, that’s the way they voted—and they will know from walking around that that’s the reality.

We’ve got a plan—we’ve got a plan, and the other side of the House didn’t have much of a plan, but we do have a plan. We are going to reduce debt. We want to reduce debt below 40 percent. We encounter regular shocks in New Zealand; we need that buffer, that is clear. We have a huge amount of interest that I’ve already alluded to that we are paying out; we need to reduce that. Yes, we can take on debt, if necessary, but if we do it has to be about making sure we fund infrastructure that is going to deliver long-term economic growth and productivity gains not the sort of debt that members on that side of the House covered themselves in and swamped our country in which was for operating expenses that consistently delivered worse outcomes for New Zealanders.

We’re going to be delivering tax relief as well, and I know the hard-working people of Tauranga and around New Zealand are very much looking forward to that. And we have a little walk down memory lane to 2011 when tax relief was last delivered, and we had people paying 15.5 percent of their income—around that—in tax. We look at that today; it’s up at 20.6 percent, as Stuart Smith, chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, pointed out in his opening speech. We don’t have a tax problem in New Zealand; we have a spending problem. And we have inherited an extreme spending problem from that side of the House—

Reuben Davidson: So why do people need to leave?

SAM UFFINDELL: And I hear them piping up. New Zealanders need to always remember what you did to our country, they really do. We have inherited some huge issues from you. But we are going to be delivering tax relief, because you know what, Madam Speaker? We actually believe that hard-working people deserve to keep their money. We think that they can do more with it than the Government can. We trust Kiwis to do better with their money to provide for them and their families, better than we expect the State to do it. We want them to keep more of their money and we have been clear through the election campaign and coming into Government that we are going to be delivering tax relief, and I know many New Zealand households who are out there doing it tough—you know, they’re paying a lot more in rent, they’re paying a lot on their mortgage, we’ve seen inflation, it’s continued—are looking forward to getting a little bit more back in their pocket.

And it was pointed out, I think, from a member of the ACT Party, who said, “Look the other side of the House, they rubbish these tax cuts, and maybe it doesn’t impact them. We’re sitting here on a $160k a year; they might not notice the tax cuts.” But for your average household out there in New Zealand that is doing it tough, that is going to make a difference. Maybe that means that they can take their kids to a dance class. Maybe it means that they can buy them some new footy boots. Maybe it means that they can decide that they don’t have to take something out of the trolley. There are many things that people will be enabled to do by getting a little bit of extra help, and we are there to help New Zealand households.

We also want to make sure that we’re cutting wasteful spending. And I think a really good example that this Government has delivered on this is with the school lunches programme where we looked at what was being done and we said, “Look, we can save $104 million on this, and we can actually roll it out to feed 10,000 more kids aged two to five years old.” That’s a really good example.

We’re looking at providers like Gumboot Friday and saying, “You’re doing a fantastic job, brilliant, we’re going to back you, here’s $24 million.” That’s a really good story. We saw the announcement today around community housing providers and social housing where we’re going to provide $140 million into that to provide 1,500 new social housing places. And I look in Tauranga, where we’ve got Accessible Properties, and they do a fantastic job, and they do a lot more cost-efficient job than Kāinga Ora. Their failures have been well noted and we’ve seen it in our local market—and I can see my colleague Tom Rutherford over there—where they have come in, outbid the market a lot, spent a lot building stuff, and delivered houses that actually aren’t affordable for the people that they’re intended for.

So this Budget is a no bells, no whistles—you know, it’s a no-frills Budget. It’s about getting back to basics. It’s about delivering tax relief to hard-working Kiwis and that’s what the side of the House is focused on. We are focused on rebuilding our economy, we are focused on restoring law and order, and we are focused on delivering better public services. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2024.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill

Second Reading

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: 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 Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill be now read a second time.

Tihei māuriora. 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 tipuna o te pō, haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te wāhi ngaro, haere, haere. E ngā kāwai Rangatira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[‘Tis the breath of life. The House stand, greetings to you. The land outside, greetings to you. The native people of this area, acknowledgments. The ancestors of the night, farewell, farewell, farewell. Farewell to the unseen realm, farewell. Dear esteemed leaders, greetings to you all, thank you, thank you.]

I’m pleased to be here today to support the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill for its second reading and to greet the many people from Whakatōhea who have come to the House to hear this second reading speech today.

This bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed by Te Whakatōhea and the Crown in 2023. The deed settles all the remaining historic Treaty of Waitangi claims of Whakatōhea and iwi in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, comprising six hapū: Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Ira, Ngāti Ngahere, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ruatakenga, and Te Ūpokorehe.

The Whakatōhea settlement journey has been a long one. Today, we remember and pay tribute to the leaders, including the many whānau members, who have passed on before they could witness this milestone. Te Whakatōhea has been served over the years by courageous and committed negotiators and advisers. To Robert Edwards, Graeme Riesterer, and the entire Whakatōhea Pre-Settlement Claims Trust, I thank you for your hard work throughout these negotiations. I congratulate the trustees of Te Tāwharau o Te Whakatōhea on their election at the inaugural AGM in March. I also acknowledge the negotiators Maui Hudson and Jason Pou and their support team led by Arihia Tuoro and Gina Smith for their significant contributions to this settlement.

On the Crown’s side, I acknowledge the work of my predecessors the Hon Chris Finlayson, who reached agreement in principle with Te Whakatōhea in August 2017, and the Hon Andrew Little, who introduced this bill in August 2023. I also acknowledge the work of the chief Crown negotiator Glenn Webber in these negotiations, and my ministerial colleagues, Crown agencies, and, in particular, the Office for Māori Crown Relations - Te Arawhiti and local authorities for their support to achieve this settlement. Today’s reading marks another important milestone for Te Whakatōhea in their settlement journey.

Te Whakatōhea first petitioned this House in 1914 for the Crown to honour its commitments under the Treaty of Waitangi and to recognise its breaches regarding the confiscation of Whakatōhea lands. While that petition was unsuccessful, Te Whakatōhea continued to petition the Crown, with many members contributing to these efforts. In 1946, Te Whakatōhea received a small form of compensation from those land confiscations, but the full impact of the Crown’s actions was not addressed. In the 1990s, Te Whakatōhea were amongst the first iwi to enter settlement negotiations with the Crown and, in 1996, initialled a deed of settlement. That deed of settlement was never put into ratification. More than 100 years on from the 1914 petition, and 30 years on from the initiating negotiations, we’ve finally reached a point where the Crown acknowledges and apologises for the grievances it caused.

The bill was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee on 17 August 2023. The committee received and considered 112 submissions on the bill and heard oral evidence from 40 submitters. The committee recommended minor amendments to the commencement date and the insertion of a reference to traditional knowledge labels. The committee also considered requests for two hapū to be withdrawn from the settlement: Te Ūpokorehe and Ngāti Ira. The committee acknowledged the different, strongly held views about the removal of hapū from the bill. However, the committee did not recommend any substantive changes, because, on balance, they considered it in the best interests of Te Whakatōhea for the bill to proceed without change.

I’d like to extend my thanks to the committee members for their work on the bill. I acknowledge the strong views of those from Te Ūpokorehe and Ngāti Ira who seek their own settlements. However, I support the committee’s decision. Te Whakatōhea has worked hard towards settlement for many years, and moving into the post-settlement space will provide opportunities for all hapū. I hope all Whakatōhea hapū can find a way to work together to make the most of the settlement opportunities that are provided.

Today is about looking forward to the future while acknowledging the past and the long and difficult journey it has taken to get here. I personally first encountered the story actually studying my Master’s in history, and my thesis was on William Colenso, who wrote an article called “Fiat Justitia” about Mokomoko and his story defending him. I’ve always been interested in those tragic, tragic events, and the redress contained in this bill provides a foundation that will benefit many generations of Te Whakatōhea to come by supporting them in their future endeavours and in realising their aspirations.

No settlement can fully compensate for the wrongdoing of the Crown or compensate Whakatōhea for the hurt that they have endured, but it is my hope that this settlement will mark the beginning of a strengthened relationship between Whakatōhea and the Crown based on mutual trust, cooperation, and partnership. I support the committee’s recommendations as they will ensure the redress in the Whakatōhea deed of settlement can be properly implemented through this bill. This reading today is another important step in the settlement process, before the third reading, which will result in the full and final settlement of the historic Treaty of Waitangi claims for Whakatōhea.

I look forward to hosting many, many more of Te Whakatōhea on what will be a special occasion and to honour the commitments the Crown has agreed to take towards reconciliation. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

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

Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Otirā e tika ana kia tuku mihi atu ki ngā whānau me ngā hapū katoa o Te Whakatōhea. Ki a Ngāti Rua, Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngāhere, Ngāti Ira me Te Ūpokorehe. Ānei mātou o te roopu Reipa e tuku mihi atu nei ki a koutou, tēnā koutou mō ō koutou kaha kia mahia ēnei mahi. Nōreira e tika ana kia tuku mihi atu ki a koutou. Kia whakapiri hoki āku mihi ki te mihi o te Minita, ki a rātou mā kua hinga mai nā mai i te tīmatanga o tēnei kereme tae noa mai ki tēnei wā. Nōreira e ngā mate maha hoki wairua atu ki a rātou te tini me te mano kia rātou katoa; tēnei te mihi ake, e moe. Ā kāti mō tēnā.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is only right that I acknowledge the families and all the people of Whakatōhea. To Ngāti Rua, to Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngāhere, Ngāti Ira, and Te Ūpokorehe, this is us the Labour Party acknowledging you all. Thank you for your strength to have endured this. And so it is correct to acknowledge you all and to also support the acknowledgments done by the Minister, to our loved ones who passed during the inception of this claim right up to present time. And so, all our loved ones, farewell to the multitudes there waiting for you; this is my acknowledgment, rest well. And so, furthermore.]

I had the honour and privilege of being on the Māori Affairs Committee that considered this bill. We were fortunate enough to travel to Ōpōtiki and to be hosted by Te Whakatōhea and to hear the submissions on this bill. I want to acknowledge all 40 that made submissions orally and to everyone that did put in submissions. I think it’d be fair to say that the committee spent a lot of time considering what we heard, and we heard the Minister outline some of that.

Can I reflect for a moment on our visit to Ōpōtiki. I had the honour and privilege of responding to the mihi whakatau and in my response I made it very clear about what the role of the Māori Affairs Committee was in considering this legislation. We were, as a committee, very clear about what our role was and also very clear about what it wasn’t. I raise that issue because it would seem to me that some of the submitters—I’ll be kind and say “may have been misled” as to what the role of the committee was. That was very clear in the submissions.

I say to those people who wrongly believe that the Māori Affairs Committee had far more power and authority than we actually do to make changes to a deed of settlement, which is a legally binding document between the Crown and Whakatōhea—but what we did do was listen very carefully to what they had to say. As the Minister stated, on balance, we made the decision that it was in the best interest of all of Whakatōhea not to make any changes.

I want to acknowledge the negotiators, the pre-settlement team, but, in particular, I actually want to acknowledge Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, because, over the last 70 years or 80 years, maybe, they’ve had the responsibility of growing the iwi asset, and I have to say I believe they’ve done an incredibly good job. Because of something that happened at my home, I wasn’t able to stay for the committee’s tour of the rohe. But I’ve heard from colleagues who were very impressed—I’ve read for myself; I can see that. I also attended the Ahuwhenua awards last Friday and I could see that demonstrated as well, that the Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board has done an amazing job.

This piece of legislation will disestablish the Whakatōhea Māori Trust, and Te Tāwharau o Te Whakatōhea will take over that role. They’ve got huge shoes to fill, and I think it’s important that this House recognises the importance of the work that the Māori Trust Board has done, and I certainly do that now.

I’m not going to go too much into the settlement detail, as outlined by the Minister. I do just want to touch on some of the cultural redress. I think, from my reading of it—and I’ve read many, many deeds of settlement—this one has a particularly strong cultural redress throughout the document, with the transfer of sites, the statutory acknowledgments, deeds of recognition, and protocols and other mechanisms which I believe will give Whakatōhea the opportunity to really express its mana over its whenua.

So I congratulate Jason and Maui, and the whole team that had the tenacity to get to this day where we have its second reading in this House. I look forward to the third reading. I’m not going to say any more, except I’m going to mihi to colleagues on the Māori Affairs Committee, and once again to ngā whānau me ngā hapū o Te Whakatōhea. Nōreira huri rauna, tēnā rā tātou katoa. [the families and the people of Te Whakatōhea. And so, everyone present today, thank you all.]

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Ki a koutou o Whakatōhea, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. Tēnā tātou katoa ngā mema Pāremata o tēnei Whare, nei rā taku mihi aroha ki a koutou o Whakatōhea. Ki ngā hapū, Ngāti Rua, Ngai Tamahaua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngāhere, Ngāti Ira me Te Ūpokorehe. Nei rā taku mihi aroha ki a koutou i roto i ēnei wero kei mua i a tātou mō tēnei mea te kereme.

[Madam Speaker, thank you. To you all Whakatōhea, greetings to you all. Salutations to all parliamentary members of this House. I express my sentiments to you Whakatōhea. To the subtribes, Ngāti Rua, Ngai Tamahaua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngāhere, Ngāti Ira, and Te Ūpokorehe, I would like to express my sincere acknowledgments to you during these challenging times, in regards to this claim.]

I stand to speak today as I was the Green Party member on the Māori Affairs Committee who was also so privileged to go to Ōpōtiki to be hosted by all of the whānau in Ōpōtiki and, most importantly, to listen really deeply and really closely to all of the views and the journey that this—as we all know—difficult Crown process has put on to Whakatōhea. I really want to acknowledge the challenges that we faced as the Māori Affairs Committee, but I think these are challenges that the Crown has faced for quite some time, in how do we actually restore healed relationships between Māori and the Crown, and also between hapū of iwi.

I wanted to start by saying that since this is the second reading, it focuses on the submissions that we heard in Ōpōtiki, and there were also some follow-up submissions that we later heard as the Māori Affairs Committee. We were also really privileged to go on some of the site visits around part of the rohe of Whakatōhea. I was looking at some of the submissions, refreshing the words and the sentiments that were expressed to us at the Māori Affairs Committee. I wrote down here, from hearing some of the submissions, some notes to capture some of the sentiment that I think is going to be the most important as we support the passage of this bill—and the Greens are supporting this bill, Whakatōhea.

Now, we are not doing that without an acknowledgment of the valid concerns that were raised, as the select committee report has articulated—yes—but I really do want to acknowledge this quote in particular, which is where Whakatōhea said to us, “It is up to us—Whakatōhea—that we repair and heal with hapū.” We know that that is absolutely what has happened in the process of claims settlement in Aotearoa. We know that it goes back to iwi, back to the claimants, who have that mahi. We cannot expect that mahi to be able to happen without, firstly, an ongoing acknowledgment of the way that Crown processes have continued to breach Te Tiriti and the way that Crown processes expect things to be settled, as opposed to having an enduring, positive relationship between people, including between iwi and the Crown, and between hapū.

Rawiri Waititi: “Situationships”.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Absolutely, as my colleague the member from Whakatōhea Rawiri Waititi is referring to. We, as Māori members, know deeply from our own rohe and iwi processes and experiences, and that lived experience—we know deeply that in the settlement process, as it is called, many hapū have validly felt that their voices have not been heard, and that their voices and their stories and their tūpuna have not been heard and they have not been acclaimed to them, to their whakapapa. We know this. Those concerns are valid, and we must acknowledge that in this House.

The support from the Green Party to progress this Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill through the House at the second reading, I mention again, does not go without the acknowledgment of those valid concerns: the acknowledgment of mandate concerns, the acknowledgment of what the processes of votes that hapū and iwi are left to rely on, and the acknowledgment of—oh, actually, I was looking at one of my notes here. It’s the acknowledgment that—and this is not just about Whakatōhea but it is where lands have been used to settle other claims across iwi, and we’ve seen it time and time again. You’ve got this convoluted situation of iwi lands being used by the Crown to settle another iwi’s grievances.

All of these issues were raised with us. We visited—was it Tarata? We visited many different sites, including the sites of great mamae and injustice, actually. There were the generations of injustice that followed, and how lands have gone into private ownership—and this has happened all around the country. How significant, significant hapū lands have ended up in private ownership, how the Treaty settlement process is not always able to—well, the Treaty settlement process has never been able to be a justice settlement, and let’s get that right first. We know that despite that, our iwi, our hapū members, give blood and sweat and tears and generosity to achieve what is possible and to achieve for mokopuna to come—for all the hapū.

I know that many of us members, in fact, across the House on that Māori Affairs Committee—a very good select committee—held authentically the concern that Whakatōhea were going to be left with the mahi of repairing and healing relationships. We put that to the officials. We put that to the members of Whakatōhea. I also want to acknowledge that when we’re talking about Ngāti Ira and Ūpokorehe, I do acknowledge that we had members of those hapū who also want to see the continuation in the support of this bill. So it’s never clear cut and it never has been, but we did hear some valid Ūpokorehe and Ngāti Ira concerns.

I stand here, being straight, upfront, and confronting how difficult a decision it has been, but, yes, the Greens are supporting this bill. But we can’t leave the relationship and the responsibility of the Crown here, through supporting this bill through the House. We have to be able to support Whakatōhea to validly pick up those concerns and those kōrero in whatever way Whakatōhea knows is best in order to validly pick up those concerns to ensure that Ūpokorehe and Ngāti Ira are cared for and are worked with. That is the constant reassurance that we sought, as committee members, and that is the constant reassurance that we received from Whakatōhea and from negotiators.

So I did focus intentionally in the majority of my contribution—this is my first contribution on Whakatōhea, because the fantastic former Green MP Jan Logie did our first reading speech. I then became a member of the Māori Affairs Committee and was privileged to have the visits and hear the whānau directly.

To those whānau of hapū—those whānau members—who put their case to us about wanting to get support for their hapū to be pulled from this Whakatōhea settlement: you have absolutely been heard deeply outside of those submissions. We had deep conversations across us, as members, to really acknowledge your voices. Your voices were so impactful that we had profound conversations about how to ensure that it did not feel like your words were uttered in vain.

Now, the last word, I think, is to say why I am confronting and owning outright the decision that the Greens have made to be in support, recognising that I am accountable to those voices who came to me directly to put their case for the bill to be pulled back at this time, and for their hapū to be pulled out—I acknowledge that. I also want to acknowledge the nannies of Whakatōhea who said, “Come on, Marama, don’t delay our mahi.” We’ve always got, as MPs, these issues and challenges, and we do the best we can with them. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak on the second reading of the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill. I was not on the Māori Affairs Committee that did this wonderful visit to Ōpōtiki and the surrounding rohe to see the great strides that Whakatōhea and the people of your community have been making to bring yourselves to a place you would like to be. But I am someone who has spent his entire life in Te Moana-a-Toi, and I have heard stories, for a long time, about what happened down in Ōpōtiki, in the hills behind. All these stories came in pieces, and I heard many of them over my life. But it wasn’t until—and I think this is part of the benefit of the settlement process—reading through the bill and having all those stories, which I’d heard, repeated in order and in a way that really laid out what the tīpuna and the people of Whakatōhea alive today have gone through.

Whakatōhea rangatira signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. They were embracing a new technological age, building infrastructure, and developing organisations to take advantage of what was becoming a very, very fast-changing economic and social world. Whakatōhea fought against the Crown. In Tauranga Moana, where I’m based, there was a defeat there, and rangatira, who I would like to name—Te Āporotanga, Apanui, Tūtakahiao, Mikaere Pihipihi—were killed. This left Whakatōhea with a considerable loss in their leadership, and there were travesties in those deaths. The Crown held Te Āporotanga a captive and failed to keep him safe and breached Te Tiriti by his death in custody. The Crown forces subsequently went and invaded the Ōpōtiki area, following what was Pai Mārire disturbances in the Bay of Plenty, but these led to disagreements which eventuated with Carl Völkner—a name that people only know because of rocks behind Whakaari but is actually an important part of the history of the Bay of Plenty.

This moment was used as a start of an invasion, which led to Whakatōhea being held responsible, despite members, like Mokomoko, speaking up on behalf of Völkner and saying that this should not happen. The Crown took Mokomoko and, it must be said, the whole story is heartbreaking. He maintained his innocence, but he was put to death, and it took over 100 years for his family to get back his remains. The Governor-General granted Mokomoko a free pardon in 1992, but it didn’t help as much as it should have if the descendants had had a part in working that through.

Whakatōhea was devastated by looting and plundering which took place as the Crown troops invaded, destroying crops, animals, houses, equipment, and taonga. The attack at Ōpōtiki in September 1865 led to a loss of life and destruction of property. Pākōwhai settlement was bombarded by a Crown warship, and at least 35 bodies were left desecrated and, afterwards, buried by the Crown forces in a mass grave. The Crown now acknowledges that they used scorched earth tactics to remove the people of Whakatōhea from their developments they had made on the land. Their once thriving economy was left devastated. Crops were destroyed, horses and livestock killed, houses and ships burnt, and the destruction of a truly inspirational piece of important infrastructure, the Ngāti Ira flour mill.

The Crown went way beyond what was necessary or appropriate—to understate the matter. We acknowledge the reckless disregard the Crown had for Whakatōhea. So much was taken. The Crown confiscated productive land and established the Ōpape Native Reserve, causing the displacement and subsequent loss of connection and economic stability for the iwi and the future of Whakatōhea.

We are trying to put things right as best we can, and there is a thriving cultural and commercial opportunity in Ōpōtiki and the wider rohe. This bill returns cultural sites of importance, and I grant that it’s not enough but, with your goodwill, I hope we can move forward to a brighter and better community together, where I can come down and fish around the mussel farms, maybe launch my boat, and go out through the cut. That would be nice.

Rawiri Waititi: A thousand bucks.

CAMERON LUXTON: Well, jeez! Let’s not start that up.

Look, we need to acknowledge what has happened and move forward together. But I grant that it may never seem enough to anybody. But ACT supports this step, and I thank you for coming and listening to my speech. Thank you.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Ahiahi mārie. I rise in support of the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill. We’re at the second reading now. In fact, it’s the first settlement bill that the Māori Affairs Committee of the 54th Parliament inherited. It’s the first settlement bill that I’ve been directly involved with. As part of the Treaty settlement process, this bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed between the Crown and members of Whakatōhea in May 2023.

The iwi Whakatōhea is based in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, and I’d like to recognise a few MPs in the House today, including my colleague Dana Kirkpatrick. With a population of about 17,000—Madam Speaker, the clock hasn’t started.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It has now. Apologies for that.

RIMA NAKHLE: That’s OK.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You gained a couple of seconds there. Keep going.

RIMA NAKHLE: With a population of about 17,000, Whakatōhea’s area of interest spans about 200,000 hectares. Like every Treaty settlement I’ve studied so far—there’s only been a few, though—each one is noteworthy in its own right and includes aspects of deep significance.

The Whakatōhea story I’ve learnt is, like so many of our settlement stories, one of profound loss, unimaginable pain, and uncomfortable truths, but the history which forms the basis of the deeply seated grievances underpinning the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill is considered by some as one of the saddest and most moving accounts of land confiscation and subsequent loss suffered by te ao Māori in New Zealand’s history—one of invasion; senseless loss of life; false accusations, in my opinion; and the infliction of horrible violence which set the scene for perpetual and ongoing generational trauma.

This settlement deed and this bill will acknowledge the wrongs of the past, recognise the sufferings inflicted by the Crown, and provide financial, cultural, and commercial redress to the people of Whakatōhea for the benefit of those people who are most important to them: their mokopuna.

I acknowledge the support that this bill received in the submission process, and I also respectfully acknowledge the opposition to this bill as well, but we can’t let perfection be the enemy of good.

I acknowledge the members of Whakatōhea who are present in the House with us today, and I thank you for the beautiful manaakitanga you bestowed upon myself and my fellow members of the Māori Affairs Committee when we were fortunate enough to be at your home, Ōpōtiki, and beyond, earlier this year.

If I may, I would like to also acknowledge Jason Pou and Maui Hudson, as well as Te Arawhiti representatives Glenn Webber and Jacob Pollock, for your patience and transparency in answering the many questions that I and my colleagues on the committee had—questions and concerns, as the Hon Marama Davidson pointed out, throughout this process. Thank you.

Lastly, there’s been a lot of sweat and tears in this long road towards settlement for Whakatōhea—decades, in fact. I look forward to the third and final reading, when, hopefully, the dark cloud of burden, of sadness—some of it can be lifted off your beautiful shoulders. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. This is a split call—five minutes. Thank you.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare.

Kei aku parepare, kei aku whakaruruhau, nei rā te reo whakamiha ki a koutou katoa. Aio nuku, aio rangi, aio te pou herenga tangata o te motu, a Kingi Tūheitia Pōtatau te Wherowhero te tuawhitu. Rirerire hau, pai mārire. Tangihia rā ngā mate o te tau o te marama. Koutou ngā pare kawakawa o Pare ārau kua hoki atu rā ki a Hinenuitepō. E ngā uri o Muriwai te iwi o Whakatōhea. Ngāti Rua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngahere, Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Ira me te Ūpokorehe. Nei rā ka tuohu tētahi mokopuna o Waikato ki a koutou me tō koutou nei kereme raupatu. E te Pīka, nōku te hōnore nui ki te waha i ngā kōrero mō te Pāti Māori i te rangi nei. E tautoko katoa ana mātou i tēnei o ngā wawata me ngā maruāpō nui o te iwi o Whakatōhea.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker, and also greetings to the House.

My dear protectors, my dear defenders, this is my convivial acknowledgments to you all. Peace to the land, peace to the skies, peace to the gatherer of people, King Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII. Rirerire hau, pai mārire. We mourn our loved ones who have passed this year. You are the mourning wreath of Pare ārau who have returned to Hinenuitepō. Dear descendants of Muriwai, people of Whakatōhea. Ngāti Rua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngahere, Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Ira, and Ūpokorehe. Here I am, a child of Waikato showing my respect to you and your settlement claim. Madam Speaker, it is my true honour to speak on behalf of Te Pāti Māori today. We wholeheartedly support the dreams and aspirations of the people of Whakatōhea.]

I begin my kōrero acknowledging our king, Kīngi Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero te tuawhitu, as he was the first signature on this claim. I am here to fully support his signing, and I’m also very, very privileged today to be speaking on behalf of Te Pāti Māori.

Me tuku te reo owha ki tētahi o ngā kaiārahi, ki a Rāwiri Waititi. Ko tēnei tōna whakapapa, koinei tōna uri, koinei hoki ōna tūpuna kua whawhai i roto i tēnei o ngā mahi. Tēnei o ngā kaupapa nui o te kereme o Te Whakatōhea.

[I would like to give my sincere acknowledgments to one of the leaders, Rāwiri Waititi. These are his genealogical ties, these are his people, and these are his ancestors who fought in this. The settlement claims of Te Whakatōhea.]

I want to recognise huge impacts of the Land Wars on Whakatōhea, who pledged support to the Kīngitanga movements of Waikato in late February 1864. Whakatōhea joined the 800-strong Tairāwhiti taua, a combined force drawn from East Coast iwi and hapū. The Whakatōhea contingent was led by Treaty signatory, chief Te Āporotanga of Ngāti Rua, Hira Te Popo of Ngāti Ira, and Apanui of Ngāti Patu. The battle of Kaokaoroa was a devastating loss for Te Tairāwhiti, and the costs of colonisation were not only felt on the battlefields but also by the increase of foreign diseases that whānau were defenceless to in communities that were once abundant with kai and whenua. That had been stripped by the Crown. Whānau of Te Whakatōhea perished both on and off the battlefield.

This was the first hearing and site visit for the Māori Affairs Committee of 2024. As a newly appointed member to the committee, ka rongo atu i te mamae, ka rongo au i te ngaukino o Whakatōhea me ngā take o te raupatu. Tēnei te mihi ki ngā uri katoa i tae mai ā tinana ki te tuku i tō koutou reo me ō koutou whakapapa. [I feel your hurt, I feel the pain of Whakatōhea in regards to confiscation. I acknowledge all the descendants who have arrived here in person to speak your truth and your history.]

With a huge highlight for me, we were privileged enough to be guided from Matua Te Ruahohonu at the site of Te Tarata. I too recognise all the descendants of those who fought at the siege on Te Tarata, the Whakatōhea casualties during that pakanga cost 10 percent of the Whakatōhea population at that time—a tremendous loss for their iwi too great to put into words. Tēnei te mihi aroha ki a koutou, e ngā uri o tēnā o ngā pakanga. [My heartfelt sentiments to you all, the descendants of that battle.]

We also visited the mussel factory farm, which was led and worked by the descendants of Whakatōhea. We heard and felt the mamae and the cries of the descendants of Whakatōhea. However, we also felt and heard the dreams and aspirations for their mokopuna. Ᾱ, me mihi ka tika ki a koutou Te Whakatōhea [It is only important that I acknowledge you Whakatōhea] in the recent Ahuwhenua awards.

I want to also acknowledge all of the rūruhi and koroheke who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into this settlement. I want to also acknowledge the three rangatahi who were also heard at this settlement hearing. I rongo au i tō koutou reo, te reo o te kohanga. [I heard your voice, your call.]

This process of the Crown in the Treaty settlements is a breach of Te Tiriti. The process of this House still continues to divide and conquer te iwi Māori in this process. We must make Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding on the Crown and implement all unaddressed Wai claim recommendations. We must also abolish full and final settlements, which is outlined in our mana motuhake policy.

I follow the words of the speech from earlier, from Marama, in making sure that I deliver to this House that some iwi and some whānau did not hear their voices at the table, which were some concerns of the whānau, some whānau of Ngāti Ira, Ngāi Tamahaua, and Te Ūpokorehe. I te rangi nei tēnei te tuku atu ki a koutou. Kua rongo au i tō koutou reo tūpuna. [Today, I send to you. I hear the voice of your people.]

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 to the Treaty must continually strive to meet the obligations it sets out to do in all articles. Nō reira tēnā rā tātou, e te Whare, tēnā rā koutou. [And so, thank you, dear House, thank you all.]

STEVE ABEL (Green): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Kia ora koutou, Whakatōhea. In the context of a people defending their land, a man by the name of Mokomoko was wrongly accused of murdering a missionary and taken to Mt Eden Prison, and he was hanged. His infamous words in his song were, “Take this noose from my neck that I may sing my song.”

These settlements are supposedly in an effort to take the noose of colonisation from the neck of tangata whenua Māori. The evils of Crown actions are not in contention. The wrong done to iwi and hapū of Whakatōhea are laid bare. The legitimacy of the demand for redress and amends is without question. You have been wronged by the Crown, and we here acknowledge that today.

One thing that causes me disquiet is what I have heard from a number of iwi, that the processes of Treaty settlements themselves cause another variety of harm. Because it occurs in the strictures of the red book, it offers a fractional 1 to 2 percent of what has been lost in a physical sense, let alone can it amend for the human social livelihood and cultural impact of colonisation—and the ecological loss, because nature is invariably irreversibly destroyed and desecrated in that act of colonisation. The very process sets iwi against their neighbours, into disagreement with fellow hapū, into contention with their whanaunga.

In a supposed effort to make amends, I am left with a sickening feeling of the Crown causing another form of harm to tangata whenua Māori. If the intention is rather to make the past go away and to be done with it, as the term “full and final” implies, we disdain that intention. A relationship is not something that ceases to listen, ceases to respect, to move with the needs of all parties to that relationship in perpetuity, nor ceases to uphold the founding commitments. Our Tiriti o Waitangi is a living foundation for relationship; it is not a contract with an end date.

Which returns us to the instance at hand. We acknowledge the contention, as has been done, but this in no way is to disrespect the view of all parties to this process. It is not for us to prosecute the issues of your iwi and hapū; it is for us to be honest about how the Crown’s part generates tensions and causes new varieties of harm. The effect of the current process is that those hapū who do not feel represented by a settlement nevertheless have their own claims extinguished by that settlement. Where a hapū wants the right to withdraw from a settlement to pursue their own path, there should be a means for that to happen.

I also want to say that divergence of opinion within an iwi is a perfectly natural and common occurrence. Whakatōhea—the crimes of theft of your land and the killing of your ancestors are shameful blots on our nation’s history. There can be no legitimacy in our nationhood if it is not set in a principle of justice for all iwi and hapū of Aotearoa New Zealand. We must know our history honestly and understand its impact on this very day. If we do not, then we will also not recognise the perpetuation of those injustices and the policy actions of today. I wish, Whakatōhea, that this settlement goes some way to removing the noose of colonisation from your neck that you may sing your song. Kia ora.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Kei ngā uri kua oti te whakarauika mai ki konei ki roto i tō koutou Whare. Te Whare i whakaritea hei noho mā mātou mō tēnei wā hei whiriwhiri i tēnei wā hei whakatutuki mā mātou i ngā mahi i tīmata mai noa atu i ō koutou mātua kua poupou ki te matemate. Nā reira, ngā uri a Te Whakatōhea, ngā uri a Mataatua waka, Rangitūtohu waka, ērā atu o ngā kārangarangatanga mai te ao kōhatu. Tēnā koutou ka tatū mai ki konei. Kua roa noa tēnei take e werewere ana.

Ahau ka mahara ki te wā tā koutou tamaiti e Minita ana i konei, te mokopuna a Mōnita Delamere, a Tuariki nāna i akiaki nāna i whai i te wā e mana tonu ana a Doug Graham hei Minita i roto i te Kāwanatanga o Mr Bolger. Kīhai rawa i oti i taua wā i whakahēngia e Te Ranginui me wana kaitautoko. Kua pou te hia rā nei tau, ko ia tēnei ko tātou i tēnei pito o tēnei rautau e rapu ana me pēhea rānei e whakaeangia ai me pēhea rānei e whakaeangia ai aua hapa, aua hara, aua mahi i oti i te wā o ō tātou wheinga. Hei aha māku e whakaranea ngā kōrero mō tō koutou whanaunga a Te Ranginui. Mā koutou anō a ia e kōrero i roto i wō koutou whare i runga i ō koutou marae. Nā ka heke mai kia Claud ka heke mai ki ngā mātua o tērā wā, nā kua riro ko koutou hei whakatutuki.

Me timata au i konei mō te kōrero ki ngā hapū. Ahakoa kōrero mai ana tērā atu o ngā mema me whakawatea he huarahi e puta ai ngā hapū, mahi nui kia whakatōpūngia ai ngā maramara o tētahi iwi. Kahore he oranga kahore he kaha, māku e titiro ki te kongakonga o tātou iwi Māori. Mā roto i te whakatōpū tanga mā roto i te whakahuihuinga o ngā tātai katoa i raro i te maru Kotahi, kātahi tātou ka taea te kī kua ea ngā moemoeā mai i ō tātou wheinga.

Tērā tētahi wāhanga tēnā pea ā tōna wā ka huri anō te ihu o te Kāwanatanga ki te hongihongi ki te ketuketu rānei mena he oranga ka kitea mā roto i a Ūpokorehe. Ēngari he take kē anō tērā. Mō te wahanga ki ngā whenua i riro pōhēhē, i riro muru, i riro raupatu atu. Kīhai tēnei Kāwanatanga e noho nei ahau i āhei te whakahoki mai i ngā whenua katoa. Ēngari nā mātou i titiro ki te moana. Ko te pāmu kāhorekau i whakahokia mai tērā pea he pāmu mātaitai, he pāmu oranga kei roto i ngā mau o te tai, kei roto i te mata o te tai, kei roto i te takutai ka taea te kī ka ea ēnei mahi. Nā reira nui noa atu te tautoko kia āmenengia ai tēnei pire me te mahara ko koutou tētahi iwi, e te Māngai o te Whare ko tēnei iwi roa noa e whakatahangia ana i roto i te tumunga me te paringa o te tai tōrangapū.

Ehara ko tētahi iwi, pēnei i a Ngāi Tahu, ehara ko tētahi iwi pēnei i a Tainui, ehara ko tētahi iwi mātotoru te tangata iti te roro pēnei i ahau i a Ngāpuhi e tū nei. Ēngari he iwi i ū tonu ki ngā Kaupapa o te hāhi. He hāhi i whakaritea hei Kaupapa mā koutou mai te wā i a Te Kōti. Ehara i te hāhi whakapāhongia ai pēnei me tērā whanaunga o tātou a Bishop Tāmaki, kahore. Engari ko tēnei hāhi tapu, mau tonu i roto i ngā ritenga i kite ai koutou he iwi Motuhake. Ko ia tāku e tautoko ake nei, māua ko taku Rangatira nā te mea ēnei momo kōrero e hāngai ana ki te ngākau o te Māoritanga. E hāngai ana ki te mauri me te manawa o te Māoritanga. Karekau pēnei me ngā pahupahu mama noa iho te kite, mama noa iho te kapokapo i runga i te reo irirangi, kahore. Me te mahara hoki ki te roa o te wā i rapu ai ngā ūpoko ehara i te mea ko tō koutou iwi anake engari ko te hapori whānui. Me pēhea rānei ngā wehewehenga ka whakamāmāngia ai, me pēhea rānei wētahi Kaupapa hou e whāngaitia ai ki te pūtea, e whāngaitia ai ki te oranga kia whiwhi mahi ai kia whiwhi huarahi hou ai, ā, kia ea ai ngā manako kei ā tātou Tamariki.

Ehara i te mea ko te katoa o ngā tūmanako ka ea mā roto i te pire nei, ēngari ko tā mātou he tautoko i a koutou, he tautoko ngā mahi i oti i tērā pāti e noho mai rā. Ko te pāti nui kei tēnei taha, a Nāhinara, kahore he patanga kahore he pononga, kahore he tikanga kia noho wehe kē ai pēnei i ahau me tō mātou wāhi pāti me tū tahi kia koke whakamua ai koutou i roto i tēnei whai o koutou. I roto i tēnei whare ahakoa werewere tonu ana te hia rānei take kei waenga i a tātou te iwi Māori. I tēnei rā ka whakatutukitia tēnei wāhanga o te Kaupapa e whakaritea hei whakatutuki mā tēnei reanga. Ko wai ka hua ko wai ka mōhio he aha rānei e toe ana hei ngā reanga e haere ake nei.

[To you the descendants who have assembled here in your House. The House in which we sit here today and debate on how we can best complete what was first set forth here by your elders who have now passed on. And so, the descendants of Whakatōhea, the descendants of Rangitūtohu, and all the other kin from the old world. Thank you all who are present here today. This has been a very long time in the making.

Myself, I remember when one of your descendants was a Minister here, the grandchild of Mōnita Delamere, it was Tuariki who supported during the time where Doug Graham still held mana as a Minister in Mr Bolger’s Government. It didn’t come to fruition, it was challenged by Te Ranginui and his supporters. So many years have passed. In this day and age, we are searching for how to satisfy and rectify those wrongdoings, the hardship upon your people at that time. It isn’t for me to speak to what your kin Ranginui had advocated for. Only you can speak on him in your own house and in your own courtyard. And then we come down to Claud, the elders of that time. And now the responsibility is up to you to take up.

I shall start here to speak to the hapū. Despite what that member said about clearing a pathway for the tribes to thrive, it is a huge task to bring a people together. There is no wealth, no strength, I will look at the little that the Māori do have. Through assembling, through bringing together of all the people under one umbrella, only then can we say that our elders dreams have been met. There may also be a time where the pathway changes and that the Government will meet with and see if there is a pathway ahead in the Ūpokorehe. That is, however, a different matter. In regards to the land that was wrongfully taken, that was confiscated. This Government is unable to return all of the lands. But as we focus on the sea. The farms, nothing, bring back muscle farming, there is successful farming in the tides of the ocean. It is within the sea that we might find wealth. And so there is much more reason to support this bill, and to remember also that you are one nation, this is one nation who during the tides perpetual ebbs and flows have been challenging politics.

Unlike a nation such as Ngāi Tahu, unlike the nation of Tainui, unlike such nation as my nation of Ngāpuhi who are large but dim-witted. They are a nation who are staunch to their religious teachings. A religion that was set forth for you from the time of Te Kōti. Not a religion like our cousin Bishop Tamaki, no, but this religion is sacred and still abide by their principles, you see they are a unique people. That is why I support it, me and my leader, because these words are relevant to the Māori people. It is in regards to the core and inner being of Māoridom. Unlike the ravings of some that are easy to see, that is easy to hear on the radio station, no, but also note the long arduous efforts put forward, not only by you but by the wider community.

How do we satisfy the division, how do we grow the economy, growth for the wealth to create jobs, to prosper and to manifest the dreams of our children. It is not as if all the aspirations will be successful within this bill alone, but we are here to support you, and to support what was started from that party sitting over there. The big party is on this side, National, there is no reason for us to be divided, but we need to stand together so that we and you can move forward. In this House, despite forgetting the many issues surrounding us Māori, on this day at least, we can satisfy one part of these issues for the current generation. Who knows what the future holds for the future generations.]

I stand to support the efforts of Whakatōhea, a tribe hailing from what we call today the Eastern Bay of Plenty, a very traditional group within Māoridom, the keepers of their own faith, shared by other iwi of that particular area. I refer here, obviously, to the Ringatū church. I refer also to the fact that all iwi have management challenges with hapū. But let us say it’s important that we simplify the process so we avoid what we call in Māori the kongakonga principle—crumbs being left rather than a robust or singular body. For those reasons, we of all people, in New Zealand First, understand, and one hapū is referred to here, Te Ūpokorehe, and as I’ve said in our Māori language, it may come to pass at some other time that another Government takes up their particular issue, but, as of today, we stand with this bill, this report, and the need to enable Whakatōhea leadership to move forward with the endowment that is contained in this settlement.

But it’s an endowment also that has been augmented and added to by the efforts of myself and my leader, and indeed the late Parekura Horomia, who took us to Whakatōhea in about 2006-07 to talk about the development of an aquaculture industry off the coast of that part of Mataatua country. So the kaupapa keeps going on. This is only one part of the contribution, and as we’ve said in our reo, it speaks of what this generation, in the context of binding the past, the present, and the future, to lay down a kaupapa so that the sadness, the mistakes, the anger, the disappointment of the past fades away and we look forward. It may sound trite when I say it like this, but no society prospers by continually looking backwards, continually raking up the coals of discontent. I, as a member of the Ngāpuhi tribe, know that better than any other single whānau in Aotearoa. I salute you. Tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe, e te Pīka. Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te atua nāna nei ngā mea katoa. Ko te mihi tuarua ki te Whare e tū nei, āpiti hono tātai hono te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, āpiti hono tātai hono te hunga ora ki te hunga ora. He mihi mahana ki a koutou ngā uri, ngā tāngata o Whakatōhea, ā, he mihi mahana ki a koutou i tēnei rā. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huihui mai tātou katoa.

“Tangohia mai te taurā i taku kakī kia waiata au i taku waiata.”

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. First acknowledgment is to the god, whom is the beginning and the end of everything. Second acknowledgment to this House standing. The dead to the dead, the living to the living, the lines are joined. A warm greeting to you the descendants of Whakatōhea, the people of Whakatōhea. A warm welcome to you all today. And so, thank you once, thank you twice, and welcome everyone.

“Take the noose off my neck so that I can sing my song.”]

I learnt those words when I was young, and they have haunted me for a long time. I grew up with that story, and it’s only now that I look back and do my research properly—that the proper last words of Mokomoko were, in fact, “E mate hara kore ana ahau. Tēnā koutou Pākehā. Hei aha.” That story is part of the apology that’s part of this bill, in terms of the wrongs that have been committed against Whakatōhea. And there are few other iwi in New Zealand, in our history, who have had the full force, the might, of colonisation like Whakatōhea have. In this settlement bill, which reaches its second reading today, the apology is contained within the bill and it makes for sobering reading. Many New Zealanders, who may start to pay more attention to our history, I hope, will take a look at some of these bills and read not only the Māori but the English of what is contained within its pages.

The Crown acknowledges in this bill the sense of grievance and pain suffered not only by the whānau of Mokomoko but all of those who had to endure fighting for their own lands and having those lands taken as raupatu—the direct impact of the native land laws, which segmented and fragmented collective ownership and enabled it to be eroded, piece by piece, over time, with iwi having no ability to fight back or retain collective ownership. It is, essentially, a Pākehā square that forces Māori into that hole, and that has had direct consequences into the identity, the connection with land through awa, maunga, and whenua that Māori have been separated from through the force of something as devastating as the work of the native land laws.

The Public Works Act was also at force for Whakatōhea, with significant lands listed here in this bill that were taken under the Public Works Act. Moutohora Quarry was one of those that was taken, and is included in this apology. The Crown acknowledges in this that Whakatōhea were left, as a result of all of these different actions, these different wrongs, landless. The Crown acknowledges the accumulative effect of its acts and omissions, including raupatu, Crown-purchasing practices, survey costs, and the operation and the impact of native land laws. This has caused deep pain to Whakatōhea, leaving them separated from maunga, awa, and traditional sites, and contributing to the loss of traditional knowledge. It has hindered their economic, social, and cultural development. The Crown’s failure to ensure that Whakatōhea have retained sufficient land for their present and future needs was a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its principles.

I’m aware that time is nigh, so I will conclude. But I really hope that the provisions within this bill, particularly aquaculture, provide hope and light for the future of the people of Whakatōhea. I acknowledge that the Crown’s policy of large natural groups is brutal and unkind; it does not suit the natural formations of hapū and iwi. I acknowledge those who are not happy with this settlement. But it is my real hope for your people that the opportunities and the like that lie ahead will provide some guidance and hope for your rangatahi, for the next generation—that you can continue to be who you are and to influence and have your tino rangatiratanga in force within your own area. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to leave the House for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m. this evening.

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, we are debating the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill. We are up to call nine.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): Kororia ki te atua, māungarongo ki te whenua, he whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa. Kororia ki te atua i te putanga mai o te rā, tae noa ki tōna tōrengitanga. Tēnā koutou Te Whakatōhea, ki ngā hapū e ono o Whakatōhea. Nui tōku hōnore, nōku te whiwhi te tū ki konei ki roto tēnei Whare kia hōnore ai ngā hapū o Whakatōhea.

[Glory to the god, peace to the land and good thoughts to all people. Glory to God from the rising of the sun to its setting. Greetings to you, Te Whakatōhe, to the six subtribes. I am really honoured and grateful to stand here in this House to honour the subtribes of Whakatōhea.]

I’ve said in this House several times—and, I think, for as long as I get the privilege of serving here, I’ll say it every time—that I don’t think there is any greater honour than to stand in this House and to honour those iwi who have pursued the forgiveness and the reconciliation after all that has gone on this land. It is the main reason why I came to Parliament. I wanted to serve on the Māori Affairs Committee specifically so that I could be part of the Treaty settlements process, and Whakatōhea is the first settlement that I’ve been able to work on and serve on, and I will never, ever forget it.

Nui tōku harikoa ka huri ōku whakaaro ki tērā wiki mō te pānui tuatoru o tēnei pire. Koirā te wāhi o te nuinga o ōku whakaaro e pā ana ki tēnei mahi. [I am delighted for the coming week to the third reading of this bill. I will leave most of my speech till then for this bill.] Heoi, ki tēnei pō, [However, this evening,] I do want to speak very briefly to the three elements that make up a settlement bill, what they are, and then I want to conclude by reading in this House in te reo taketake, te reo o te whenua nei [ancient language, language of this land] the Crown’s apology to Whakatōhea. The three parts are that we recognise the history—and that has been well traversed in this House tonight and will be more fully again next week as it was in earlier readings as well. The second is that we both speak about and pass the legislation that is necessary to affect the resources that, in both our hopes, will be the foundation for the flourishing of Whakatōhea.

In that regard, can I pay respect to the Treaty negotiators? Jason, I see you there. Maui, I see you there. [Interruption] What’s that? [Interruption] Ha, ha! So you always tell me. [Interruption] Yeah. You are well named—you are well named—Whakatōhea: your persistence. To the Crown negotiators as well, for your patience and your wisdom. I know that there has been—and while I was late to the piece, I did experience. I know and understand now the challenges of navigating six hapū together, but you have done that with grace and persistence, which, as I say, bestows—well, yeah, the name of your iwi is bestowed upon you.

But now let me take the remaining time to te pānui tēnei whakapāha a te Karauna ki ngā iwi o Te Whakatōhea. [to read this apology made by the Crown to the people of Whakatōhea.]

Ki ngā uri o Te Whakatōhea, ki ngā tipuna me ngā mokopuna. Nō te hāinatanga a ngā Rangatira o Te Whakatōhea i te Tiriti o Waitangi i mahi ai i runga i te wairua o te whakapono me te mahi tahi. Me te aro ki ngā hua ka hua mai ki tō rātou iwi, mā te mahi tahi i raro i te Tiriti. I takahia tērā whakapono e te Karauna. Nā tāna tahu i te ahi o Tūmātauenga me te raupatu i te whenua o Te Whakatōhea. ka noho ko te Karauna anake hei whakairinga mō ēnei mate. Nā ngā mahi hara a te Karauna i mate parekura a Te Whakatōhea, me te whakangaromanga i ōna papa kāinga i tupu ai te riri ki waenganui ngā hapū me ngā whānau o Te Whakatōhea. ā, i raupatutia ai ngā pātaka kōrero o Te Whakatōhea. kei te rongohia nuitia tonutia ēnei whakawhiunga i ēnei rā tonu. Ka whakapāha te Karauna ki ngā Rangatira i mate taurekarekatia i ngā ringaringa o te Karauna. Ka whakapāha te Karauna ki ngā uri o Te Whakatōhea nāna i whakarawakore ā-ohaoha ā-ahurea, ā-wairua, ā, kua noho matekai nā ngā mahi hara a te Karauna.

Kīhai hoki te Karauna i whakatutuki i ōna oatia i raro i te Tiriti o Waitangi, ā, kua tau te whakamā o te hōnore kore ki runga ki a ia anō. Nā runga i ana takihitanga i te Tiriti o Waitangi me ngā mamae pouri nui i whiua kinotia ki runga ki Te Whakatōhea i āna mahi hara me ōna hara nunui rawa atu e koropiko nei, e tūohu nei me te tuku i te aroha tino nunui rawa atu. Ka whakahōnoretia e te Karauna ngā uri o Te Whakatōhea kua tohenihorautia te tohe nui ki te whakatau tika i te hē. Kua tohenihorautia te pakanga ki te pupuri ki te whakarauora i Te Whakatōheatanga o roto i ngā whakatupuranga tangata. Mā roto mai i tēnei whakataunga ko te tūmanako o te Karauna, ko te whakahōnore i te oati o te mahi tahi nāna i kī taurangi ki a Te Whakatōhea i te tau 1840. Me kupu Whakaari tātou ki te anamata o te huarahi nui ki ngā uri o Te Whakatōhea me te haere ngātahi i runga i te mahi tahi o roto i te wairua o te tūmanako nui me te aroha, maruwehi ki te Tiriti o Waitangi. Koirā te tūmanako hei ā tērā wiki.

[To the descendants of Whakatōhea, the ancestors and the children. The signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi by the leaders was done in good faith and unity. And to also focus on the benefits for their people through working under the principles of Te Tiriti. That honour was breached by the Crown. By way of warfare and land confiscation of Te Whakatōhea. It is Crown only to blame for this tragedy. It was the wrongdoings of the Crown in which the Whakatōhea people lost their lands and were massacred that consequently caused division and anger amongst the communities and families of Te Whakatōhea. Also, the ancient wisdom of Whakatōhea was lost. We still feel the effects of it in this day. The Crown apologises to the leaders who died dishonourably by the hands of the Crown. The Crown apologises to the descendants of Whakatōhea who caused their economy, their culture and their spirits to be poor, and, who have become destitute because of the Crown.

The Crown failed to honour its responsibility under the Tiriti o Waitangi, and has caused dishonour and shame on itself. It is apologising and expressing its regret due to its breeches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its destruction on Whakatōhea. The Crown honours the people of Whakatōhea who have been fighting the fight to correct the wrongs, who have fought relentlessly to hold fast to their Whakatōheaness within their generations. Within this settlement, it is the Crown’s hope that they will honour the oath and work together with Te Whakatōhea, which was promised in 1840. We need look forward to the future, to a prosperous future for the people of Whakatōhea and move forward together in good faith, good spirits and love to respect Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That is the hope next week.]

I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai. Kāti, ki a tātou katoa. Te Whare e tau nei, e ōku tini whanaunga o te wā kāinga e mihi atu ana ki a koutou katoa.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. And also, to all of us. This House standing, my many relatives from home, I acknowledge you all.]

This is the second reading of the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill, and as Greg Fleming, the speaker before me, mentioned, the third reading is where ka tino hurō tātou [we can celebrate] the progression that has been hard-fought for by Te Whakatōhea and those who have worked on the claim for so long. Therefore, I don’t want to drag out proceedings, but I do want to acknowledge kei te tangi tonu ngā uri o Mataatua waka. Ā, ko tōku pāpa, Pānapa Davis, te pāpa o Kelvin, uri o Ngāi Tai, tērā o Mataatua. E tangi kau atu ana ki te hunga kua riro atu ki te pō. Ka tāpai ake te īngoa o taku pāpa, o Pānapa ki te tāhūhū kōrero o tō tātou Whare e tū nei. [the people of Mataatua waka still in mourning. Also, there is my uncle Pānapa Davis, Kelvin’s father, descendant of Ngāi Tai, of Mataatua. Deepest sympathies to those who have been taken by the night. I will add my Uncle Pānapa to the ridgepole of our House.]

I heard my matua Shane Jones talk towards some of the challenges around hapū. When you look towards such large settlements like Te Whakatōhea—and he rightly expressed that, as a descendant of Ngā Puhi, the spectre of so many hapū involved in such delicate negotiations, and the progression of our aspirations moving forward, is always a tricky one. But if there’s one thing I can recall from the late 1980s, my grandfather the late Sir James Hēnare, when Ngāpuhi seemingly had consolidated but then had sort of started to branch out into various different hapū groupings, always said tēnei mea te whakapapa kore e taea te karo—this thing of genealogy can never ever be swiped away or pushed away or fended off. That speaks to the depth of our genealogy and the strength of it, and that regardless of what’s negotiated and how this House might proceed with such important settlements, like Te Whakatōhea and so many others that have already been undertaken and others that are yet to come, we must remember that our whakapapa, our genealogy, will continue to remain strong. It has done for centuries. It did so before this Parliament was even created, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I suspect it will continue to do so for many, many more centuries.

So, while I appreciate some of the challenges through some of the submissions, claims to the Waitangi Tribunal can be confronting as we continue to progress settlements. I just want to remind my whānau, in particular, of Te Whakatōhea—as a descendant of Ngāti Rua myself—and also the manu hapū around this country, tēnei mea te whakapapa e kore e taea te karo. [this thing of genealogy can never be evaded.] I support this bill at its second reading.

JAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s a pretty tough job sometimes to follow speakers who are fluent in the reo and who have such deep history and knowledge, such as the Hon Peeni Henare and my colleague Greg Fleming, but it’s a privilege for me to stand up and speak to my very first Treaty settlement bill. Actually, this morning, I had the privilege of subbing in to the Māori Affairs Committee, well chaired by my colleague Rima Nakhle in the absence of our permanent chair, Dan Bidois. I just wanted to acknowledge the chair, Dan, and give him a hearty congratulations on the arrival of his baby boy, Noah, this week. He’s off looking after mum and baby, so I’m sure we just send him all of our love and aroha for that.

The Māori Affairs Committee—my first experience with them today. An amazing committee; a committee which spends the vast bulk of its time righting the wrongs and repairing history and working collegially, and I think you see, in the contributions made across the House today and in other bills like this, that that is reflected in the work of that committee. So I just want to acknowledge the privilege of being on that committee this morning.

Can I mihi to Whakatōhea whanaunga in the gallery tonight, present with us to witness this next step. My eyes are a little younger than Greg Fleming, so I can say, Jason, you are the handsome one, so I’d just like to acknowledge your presence here. But I did want to say that we do salute you. We acknowledge you being here with us tonight and just wanted to say that we know that nothing will ever totally repair the damage that’s been done in the past, but this is a first step in what I think is the right direction.

Many have traversed the history of mistreatment. It’s been well traversed tonight. It’s worth stating once again, for the record, that Whakatōhea once had a thriving economy and robust political structures. However, it was the invasions and confiscations of the Crown that devastated their lands, their economy, and their leadership, leading to significant loss. It was the State and the Crown that confiscated land. It was the State that established native reserves confiscated from Ngāti Rua, forcing members of other Whakatōhea hapū to relocate there. It was the State and the Crown and their education system which strongly discouraged and barred the use of te reo and the use of their language, so we must never forget who is responsible and who are the ones here who are providing this apology. It’s this deed of settlement that represents the conclusion of historical Treaty of Waitangi claims addressing those injustices from the Crown’s actions before September 21, 1992.

It’s on the record that this settlement contains financial and commercial redress and cultural funds of around $100 million, and I’d like to just point out to Whakatōhea that my own iwi, Ngāi Tahu, back in 1997, themselves had a settlement of around $170 million and have now accrued an asset base of over $2 billion, so I’d just like to say that with this, there is a pathway forward. There is a pathway forward to providing for your people.

So, in acknowledging the wrongs of the past, this settlement sits as a vital step towards healing the deep pain that has been inflicted upon Whakatōhea. It recognises the immense suffering caused by the Crown’s actions, from invasions to land confiscations. The settlement is not merely a formal gesture but it is a profound acceptance of historical truths that pave the way for genuine reconciliation. We on this side of the House, and I think we across the Parliament, are proud to see yet another Treaty settlement moving forward—proud of the history of this House in settling claims. We will all, hopefully, work together to continue to settle claims for every iwi, so that every iwi has the opportunity to move forward and provide for their people.

Finally, in closing, I’d just like to acknowledge the work of the Hon Christopher Finlayson, who kicked off this particular Treaty settlement, and the work of Ministers Andrew Little, and, of course, the Hon Paul Goldsmith for their work in continuing it forward as well. I’m very proud to say that I stand here and commend this bill to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tū ake, tū ake Te Whakatōhea. [Stand up, stand up Te Whakatōhea.]

It’s an honour and a privilege today to stand in the second reading of this bill, the Whakatōhea Claims Settlement Bill, and mihi to ngā hapū o Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Rua, Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ngahere, Ngāti Ira, and Te Ūpokorehe. May I also acknowledge the members of Te Whakatōhea who are in the House tonight, as well as the negotiators who have participated in the negotiation of these settlement claims, and to the Māori Affairs Committee who were lucky to recently join Te Whakatōhea in the rohe to experience the development that is going on around not only the settlement trust but in the organisations that have existed for many, many years to represent the economic development interests of Te Whakatōhea and the town of Ōpōtiki that they are the kaitiaki over.

This is the opportunity for the House to consider this bill that’s returned from the select committee, and I’m happy to see that it has returned with no changes. Members around the House tonight have spoken about the many concerns that were raised by submitters, and submitters have been carefully listened to by the Māori Affairs Committee. There have been no changes made to this legislation because, ultimately, it has been the view of everyone who’s participated in those hearings, and in Te Whakatōhea’s rohe in Ōpōtiki, that this bill must continue, and its settlement of these claims is extremely important.

I was lucky to join the Māori Affairs Committee, I’m not usually a member of that committee, but I got to go along to the hearings in Ōpōtiki and to meet with those people who wanted to raise issues about the settlement. And my own personal reflection on that, because I am uri o Te Whakatōhea through my father’s connection there; he was raised on the shores of the Ōhiwa Harbour. He was born in the year 1934, and a year into his life he was taken to his grandmother there, Wairemana Patutoro, and he was raised by Rimaha, who was a minister of the Hāhi Ringatū in that area, and his grandmother. And so his connection there is like many of the people of that era who were brought up in Te Whakatōhea’s rohe, his whakapapa was a mottled mix of those people from Tūhoe from the wider East Coast and from Te Whakatōhea’s rohe. Because the period between 1860 and 1890—which is covered so well in the Crown apology in this bill—was a period of upheaval and of persecution of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki and, from the area, those people who identified with Te Whakatōhea, Tūhoe, and the many iwi around that rohe, and it led to a clearance of Ōpōtiki on to native land reservations and other people from the area having interests in lands. And so my father is a product of what is, essentially, a period in our colonial history which was deeply disruptive of not only Te Whakatōhea but of all of the iwi who called Ōpōtiki home.

I say it’s a period of colonisation because this is the direct impact of the economic interests of settlers in the area and of those things which are directly referenced in this settlement bill, like the killing of Mokomoko, which can be seen now as tools of the colonial Government of the day to move people away from what was, essentially, highly profitable farmland and a highly profitable area where there was a port. And so you can see the development of this area as a sort of microcosm of the way that the colonial Government of the time treated Māori people and individual hapū and iwi, and from that we can learn a lesson of how these Treaty settlements bills should restore that kind of economic prosperity to the regions. So that was what I saw.

While I was there, I thought about my dad growing up with his grandmother and how they lived, basically, a subsistence existence. He grew up down by the Roimata Marae that is out at Kutarere, and between the Kutarere wharf and as you go around to a place called Hiwarau. Dad grew up in a raupō whare. It had a dirt floor and every year they would have to replace the roof. This subsistence existence was the norm for my dad because that had always been his grandparents’ lifestyle and it had always been their way to look after this place which was important to the life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki. It was somewhere where he was injured before he died, just around the corner, and it’s somewhere which is sacred to the Hāhi Ringatū. I tell you this story because there are not many people alive today who grew up in that setting. He only learnt English when he was nine years old because that was the age that he was able to walk to the school at Kutarere himself, because it was about a 40-minute walk across the mudflats, and he had to do that in the wintertime.

And I thought when I was sitting there—in this incredible tour that Te Whakatōhea was able to give us around the mussel farms, the factories, the economic development opportunities, as well as their involvement with the local schools and the local housing projects—of how much of an impact something like that would have had on the life of a child like my dad who grew up in the area. You know, he grew up in a rural area that had none of those services. Peter Fraser’s Government was the first Government that put buses on the roads so that he could get to school, and that was initially what took him to high school in Ōpōtiki and then later on to teachers college. But the kind of economic interventions that an iwi can lead, where they know the needs of the people, where they can connect with the local communities, and where they can deliver services that are fit for children like my dad living in those areas, is phenomenal. The economic development role of iwi playing in these regions cannot be understated and it is so important that settlements like these proceed.

That is why we look to the issues which were raised with the committee in submissions, and those were seriously felt hara that the hapū are raising here with the Crown’s process and settlement. I acknowledge those; those are hurtful. Those are hurtful now to the people who feel deeply about these issues. Things like the 33 sites of cultural redress which are being transferred by this bill to Te Whakatōhea—that hapū feel a greater interest is owed to them and not to the wider collective. Things like the joint management board arrangements between the Ōpōtiki District Council and the iwi that do not properly recognise the supremacy of those hapū in their individual areas and which they feel overcuts the arrangements which they already have in place for resource management by the hapū. Those are those are very real concerns.

I also personally do not agree with the renaming of the Waioeka Scenic Reserve, and I spoke about this in the first reading speech. Waioeka is the name of my daughter and the diphthong in “aioe” is an important part of te reo Māori. It is an important part of the way we understand our language that these diphthongs exist. And so to put the “w” in “Waioweka” I think is incorrect and it’s certainly not what I understand the position of the other iwi who whakapapa to the river Waioeka to be. And that was not what was captured in the history of the story of the Waioeka River when it was put together by my uncle Charlie Pera and Rutene Irwin who has now, sadly, passed away.

I still disagree with those things, but I’m standing here in heartfelt commendation of this bill. This is such an important bill because of the impact that it can have on the lives of those kids like my dad who grew up in the arms of Te Ūpokorehe at the Ōhiwa Harbour. To be able to grow up in a town where your iwi has launched an absolute world first of a healthcare centre, te kōpū ārau [a recovery centre] for people with alcohol and drug addictions. That is a world first, and it is something that this settlement will be able not only to continue and to grow but to let this iwi model that for the other iwi it is working with and for everywhere around the country. I hope we can have more of these facilities which these kinds of settlements can empower. The kind of impact that they can have on housing—Te Whakatōhea is a leader in the country in the way that it has not only built its own homes for its own people but has resourced that with a pipeline of building work and construction jobs in the town unlike any other. This is a model that we should be replicating around the country in regional development projects.

I’m so proud to be an uri of Te Whakatōhea when this is what they can achieve with the settlement. That is why—it may not be perfect, but Te Whakatōhea are going places with it. And I commend this bill to the House.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Kia ora, he hōnore nui māku ki te kōrero ki a koutou katoa. He mea nui ki ahau te tū i mua i a koutou me te whakanui i a koutou. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Kia ora, it is an honour for me to speak to you all. It is a big deal for me to stand before you all and honour you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone.]

This is one of a number of settlement claims bills I’ve spoken on in this House and I’m particularly pleased that I’m here to speak on this one as it is deeply ensconced in my very electorate, the mighty East Coast, the best electorate in the country.

Whakatōhea are one of the many proud iwi in my electorate. Proud kaitiaki of whenua and wai, te reo, and mātauranga in the area around Ōpōtiki in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Some of their kaumatua and whānau are here today to hear the second reading of their Treaty claims bill. I welcome you all and want to pay my respects to all of them, to the hard work they’ve done to get to this point in time, for the struggles and the heartfelt anxiety that still remains with many in this iwi today, and for the vision that marks their determination to provide for their people despite the atrocities that happened to their ancestors.

Might I also acknowledge all of those who have worked on the legislation and the deed: successive Ministers of the time, Chris Finlayson and Andrew Little; past and present Māori Affairs Committees; Te Arawhiti’s team, Jake Pollock and Glenn Webber; the negotiators Maui Hudson and Jason Pou, Gina Smith, Vaughan Payne, Arihia Tuoro, and of course kaumatua Robert Edwards, Graeme Riesterer, and CEO of the trust board, Dickie Farrar. Welcome back to the House for this, the second reading of your claims bill. It’s an honour and a privilege to speak.

I want to pay tribute also to all of those who have gone before, who may have not got the opportunity to see this settlement reach its conclusion. This is just as much for them today as it is for the mokopuna and tamariki here with you.

Whakatōhea has an area of interest covering around 200,000 hectares in the Eastern Bay of Plenty and is a proud iwi with over 16,000 members comprising six hapū: Ngāi Tamahaua, Ngāti Ira, Ngāti Ngahere, Ngāti Patumoana, Ngāti Ruatākena, and Ūpokorehe. Whakatōhea was at the heart of some of the worst treatments in the Māori Land Wars. These have been addressed in the apology to Whakatōhea, which can best be described as a small redress of the considerable hurt that was created by the actions of the Crown.

In 1865, the Crown invaded Ōpōtiki and waged war on Whakatōhea. Crown troops killed many members of Whakatōhea—including non-combatants—and adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying homes, crops, livestock, and taonga. The Crown confiscated most of Whakatōhea’s productive lands and forced hapū into insufficient reserves, known as the reservation. The Crown’s actions caused Whakatōhea to live with economic, cultural, and spiritual loss, and created divisions between whānau and hapū. The Crown alone was responsible for those Treaty breaches and it is only right, now, for the Crown to apologise to Te Whakatōhea.

Whakatōhea has been seeking justice from the Crown for generations—firstly, in 1914, for the Crown to inquire into and provide compensation for the confiscation of land. That attempt was unsuccessful, however, the iwi continued to petition the Crown, with many members contributing to those efforts. In 1946, Whakatōhea received a small amount of compensation for those confiscations: £20,000. In the 1990s, Whakatōhea was among the first iwi to enter settlement in negotiations with the Crown, and in 1996 they initialled a deed of settlement. That deed of settlement was never put to ratification because of concerns about the scope and sufficiency of the settlement, and I’m pleased that many of those who took part in the 1990s process, no matter their view at the time, are here in support today. The current settlement negotiations began in 2016, more than 100 years on from that initial petition, and 30 years on from these negotiations.

Last weekend, I had the honour of attending the Ahuwhenua Māori farming awards where Whakatōhea was one of two finalists. They didn’t win, but they took away massive learnings and some significant accolades for being the finalists. And what occurred to me at the time, that evening, was that it wasn’t winning the Ahuwhenua that would have been the greatest achievement for the iwi but the reflection on what their first dairy farm had done for them.

Purchased in 1946 with that £20,000 grant from the Crown for the confiscation of land, the farm was the first step into commercial ownership and diversified income for the iwi. Notably, this strategy was voiced by the inimitable Robert Edwards, who said, “If they won’t give us our land back, we will buy it back piece by piece.” And that’s what they did. That farm started a legacy continued by the iwi’s vision and leadership—a commercial platform that in time would fund the purchase of many other farms, kiwifruit blocks, forestry, and the foray into aquaculture. The vision and confidence of the iwi to then use a portion of the returns from that platform for investment into social projects, like education, apprenticeships, housing, and much more, has provided a long-lasting legacy that is testament to them.

In fact, Uncle Robert’s enthusiasm was so great that when the CEO was away on holiday, he once bought a farm. And he now says, with a twinkle in his eye, he can’t understand why she won’t take holidays anymore—and that’s a true story.

The mussel factory and the journey of ownership, apprenticeships, jobs, and putting Ōpōtiki on the aquaculture map has been nothing short of mind-blowing. The factory sits like a sentinel on the outskirts of the township, but it has become a pivotal point of the local community, and, again, the vision of the iwi to try and farm the sea has seen lots of purpose-built mussel boats travelling to and from the mussel farm, well out to sea.

The Whakatōhea deed of settlement contains Crown acknowledgments and a Crown apology for the breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles, and now transfers the assets, liabilities, and people to the post-settlement governance entity Te Tāwharau o Te Whakatōhea, with representatives from all hapū to administer the future for the people.

With all of that in mind, it would appear that the Whakatōhea settlement is accepted by the iwi at large. But there is nothing that makes up for the actions that were imposed upon this hard-working iwi across the past two centuries—the confiscation of vast tracts of land that left them virtually homeless, without fertile land to grow their own food and create a prosperous existence for their whānau.

Now, throughout the process of hearing submissions, there were some significant comments made by some of the people who gave their time to come and speak to us in Ōpōtiki. It’s fair to say that not everyone agreed. Not everyone’s in favour of the settlement, and the hapū of Ngāti Ira and Ūpokorehe spoke at length about their desire to have the settlement delayed so they could work through issues in the Waitangi Tribunal. But the select committee debated this in depth on a number of occasions and, on balance, it was felt that it wasn’t in the best interests of the people of Whakatōhea to delay this again.

I’ve travelled through the Ōpōtiki rohe for the better part of 50-something years. I won’t say how many 50-somethings, but I am ashamed to say that I, like many others, have not appreciated the whenua or the historic nature of the district or your land, and especially the stories of the people from there. As part of the submissions process, we travelled to some of those significant sites. But I also wanted to make note of some of the comments made in the submissions hearing. I found the submissions difficult to listen to—harrowing in some cases and deeply moving in others. But from the eloquent and respected voices came a mix of regrets, vision, hope, and determination.

Te Kahautu Maxwell said in his submission—and I quote—“I was a leader in the opposition that turned down the Government offer in 1998, and I have regretted that ever since because my iwi became so divided. I thought I’d go to the grave with that. And this time I’ve put my heart and soul into this.”

Uncle Robert Edwards was the man that in 2003 initiated the first meeting since the 1998 determination of the deed. It has taken another 20 years to get to this point and to shore up the settlement for the people of Whakatōhea. In his own words, Uncle Robert said, “We can’t live in the past, we have to move forward. Representing your iwi is difficult, but nevertheless rewarding. I am proud to have been a part of this journey upon which a better future for our mokopuna can be built by all those who follow.”

Now is the time to move forward, to take this settlement and put it to the very best of work. If Whakatōhea can achieve all that they have in spite of what happened to them throughout the Land Wars and the disruption of the 1800s and the 1900s, then I am convinced that this will now be another step forward in this century. Like I said, there’s nothing that makes it better, but at least this goes a little way further to implementing the vision of your iwi.

Uncle Robert said—the other night at the farming awards—“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift.” The settlement is not a gift; it is recourse for actions against you. But it is also another step in what has been a long and arduous journey, and I applaud the patience and the way in which Whakatōhea has dealt with the challenges and the adversities. With the best of will, tomorrow’s mystery will now be a little clearer for our clever, visionary, and determined iwi from the mighty East Coast. I have only recently come to know you, but it is indeed my privilege. Kia kaha, my friends. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Waiata—“E kore au e ngaro”

House in Committee

House in Committee

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill and the Māori Fisheries Amendment Bill.

Bills

Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 21 May.

Part 1 Applications for visas and entry permission (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, when the committee suspended last night, we were debating Part 1 of the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 6, “Applications for visas and entry permission”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): It’s a pleasure to resume the debate on this rights-diminishing bill. I just wanted to pick up on where we left last night. I want to pick up on the fact that the only thing offensive here is the fact that multiple—and including every human rights organisation and organisation that works with migrants and refugees doesn’t support this bill. They may have constructive amendments to propose, but, at the end of the day, this is around harm minimisation. By no means should one actually pretend that this is about those organisations suggesting that mass arrivals are needed.

One of the things that we were asking last night around this two-tiered way of treating people arriving by sea versus air was the creation of discrimination. One of the things around that discrimination that I wanted to pick up—and I use the word “discrimination” because it was—

Hon Shane Jones: Say something original.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —raised by the person in the chair. I look forward to Shane Jones taking a call on this debate and saying anything, actually, of use.

Hon Member: Impossible.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Impossible indeed. But I did want to ask whether the Minister had, for example, done any consultation around the health needs of people arriving by sea that actually could be quite different from perhaps those arriving via the airport—people with disabilities or people who may have health conditions—and whether he actually sought any advice around the potential impacts of how that could be addressed.

Hon Shane Jones: Relevance—relevance.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Clearly Shane Jones, who’s heckling, seems to not have read the bill, because if he had any knowledge around how the immigration system works, he would understand that, actually, under the current regime, asylum seekers and any migrant, but including, I assume, asylum seekers, has to meet the acceptable standards of health conditions. We actually do, effectively, test the health of those applying for asylum, at least for residency. But, at the same time, there are public health considerations. So I wonder whether the Minister in this creation of this categorisation had done any work around any public health issues or anything relating to the wellbeing or disabilities of those arriving by sea.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, and thank you to those who have contributed to the debate—the first part thereof, the first part of the first part, so to speak. Yesterday, we traversed much of the ground that the member has mentioned—happy to address the specific question at the tail end of that contribution, and look forward, of course, in Part 2, where there are more substantive operative provisions, whereas Part 1 is very much more in the nature of providing definitions of “passengers”, “arrivals”, and “mass arrivals” indeed.

So, in response to the particular question regarding the health needs of those who’ve spent a long period of time at sea, the first point is that a mass arrival, by definition, involves a large number of human beings. There’s a complexity in that fact, and the resource constraints that would be placed all at once on an immigration- or refugee-processing system—that is otherwise not geared up for that degree of complexity and volume of cases needing to be processed at once—in itself suggests that a regime like this is required, in the perhaps unlikely, but not impossible, scenario that that there should be a mass arrival on our shores.

As for the particular health needs of people who’ve spent a long period of time at sea, the advice has been helpful in noting the complexity that’s likely to arise in such situations. Of course, we can’t anticipate the nature of exactly what that would be in any individual case. I’m not a medical expert by any degree myself—there are some actually in the Chamber who are—but I have spent a bit of time at sea, and I know that it’s possible for particular ailments to be compounded by reason of the fact of a person being away from shore for a long period of time. One doesn’t need too much imagination to conclude that, in the case of a mass arrival by sea on these shores, there would be complex health needs such that, while they must, of course, be treated as a medical matter on an individual basis, from an immigration- and/or refugee-processing perspective, it’s appropriate to consider those as one, or at least potentially together—not least of all because the confined conditions which one invariably spends at sea with many others, would increase the likelihood of communication of an ailment of a contagious nature.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. So if I heard correctly, the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Penk, talked about the advice that he had received being complex. But, I guess, I want to elicit exactly what level of advice he received, particularly around resourcing, right? Because in the event of a mass arrival, paired with the definitions that are created here, there does need to be a level of deployment of public services to respond to such a thing. So I was wondering about the confidence that he has in the capacity of the health system, and the public health system, actually, were there to be a mass arrivals of asylum seekers who presented with health conditions, perhaps transmittable diseases—around making sure that they’re looked after, not just from a public health angle but, actually, just around the welfare of those people.

Why this is extremely relevant is because part of what was identified in Part 1 was around making that distinction, and the example around cruise ships has been used several times. If you get a bunch of people exiting a cruise ship, they actually don’t have to face any medical tests, any form of—we just kind of assume for the most part that they’re not here to transmit any new diseases overall. So there’s a distinction that’s being created here—it’s often been argued that the kind of weird loophole and gap that we have with cruise ships is one of the reasons for the rationale around Part 1. That is why it is important to have confidence that, actually, the system as it is has the capacity to meet those health requirements, to respond to those—but then also whether the Minister received any advice since taking on the role, because of that gap between the previous Government handling the bill and this new Government taking it on board, around whether additional resources would be required in any parts of the system to then comply with the additional checks that creating a definition of “mass arrivals” would entail, as opposed to, for example, how they would have been treated, say, if you could claim that they were a cruise ship.

So I guess it’s about that confidence around the system being responsive to the needs of people who would now be categorised under Part 1. So the new angle of the question that I’m asking is around the level of resourcing capacity by the system, not just so much around the public health advice that he may have received.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): I move, That debate on this question now close.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I invite any other member of this committee to participate in this debate. I think, as a House of Representatives, it’s a bit of a disservice to have literally one member, other than Phil Twyford, to my right, making a contribution.

Hon Shane Jones: It’s boring!

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: It may be boring, but do you know what? Detaining asylum seekers may be boring to Shane Jones, but this is quite significant. Asylum seekers are some of the most marginalised people, and, actually, we’re going to be introducing a piece of legislation that, as many human rights organisations spoke about, is diminishing their rights. We should have a proper debate on this and actually seek answers.

Carl Bates: What sort of logic is that? Democracy?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Democracy indeed. You’re getting paid to actually legislate—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Order! [Interruption] Carl Bates, please do not debate across the Chamber with each other. We’ll come back to the bill.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Thank you, Madam Chair. To go back to the actual bill, the other part of the system, around public health concerns, would be around, for example, the public health issue, I wonder, with this new categorisation.

I’ll go back to the issues around detention, which I know are in Part 2, but there will be people who will present with, for example, quite severe mental health distress. That’s actually a completely separate health issue to, for example, a transmissible disease. But what I wanted to check, around the mental health needs of these people, are initial arrivals. This is before the detention part of the bill, in Part 2. This is around the categorisation around arrivals—whether he’s got confidence around the system being able to absorb and to identify those mental health needs before detention, because ultimately, in order for Part 2 to work effectively, you’ll need to make decisions that actually are responsive to the needs of those people.

So, with creating a categorisation of mass arrivals, which in and of itself allows for the detention from Part 2, I do want to have confidence that the Minister is on top of any resourcing, additionally or otherwise, that would be needed in order to ensure that the detention components of Part 2 won’t cause further harm.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Madam Chair, thank you very much. I think I can answer reasonably briefly the concerns raised by the member. The advice that’s been provided by officials is not complex advice. I think it’s, if I may say, pitched at the right level for a layperson like myself but acknowledges the complexities of the health needs that may arise in a mass arrival group. The member’s right to raise the fact that these could be quite challenging, but, of course, that only indicates the fact that it may be that more time is needed to process those who are in this situation—I was going to say, “who find themselves in this situation and/or those who place themselves in this situation”.

As to whether the capacity of the New Zealand public health system and, indeed, the immigration service is sufficient to process them in a timely manner—well, I can’t vouch for that. With all due respect, that’s not within the scope of the bill, except to say that to the extent that resources are finite—and it might be that if a mass arrival were to take place, for example, over the Christmas and new year period, where it might reasonably be expected that there were fewer resources available—that, again, is an argument in favour of having more flexibility in a system such that it might be that more time is needed than four days or even seven days, out to 28 days.

Of course, we’re straying now into the detail of Part 2. I look forward to those discussions, but I think, if I may say, that provides a bit of a response in terms of the nature of the distinction between a mass arrival group versus those who might be considered more traditionally as a passenger coming on to these shores.

TANYA UNKOVICH (NZ First): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 stand part.

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Mass arrival warrants of commitment

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 7 to 9, “Mass arrival warrants of commitment”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good evening again to members of the committee of the whole House for this Part 2. Just briefly, if I may take a moment to outline the position of the Government in relation to this, the most substantive part within the bill, I do want to acknowledge the discussion that was had last night on some matters that touch on the substance of Part 2, including that of the Hon Phil Twyford, who has foreshadowed some proposed amendments that he’ll be making. But I also do want to take the opportunity to thank him for the support that he’s indicated will be forthcoming from Labour in relation to the bill overall on the basis that certain amendments are made.

These are reflected in the Government amendments put forward in the name of my colleague and friend the Hon Erica Stanford. Briefly stated, if I could simply summarise the content of Part 2 but including those changes, essentially, it’s that members of a mass arrival group, if detained without a warrant, would be accommodated in minimally restrictive detention for the least amount of time necessary to achieve the purpose of that detention. So one gets a sense, Madam Chair and committee members, that it’s aimed very much at doing what is needed but no more than is needed by way of detention as to time but also in the manner of that, and it is setting out explicitly that the nature of the detention wouldn’t be in the nature of a prison cell or remand facilities, and so forth.

I do just want to acknowledge some of the engagement that’s been had with the forced migration sector, as they are self-described, and I referenced that yesterday in response to a contribution of Ricardo Menéndez March’s, who asked, I think quite reasonably, what interaction there had been on the substance of the bill. I referred to this letter that had been put forward, and I’d just state now in a bit more detailed fashion in relation to the provisions of Part 2 that it was expressing support for the four additional safeguards that have been put forward in a Cabinet paper published last year and a small number of additional amendments. I’ve, effectively, referred to those, albeit not in detail, to also note their desire to see more engagement along the lines of these matters going forward, which I think is a pretty reasonable request, and also to acknowledge the communication in the last 48 hours between the Acting Human Rights Commissioner, a response to which came from the office of Erica Stanford, being the Minister of Immigration. It was along the lines of acknowledging points made around clearly communicating the rationale for detention and ensuring that these are published—the measure of accountability and transparency. We’re talking about independent oversight and, of course, the response acknowledged the principles concerned but also noted, by way of detail, that the Ombudsman already has that statutory role.

Guidelines on the length of detention, depending on the number of arrivals—that’s the sort of staged or staggered approach by a number of arrivals that, no doubt, the Hon Phil Twyford will speak to in his own proposed amendment. But this is just to highlight that while we understand the idea behind that and agree with it to the extent that we would say that detention shouldn’t need to be longer than is necessary, that is indeed the principle of the bill. That is expressed already in the terms by which a judge can order no longer a period of detention than is necessary, so the size of the group would be a factor to be taken into account in that calculation that he or she would make.

Finally, again acknowledging the correspondence but, again, foreshadowing, no doubt, some discussion around the proposed amendment, is the idea that family members shouldn’t be separated without cause. Of course, again, we agree with that on a principled basis, but we would point out that not only is that a matter of current practice, it’s reflected in the operational manual by which Immigration New Zealand is required to operate. It reflects, too, certain provisions in New Zealand domestic human rights legislation such as the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but also important international instruments to which New Zealand is a signatory, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, or UNCROC, and others. So by reason of the actions of the executive branch needing to be consistent with those international obligations and noting that they’re not inconsistent with the domestic law requirements and, indeed, practice, those, by virtue of that, already exist as a matter of law and practice in New Zealand.

So we’re confident that those points—very reasonably made, as they might be—by civil society, by the Acting Human Rights Commissioner, and by members of the House are, nevertheless, indeed covered by the bill as we propose it be amended with these Amendment Papers.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I won’t repeat the content of the four substantive amendments that are in the Minister of Immigration’s Amendment Paper, other than to say that I think they are good and necessary and substantially improve the bill. They are safeguards that were developed as a result of the select committee process and a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment paper that was taken to Cabinet under the last Government, and I think it’s a very constructive addition to this legislative process. Labour’s support for the passage of this bill was conditional on all four of those amendments being included.

I do want to comment on my three amendments that I’ve tabled for this debate. They are amendments that were developed in conversation with the consortium of former refugee and human rights advocacy organisations that have been corresponding with the Minister, that the Minister in the chair alluded to. Let me go through them one by one.

The first, after clause 7, inserts a section 311A in the principal Act and, basically, sets out the principle that families are not to be separated in the process of the detention of the mass arrival group. The Minister in the chair has set out, I think, the Government’s position on this, but I would, in this debate, ask him to keep an open mind and to consider this amendment. I understand that the officials’ advice has been that there are already commitments that Immigration New Zealand is bound by, including its own policy and operating procedures, including the Immigration Act and the Operational Manual, which contains a number of protections for children. As well as those, there are protections for children which would apply, including the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Children’s Act 2014, the Ombudsmen Act, and the Oranga Tamariki Act, as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

My argument is that’s not enough, in a situation where we are detaining asylum seekers. The internal operating procedures of Immigration New Zealand, and our obligations under international law, I think, are demonstrably not enough if we want to ensure that children are not separated from their families in the course of detention, post a mass arrival. The example that I would ask the committee to consider, including the Minister in the chair, is that, for a very long time, Immigration New Zealand—in decisions made by quite junior officials in the department—was locking up asylum seekers in prison, demonstrably inconsistent with New Zealand’s obligations under international law. It was happening for a very long time, and it took a campaign by the human rights sector, by Amnesty International, and it took an investigation by a QC, to tell the Minister at the time that this was completely inconsistent with New Zealand’s obligations under international law.

So I put it to you, Minister, that if we’re serious about trying to ensure that this legislation does the right thing for New Zealand’s reputation, for the rights and the dignity and the wellbeing of asylum seekers in the case of a mass arrival, then the drafting elegance that officials are keen to preserve simply doesn’t weigh up when we’re considering the wellbeing and the rights of asylum seekers. So I would ask the Minister to please respond to that.

My second amendment inserts in section 316 of the principal Act the provision that the Government will engage an independent third-party organisation to monitor the treatment and detention conditions of persons detained in custody after a mass arrival. There are two organisations that immediately spring to mind that would be expertly equipped to do this. One is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its local representative, the New Zealand Red Cross. The ICRC routinely plays this role internationally, all around the world, and has a great deal of credibility and recognised integrity in performing this role of inspecting the treatment and the conditions of detention. Also, under our own legislation, the Office of the Ombudsman has a statutory role to do that prison visiting.

Now, the fact that the Ombudsman has that role under existing legislation, the fact that the Human Rights Commission has a role of coordinating this kind of activity, does not mean that it has to happen. Those provisions don’t require the Government of the day to ensure that someone, some independent body, is visiting and independently monitoring the conditions and treatment of detainees. So I again say to the Minister, if you want to give confidence to the refugee and human rights community in New Zealand, if you want to create what I would describe as an internationally credible regime here, then we need to go the extra mile. The fact that there are already institutions in place that could do this doesn’t mean that it will happen, it doesn’t mean that it must happen, and that’s the critical difference.

The third amendment that I’ve put on the Table this evening places time limits on detention. It would mean that an immigration officer may apply to a judge for a warrant of commitment authorising the detention of members of a mass arrival group for periods of time no longer than seven days for groups of 30 to 50 people, 14 days for groups of 50 to 100, 20 days for groups of 100 to 200, and 28 days for groups of 200 people or more. It draws on exactly the same logic that underpins this bill—that the sheer logistics and admin involved in processing a group of mass arrivals and ensuring that their legal rights to representation are able to be met is greater the bigger the group. The logic’s really clear.

So this amendment, basically, then would put some hard limits on the amount of time that people can be detained while a warrant of commitment is being applied for. The advice, I think, of officials—and the Minister referenced this—is that already, in the bill we’re considering tonight and the Minister’s amendment, a judge is required to only hold people and allow them to be detained while the warrant of commitment has been considered for the minimum amount of time necessary. Yep, that’s very important and that’s a great principle, but, actually, that leaves it up to the discretion of the judge. What this amendment would do is create some hard limits based on the number of people in the mass arrival group. Again, I say to the Minister in the chair, this would give confidence to people and actually remove some of the latitude that could see people being held in custody, in detention, for longer than is strictly necessary. It would be an example of Government holding itself accountable to the principle that it professes is at the heart of this bill.

So that’s my contribution. I took from the Minister in the chair’s comments earlier that the Government has decided not to support these three amendments. I appreciate the dialogue that we’ve had so far on this, and I would urge him and his senior Minister, who is in London, perhaps, to seriously consider supporting these amendments, because I think they would go a long way to giving people confidence in the regime that’s being established.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’ll just remind the member that we don’t refer to the absence of members in the House.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for the dialogue. I think it’s a helpful exercise, notwithstanding that I had perhaps unfairly anticipated his arguments, otherwise known as stealing the thunder of another contributor to the debate. But I was acknowledging those points made in the letter that had gone back and forth. And, obviously, those same points made by some members of civil society have been also taken on board by the member, and I thank him for that.

I think, nevertheless, in relation to the voting intentions of the Government on those proposed amendments, it is still a useful exercise to have this debate and discussion, not only in the general sense of democratic engagement and transparency and accountability but, of course, for the particular reason that when there is uncertainty in the law, it may be that legal practitioners, up to and including the judge herself or himself, will look at the context of the law having been passed to judge the intention of the Parliament and also the Government in passing that law as an aid to interpretation. So I’m grateful for the opportunity to have this dialogue because it enables us to put clearly on the record the Government’s intention—for example, that families should not be separated without good reason.

So in the member the Hon Phil Twyford putting forward an amendment along those lines, even though that is unlikely to succeed, I would say, in terms of the voting intentions of the committee as I understand them to be, at least on the Government side; nevertheless, it’s helpful to spell out the fact that we don’t expect and we do not want families to be separated unnecessarily, unjustifiably. I do make that distinction and place that slight caveat, because, of course, it might be that an adult person represents a risk to national security. Notwithstanding that they may have other family members as part of a mass arrival group or notwithstanding that they may claim to have members of a mass arrival group and that be difficult or impossible to verify for obvious reasons—people arrive by sea. So I do want to place on the record, of course, that it may be the case that family members may need to be separated from each other for that purpose or, indeed, for the protection of the children involved—child or children. One doesn’t need to be hugely cynical about human nature to conceive of a situation where an adult person might find it convenient for their own purposes to claim that a child is attached to them by way of family ties in a way that may or may not be verifiable.

In terms of the commitments that are already made in relation to the interest of the child and also family units being preserved so far as possible in the circumstances, of course Mr Twyford’s right to reference international law. Indeed, I was right to reference it in the first place, but he’s right to reference my referencing. But also domestic law, and, of course, spelling out these things in committee of the whole House stage, I think, in itself, adds some weight to the fact that we recognise, we underline, and we emphasise these obligations. We do not wish our courts to be ignorant of them or deliberately to disregard them if there were any suggestion whatsoever that the words of the statute might give rise to an intention that these legal norms be disregarded.

Moving on to that second point, I’ll just respond to the three points that relate to the three different amendments made by Mr Twyford in the same order. So, second, moving on to the point about monitoring the condition of those who are detained: of course, he is  right to reference the credibility of the International Committee of the Red Cross—New  Zealand version thereof. I’m sure all members of the committee are grateful for the humanitarian work of this wonderful organisation over many decades, including on New Zealand soil. However, while he is right to reference that credibility and the work that is routinely done with people in a vulnerable situation, it is very likely for those reasons that Red Cross members would be involved in supervising, in looking after, in caring for, and in generally being involved with the conditions associated with a mass arrival group. To be asking them to be in a position of then also monitoring and providing accountability places them in an obvious awkward situation of conflict of interest, and I don’t think that’s necessarily appropriate, even though I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that there would be any abuse of that position of trust.

If I may continue, Madam Chair, then I would point out in relation to the Ombudsman—and I—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Your time has expired.

Hon CHRIS PENK: And if I can continue, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I call the Hon Chris Penk.

Hon CHRIS PENK: —then I will gladly do so and gratefully do so to point out, in relation to the position of the Ombudsman, again, outlining this at committee of the whole House stage to put on the record that of course that role we would anticipate and hope would be exercised by the person exercising that office of Parliament—the Ombudsman. I emphasise the office of Parliament role as distinct from the Government of the day because Mr Twyford points out, and he’s right as far as this goes, that the Government isn’t requiring in this legislation that the Ombudsman take this action, but of course the point about the Ombudsman’s role is that it is separate from Government. If that person takes their duties seriously, and our ombudsmen—ombudspeople—always do, then they will be doing that without Government needing to direct them to do it at a certain time, in a certain way, or, indeed, at all. So, again, I think it’s tolerably clear from our constitutional arrangements, if nothing else, that it would be expected that the Ombudsman would provide that monitoring role.

The third and final point to be made relates to those proposed amendments by Mr Twyford. That principle of proportionality, he’s right, again, to point out that the bill already contemplates that there will be more time needed for more processing of more members of a mass arrival group and less time, correspondingly, for fewer. He points out, therefore, I presume, that it can do no harm to have a very specific mechanism and be quite prescriptive. But we would say, of course, on the flip side that, before it’s already in there as a principle and set out quite clearly in the law, an obligation that the judge would need to take quite seriously is to take no more time than is needed.

If we were to guess that a group of up to 50 persons could only be associated with a seven-day time frame, as opposed to eight days or nine days and so forth, I think that would be overly prescriptive of us—unnecessarily so, because, as I say, that logic is already in the law, and we’re seeking simply to strike a balance between the latitude, to use his term, or the flexibility that we probably all agree is needed at a level versus the certainty. We think that that balance is struck right by having that general principle that the least restrictive detention for the least amount of time must be observed in the way that those time frames are calculated and extended, as need be up to the 28-day mark.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. So we’re now in Part 2 of the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill. Let’s make it clear: no amount of amendments can take away from the fact that this is a rights-diminishing bill. Our opposition to the bill may be called by some self-righteous, and by others boring; we simply call it being on the right side of history and in line with human rights experts, people who work with refugees and asylum seekers, who, despite their best work to try and make this horrible bill less harmful—have actually constructively worked with many members of the Opposition to put forward amendments. We should not conflate the fact that human rights experts and those organisations are not in favour of having a detention regime; they’re simply trying to encourage us to make the detention regime not harmful.

So I want to pick up on some of the comments from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Penk. He tried to give some assurances around the wellbeing of children, using, and quoting, that there’s the operational manual. But the operational manual can be, actually, changed at the whim of the Government of the day. It, actually, is by no means a method to protect the rights of children. If the past Government was to be used as an example, that was one where even immigration lawyers were not able to keep up with the very rapid changes that were happening in the immigration space. To say that we will protect the rights of children—

Hon Shane Jones: Security! Security!

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —that are being detained, because there are some provisions in the operation manual—actually, it’s incredibly vulnerable. Because if we were to let someone like the member to my left—who keeps parroting just insult and nonsense—take charge of this legislation, who’s to say that he would, for example, not change this bill—it’s not change, sorry; the operational manual and instruct officials to worsen the rights of children. So to simply assume that the operational manual is good enough to safeguard the rights of some of our communities who have been affected by war, by genocide, by persecution, is a disservice to not only the submitters but, actually, to a genuine commitment to upholding the rights of children.

That takes me to one of my own amendments, which, indeed, as the Acting Minister of Immigration referenced, draws on the feedback from World Vision and the Red Cross around the need to make it really clear in the bill that children won’t be detained under any circumstance. So, in relationship to children, while the bill—and the parts with the “detention” in the bill—doesn’t stipulate, necessarily, the very specific types of facilities or, for example, doesn’t stipulate that those facilities may be fit for purpose for children, I then want to know what engagement he has had, since taking on the role, around the potential facilities that could be used, in relationship to their suitability for children. Children have specific needs that adults do not. Detention can have a very specific harmful impact on children. Therefore, the types of detention centres that would be used could actually result in quite big harm when it comes to children being in those detention facilities.

So, firstly, if the Minister thinks that the operational manual is good enough, I want to seek assurances and commitment that that operational manual will not be changed for the purposes of the rights of children so long as his party is in Government. Because I think that commitment around not touching the quite fragile operational manual is really, really critical. So I want to get some assurances and commitments around that, because the Minister is relying on a really fragile document that can be easily changed to justify how children will be protected. Secondly, I want to check and get confidence that the types of facilities that he’s explored will be suitable for children.

I will take other calls around some of my other amendments, but, while we’re on the relationship with human rights and the rights of children, the Minister touched on some of our international commitments that we have made in relation to the rights of children. If we were to test our international commitments—for example, how we treat disabled people under the acceptable standards of health—it has been traversed in this House that these international commitments mean very little when it comes to domestic immigration law, because we have section 392 of the Immigration Act. Actually, that, basically, ends up cancelling most of our human rights commitments because, for example, the Human Rights Commission isn’t able to actually take up any of those human rights breaches when it comes to immigration matters.

So I do want to test whether he’s sought advice around the interactions of the clauses that he wants to add in Part 2, and, in relationship, how those interact with section 392 of the Immigration Act, because there is an interaction there. I’ll take another call, Mr Chair—thank you very much, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Ricardo Menéndez March.

Hon Member: Why?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I hear the word “why”. Why am I taking calls? Why am I one of the only members who’s taken many calls in this debate? It’s because we’re introducing a bill, I may remind the member, that will allow for the detention of asylum seekers—this should not be taken lightly. We should not be making jokes, actually, about the detention of people who have gone through war and genocide. I see the members of the National Party smiling, but I hope they know they’re making levity of the fact that we’re talking about communities affected by this piece of legislation who actually have faced some of the most harrowing experiences.

So, continuing on my line of questioning, I was touching around the relationship between the clauses that he’s adding and section 392, which is around the relationship between the Immigration Act and Human Rights Act 1993. I think it’s really important that we get some insurances about how those two will interact.

Now, I did have other amendments to this bill. One of them, which I’ll speak at length to, is around making it really clear and clarifying in the bill that that we could agree, basically, to residency and reporting requirements as an alternative to detention for members of mass arrival groups, as the officers is appropriate—like others who may be liable for arrest or detention or of subject to a warrant of commitment. So I did want to test the Minister’s exploration of seeking alternatives to detention and making that clear in the law. This is something that Community Law and the New Zealand Law Society have suggested. What that would allow is to test, for example, if, at the time of a mass arrival group—say, the facilities that that initially had been intended to be used. I know that in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, the Minister talked about, for example, managed isolation and quarantine - style facilities, like hotels, or the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre—if for some reason those facilities were not to be available, say, that homelessness was really high, emergency accommodation was being used and, at the same time, we were experiencing a really major international artist visiting our shores and, at the same time, filling the quota refugee space. I’m using those examples not as hypotheticals; I’ve seen firsthand—for example, when Taylor Swift visited not many years ago—how, actually, it was really hard for homeless people to find hotels. So, for example, if the Minister had told us—

Hon Member: What are we talking about?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —previously that hotels would be used—and, yeah, people on my left-hand side may be looking confused, but that may be because they themselves have never worked with homeless people and may have never experienced what it is like to be told at the front lines that emergency housing is literally not available because we’ve got international artists. So, for example—

Hon Shane Jones: Stop making it up.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I’m not making it up—you go work at the front lines with homeless people. So Shane Jones may just want to get a sense of reality of what it is like to actually work with migrants and homeless people before throwing his constant, pretty useless remarks in relationship to this bill and dismissing a bill that touches some of our most—

Dana Kirkpatrick: That’s unnecessary.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: “It is unnecessary”—the ongoing remarks from Shane Jones are. So, you know, you may want to choose, actually, who you take seriously here.

But, anyway, going back to the requirements around detention: does the Minister not think that it is important to have alternatives to detention in the case of those intended facilities not being available? Like I said, we have had incidents of those. In relationship to those, can I just confirm—because the Māngere resettlement centre has been used as an example of a facility that has been used—how confident is the Minister around the staffing and resourcing capacity of that resettlement centre to absorb a large group that could be arriving by sea, when, for example, they may be already trying to accommodate other people arriving from other parts of the system? Is he confident that the level of resourcing right now would actually allow that specific facility that has been talked about in the select committee—not just in the process of this bill, but we kind of talked about it in the briefing of the Immigration New Zealand processes and policy and operations. So that was another question that I have.

So, for that specific facility, I want to know what level of correspondence he’s had with the resettlement centre. I want to check whether the resettlement centre has given him the 100 percent reassurance that the resources that they have will be enough to absorb that, and, if not, whether he’s actually engaged with the hotel industry, for example, and has gotten really strong assurances from the hotel industry around their absorption capacity should they already be used for other issues such as emergency housing, which we know they have been used for.

Thirdly, I want to test whether this bill and the facilities that have been alluded to, which are going to be used in this bill, would stand the test of time should we experience another major public health crisis.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the member for a very thorough dissertation on the points that he wanted to raise in relation to Part 2. I’ll take them as best I can in the order that he raised them.

The first is in relation to the Immigration New Zealand Operational Manual. He suggested I shouldn’t rely on it. Indeed, I’m not—the Government’s not relying on it—I was referencing it as part of a suite of legal obligations as they currently stand. Yes, it’s possible that the operational manual be changed in the future, but we also have domestic legislation; we have international instruments that are not so easily undone. That is the point.

The fact that there is existing good practice now shouldn’t count against the fact that we should derive some comfort from that. As I say, though, we don’t rely totally upon that, and I assure the committee that it is not only in relation to that particular document that we would regard the requirement to preserve family units, treat children well, and so forth. Of course, if the operational manual were to be changed in a way that were inconsistent with those domestic and international legal obligations, then that would be a decision that would be reviewable in a legal context—an unreasonable decision one might conclude by way of judicial review and so forth.

Second, on the question of whether the facilities that would be employed are suitable for children. I’m tempted to make the point that the least suitable possible facilities for children would be a rust bucket of a vessel at sea trying to make its way illegally across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, even the Tasman Sea. I can vouch personally for the fact that these can be quite hostile maritime environments, particularly in a situation where exploitation may have taken place to place these people in this position in the first place. It’s no light matter that children should be dragged along with such an endeavour—highly unsuitable—and, of course, that’s the context of the mass arrivals bill that we’re engaging in. Now, of course, that’s not to say, “Well, therefore, it doesn’t matter how suitable the facilities might be on their arrival to New Zealand.” I’m not saying that for a second, but I do want to make that obvious point about context.

In terms of the facilities that would likely be used, the discussion, yes, has focused partly around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) - style facilities—and I’ll return to those in a moment in the member’s questioning around their suitability, their capacity. But first I want to reference the possibility—indeed the likelihood—that the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre might well be employed in this way.

I’ve had the opportunity to visit the centre a number of years ago, along with various parliamentary colleagues at the time, including Erica Stanford, then being the Opposition spokesperson, I think, for immigration. I had no particular reason to go except that I was interested and I thought it was suitable for New Zealand representatives to know the kinds of conditions in which refugees being processed in a usual manner might be housed and accommodated.

I’m pleased to advise the member—or perhaps remind him and advise the committee—he might well already be aware that there are facilities within that centre that provide education for children. Obviously, on a temporary basis it would be contemplated in the situation of a mass arrival, but, nevertheless, the presence of young people is contemplated, catered for to some extent with that school, and also that there are specialist medical facilities. The fact that we have those goes a little way to answering perhaps the suitability of retaining or detaining persons who have arrived in a mass arrival event with complex needs, whether by reason of the fact them having arrived in that manner—health, medical needs—or by reason of the fact simply of them being children. So there’s a specialist element in that—again, emphasising, though, the inherent lack of suitability of the fact that people who are young people might be brought into this very risky and dangerous type of endeavour.

As for MIQ-style arrangements, I don’t imagine that any assurances that I would seek in May 2024 would be particularly meaningful in a future month or year or decade. Of course, we don’t know when it might be, if at all that this bill would be—or Act, as it will be; if it’s being applied, it would be an Act at that point. We simply can’t know what the future would hold. Again, the New Zealand State would have to manage as best it could in the circumstances, just as it did in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the processing of persons from overseas or New Zealanders, and the employment of those arrangements in the first place, in the MIQ kind of way.

The member raised the scenario of Taylor Swift coming to New Zealand for a concert and exacerbating the very serious point about homelessness. I’m tempted to make an unserious point about the dangers associated with Taylor Swift coming to New Zealand for concerts, but I fear I would be losing votes or at least the support of various key people in my professional and personal life. So we’ll leave that point and simply observe that, actually, to solve the problem of homelessness is a much bigger endeavour of the Government than merely this bill. Indeed, if the member wants to have that debate, we welcome that in the context of our “Going for Housing Growth” policy.

But for now, I thank him for raising those various points in relation to Part 2. As I say, these matters have been considered, well traversed, canvassed at select committee; we’ve got Amendment Papers where we think it’s appropriate to meet them and other points that, again, were already raised by the Hon Phil Twyford.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just before I call Mr Menéndez March, just a reminder that the House has got a preferred method—both the Minister and any member making a statement—of operating through the committee stages. Question and answer can be more effective often, and as Chair, I’ll facilitate that. The members are welcome to make full, five-minute speeches—that’s within their purview. However, in light of the spirit of trying to get good debate, good facts out at this committee of the whole House stage, I’ll just invite all the members involved just to reflect on that.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): I appreciate that reflection, because part of the issue last night was the fact that I had to take multiple calls before the Minister had collected his notes to speak on the bill.

Hon Member: It was two.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Actually, it was to give him the—two—but that’s as many as I took just now.

But, look, I’d like to pick up on the comments from the Minister around the operational manual, because he says he’s not relying on it, but he is. The reality is that if you don’t put something in law and you tell us, “Don’t worry; the rights of children will be safeguarded in the operational manual.”, one is relying on the operational manual to ensure that the rights of children are upheld, and this is the reason that it is being used to justify not voting for amendments that would, for example, exclude children and their accompanying parents or guardians in a mass arrivals group from being detained, as proposed by myself. I know that the Hon Phil Twyford is proposing similar amendments around children.

So I think the public should have those facts clear that by not putting it in the legislation, one is relying on the operational manual. When we have members to my left literally making fun of the debate, the issue, and saying the contributions are boring, I would not have any trust that the operational manual would be robust enough.

The Minister has actually been unwilling to commit in the Chamber that that operational manual won’t be touched to affect and diminish the rights of children. So if he’s telling us, “Don’t worry; the rights of children will be safeguarded because they’re in the operational manual and we don’t need to put it in the legislation.”, I think it’s incumbent on him to give us assurances that it won’t be touched, that those rights of children won’t be further diminished by someone from the Government touching or discussing the contents of the operational manual.

So I think that’s really critical, because it was one of the key concerns from, for example, the Red Cross. I know the Minister said that he hopes that they will engage on this bill, but they themselves didn’t see the need for this bill. They provided constructive engagement, so I do think it’s a little bit rich to say, “Oh, look, we’ll dismiss their concerns; we won’t do anything with them, but then we’ll utilise the resources of an organisation that is actually still quite stretched.” For example, as we saw with the pandemic with the provision of emergency benefits, they were stretched to the limit.

Now, going back to public health issues, we did just recently go through a pandemic that required a great use of hotel facilities and mobilisation of public health resources, a pandemic that perhaps we were quite unprepared for at the time. But should this bill have been in place in a time of a public health emergency—whatever it may have been, a pandemic or otherwise. Can I just get assurances that he’s received advice and assurances that the resources that he’s hoping to rely on to actually accommodate the detention of asylum seekers won’t be compromised by public health emergencies?

Because public health emergencies do require a huge mobilisation of resources, and there do not seem to be any sort of assurances in place from the Minister that this won’t affect the bill. I think this is why my amendment around alternatives to detention is also important, on top of, for example, as I mentioned, the safeguarding of children.

I want to touch on the points that he raised around a detention centre being better, perhaps, than a boat, but that’s like two crumbs being better than one crumb, when, actually, people deserve a whole loaf of bread and roses, and far, far more. So I don’t think we should set the bar as low as to say, “Actually, it’s just better than being stranded on a ship.” I actually think we should be looking at ensuring that children who would have potentially been escaping some of the most harrowing conditions on earth are treated with respect and dignity and not just to arrive and be told, “Hey, look, at least you’re not on a ship; you’re now in a detention centre.”

So I know that he’s saying “no”, but that is why I want to take this question quite seriously and to ask the question: can he give us assurances that the facilities that will be used will be fit for purpose for the needs of children?

Carl Bates: Of course they will.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: People may say, “of course”, but there’s nothing in the legislation, actually, that guarantees that—

Hon Shane Jones: Stop talking down our country.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I’m not talking down the country.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Jones, there are two sword lengths between these two sides of the Chamber. To continually use the top level of your voice—is it necessary to make your points? There’s no one in the gallery who needs to hear you, so carry on.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Thank you. I know that for Mr Shane Jones, asylum seeker rights may feel like a joke, but they’re not, and this is why we take this quite seriously.

So, just to round up, in my last 30 seconds, to give the Minister an opportunity—can I get assurance around the facilities being fit for purpose for children, a commitment that he won’t touch the operational manual, and confidence that the resources that are available and that will be used for detention centres won’t be compromised for public health emergencies, before I continue with more questions that are relevant to Part 2.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to respond really briefly. First, I object to the characterisation of my remarks that it is placing children’s lives in danger and with total disregard for their welfare to put them in this situation in the first place—so people traffickers and those engaging in this illegal and dangerous activity should have that point made very clearly in relation to their activities. That is not the same thing. I made it explicitly clear at the time that I was making those remarks that that is not the same thing as saying we should disregard the requirements to their welfare in relation to suitable facilities on New Zealand soil. As I say, I don’t take kindly to the fact that that implication was made by the member in his latest remarks.

Briefly, in relation to the operational manual, I was not relying and the Government is not relying on the existence of the operational manual in its current form to provide the assurances. I’ve referenced it as part of the suite of protections. If it were not to be there in that form, then other protections would still apply. That is the extent to which we rely on it. We do not rely on it solely. I can’t guarantee that it won’t be changed. I can’t guarantee that the sun will rise in the East and set in the West tomorrow. One can’t know the future, but one can take comfort from the conditions as they exist at the moment to express our recognition of the legitimate concerns raised through this process, including through the committee of the whole House stage, and the comments made by Mr Twyford and some of the comments made by Mr Menéndez March reflect that. But to sort of take the remarks in bad faith and to suggest that there is necessarily a thing to happen upon which I am supposed to give a guarantee about the future, I think is, frankly, not reasonable.

Finally, in relation to the guarantee sought that there will be no public health emergencies that might impact on the capacity of these facilities, of course I can’t. I mean, I’d love to be able to guarantee that, but it would be meaningless. We can only know that if we set up a mechanism for dealing with people in an unexpected situation—a situation which, as we heard yesterday, quite rightly, is not likely but not impossible—all we can do in this House and as policy makers and those who resource the State is to provide the best possible conditions should that situation arise in the circumstances that we face at the time. That is what this bill does. That is the purpose of this exercise, including the amendments.

If the member has any original points to make in relation to Part 2, I’d be very interested to hear them, but, frankly, we’re starting to go round in circles now about the member’s more general scepticism—and he’s welcome to that, but, frankly, it’s not assisting our understanding of the debate.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): I move, That debate on this question now close.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. There are still two more amendments that I’d like to discuss. I also don’t agree, as a matter of fact, with the characterisation of the Minister regarding general comments, because these are very specific to (a) the resources that this bill will require and (b) to the safeguards of children, which actually were raised by submitters, and are in two different sets of amendments. So I do think those are really worthwhile traversing.

The Minister kind of proved the point, right? He said, “I cannot guarantee what will be in the operational manual.” But this is why those amendments really matter. Because, actually, by voting for those amendments, we’re not relying on the Minister of the day or the Cabinet of the day to change the operational manual to then provide us with those assurances or leave it at risk of future Cabinets and Ministers undermining that same operational manual.

But, anyway, going to one of my other amendments, particularly drawing on the submission from the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties, one of the things that they suggested, and that I put forward as an amendment, was around narrowing the reasons for a mass arrivals group to be detained to only be to manage security risks, instead of it disrupting the operations of the District Courts, or that it is challenging for the immigration system to manage the mass arrivals group. Part of that was, as many submitters pointed out—and the reason why many submitters raised the fact that this bill wasn’t necessary—because they thought that the place to start would be to actually resource the courts, resource those community centres, rather than creating a detention regime independent of the level of risk that some Ministers may or may not be privy to regarding the impending or otherwise arrival of a mass arrivals group.

This amendment—and why I want to get the Minister’s comments on whether it would not be more suitable to narrow the scope of the bill for that attention to be around managing security risks, which in and of itself won’t be perfect. There will still be issues around how those are applied, but that actually would allow for a far more human rights, or less-human-rights-diminishing, approach to this bill. Because, I guess, that raises to the more philosophical point of the question—and it is not a general point; it goes back to, I think, the little Part 2 dance around the detention regime.

If the Minister thinks that there are other reasons to detain people other than to manage security risks, those then need to be really explicit in legislation to ensure that, again, we have those safeguards and clarity for people for when they’re detained, about what those reasons may be, rather than just detain them for the sake of having the courts actually be able to go through those processes. Those processes can actually go ahead independent of detention.

So I do want to get the Minister to comment as to why we wouldn’t just narrow the reasons for mass arrivals to be detained to be only to manage security risks. That goes back to my comments that I mentioned in Part 1, around the two-tier way of treatment of asylum seekers. I know the member Phil Twyford talked about the previous practices of putting people in prisons, but, effectively, what we’re doing here is still creating a practice world. While we may not be using prisons, and those facilities may be unsure, you could be detaining people who actually have posed no risk to the community when it comes to health or when it comes to security. But this bill doesn’t allow for those nuances to be made really clear.

So my question to the Minister is: why wouldn’t we narrow the scope of the reasons that people can be detained to “simply manage security risks” which would go back to the heckling of Shane Jones actually in Part 1, where he was yelling, “Security, security, security!” Actually, if he’s so concerned about security, I would see a great reason to then support narrowing the scope off the bill. I almost think New Zealand First is in support of this by the looks of it, because it seems like security is one of the key concerns and why not just make it more specific.

The last point I’ve got in regards to my amendments will be around disabled people, and I’m just foreshadowing to the Chair because I want to give the Minister an opportunity to answer the questions around my amendment regarding narrowing the scope for people to be detained.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Mr Chair. I can answer very simply the reason that we do not think it appropriate to narrow the scope of this bill, effectively, to just national security considerations, important as those may be in many situations. It is that to do that, and to define the purpose of a mass arrival warrant in that way, would be to strike the reasons that currently are recorded in the bill, which include to effectively manage the mass arrival group and to uphold the integrity or efficiency of the immigration system. Of course that must be an aim of any major aspect or regime within the Immigration Act.

I’m just confused that any member of this House would suggest that we shouldn’t aim to effectively manage an arrival and to uphold the integrity of the system. To implicitly encourage, as might be a message that would be taken away from such an amendment, the inefficient operation of the system or an attack on the integrity of the system—and I recognise, of course, that a mass arrival group is by its nature outside the established legal protocols, including those available to refugees and potential refugees—that’s clearly something that I think any responsible Government wouldn’t support.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.

A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper 28 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendments to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendments not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 34 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 35 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 36 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 37 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to our final debate—clauses 1 to 3, “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Can I just suggest a different title, and I just want to discuss, on the title itself, that this bill may have been titled “Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill”, but let’s make it really clear: this bill should be “Immigration (Diminishing of the Human Rights of Asylum Seekers) Amendment Bill”, and, to make it the really lengthy title, I would follow with “Having No Regard and/or Commitments to the Wellbeing of Disabled or Under-age Asylum Seekers”.

Throughout the debate, and now that we’re arriving to the title of this bill, which ultimately serves as the more symbolic way of debating what this bill intends to do, it is important to note the language around mass arrivals. Because “mass arrivals” as a language isn’t in and of itself political language; it is loaded. “Mass arrivals” serve, as language, to actually fearmonger around the potential risks that asylum seekers may pose to a country. “Mass arrivals” implies that the people arriving, who are fleeing war, who are fleeing persecution, actually pose some sort of risk or will be arriving in “masses”. Seeking asylum is a right, and this bill did nothing to actually enhance the rights of those asylum seekers, despite the claims by several members from both Labour and National throughout this debate. What this bill is doing, despite its quite ambiguous title, is simply diminishing the rights of those asylum seekers, using a two-tier system of ways of processing asylum seeker claims, and the reality of this bill is simply that it is founded by fearmongering. Despite what Cabinet Ministers may have been privy of, this title simply does not reflect what the community organisations at the front lines have been calling for, which is resourcing the judiciary system and the community system.

Hon Shane Jones: Relevant? No.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I know that this debate may feel like a joke for the members of New Zealand First, who have made a career of fearmongering the public when it comes to migrants, but the reality is, this bill is a load of rubbish. It simply diminishes the rights of those asylum seekers, and any member of this House should be ashamed of supporting this bill, instead of focusing on the issues that matter to those communities.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think we could not have a more straightforward description of the intent and indeed the substance of the bill. “Mass Arrivals” refers specifically to those who arrive in a way that is a mass, as opposed to on an individual basis. That’s at the heart of the first definition, the first substantive provision, within the bill. It does exactly what it says on the tin—that is the regime that it generates—because without that we would have a lack of clarity. We would have the possibility of diminution of human rights, in the sense of not being able to have an effective management of the system. Again, I stand by the fact that that is, effectively, one of the purposes of the bill, because to have them processed in as timely a fashion as possible, to be detained in as minimal a form as possible, is the whole purpose of the bill. It’s appropriate that the title of the bill reflects that.

It’s also, by the way, while I’m at it, appropriate that the commencement date be the day after Royal assent, because we don’t know when and if this bill might be required, but we cannot afford to take the chance that we have a regime not in place, whereby we’d have a system overwhelmed and without a good capacity to deal with it. That’s the purpose of the bill. That’s why the title and the commencement are as they are.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I’m assuming that the members to my right are all looking for a closure. I’m not seeing any speakers on my left, so I’ll go straight to the vote.

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

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Clause 2 agreed to.

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

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

Bills

Māori Fisheries Amendment Bill

In Committee

Preamble

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to the Māori Fisheries Amendment Bill. Members, we start with the preamble. The question is that the preamble stand part.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): For purposes of clarification, this bill reflects a desire of the owners of the Māori fisheries endowment to make amendments to the parent legislation. It’s traceable back to legislation that was passed in this House in the Helen Clark Government, based on a settlement that originally was entered into by the Jim Bolger Government in 1992. Several years ago, a lawyer by the name of Tim Castle was hired for the princely sum of $600,000 to undertake a review of the operations of Te Ohu Kai Moana. That was then subject to a variety of negotiations and consultations and meetings within te ao Māori.

So I want to draw the attention of the committee that a Supplementary Order Paper—otherwise known, I’m told now, as an Amendment Paper—lies on the Table. It will have the effect of improving the commerciality of how quota is used to meet the interests of the Māori fishing companies who desire a longer period of time to use less quota, to boost jobs and give greater certainty. The effect of the bill will be to give a greater sense of autonomy back to the many iwi and their level of influence over the central governance body, otherwise known as Te Ohu Kai Moana.

I’m advised and I faithfully pray that this is accurate, that it will improve efficiency. That all lies in the future. There are several areas where consultation was entered into, and that pertains to the role of representative Māori organisations. Sadly, it reprises a historic debate that caused a great deal of disharmony in the 1990s between the various traditional iwi and more modern aggregations of Māori society, otherwise known as urban Māori groups. There’s no consensus on this matter, so I have proceeded on the assumption that we will be relying upon the report that came back from the select committee. Although I have to say to people who may be concerned about that that Māori urban authorities, otherwise known as representative Māori organisations, have always been a part of the infrastructure of this piece of legislation.

The Amendment Paper, I repeat again, is a positive addition, improving the prospects of iwi and their companies using quota, without triggering any constitutional provisions that might cause people to doubt as to whether or not it’s a lease or an alienation. Naturally, I do acknowledge the work that the select committee did. Although this is a technical range of amendments, it does build on a historic settlement, 1992, entered into between Māoridom, led by Sir Graham Latimer, Sir Bob Mahuta, the Hon Matiu Rata, and Sir Tipene O’Regan—only one of those four totara trees is still with us—and Doug Graham, Doug Kidd, and Mr Bolger.

So I reiterate that the changes incorporated in the Amendment Paper are of a relatively modest commercial nature, but the bill does build on a report that was tabled and completed several years ago. The bill has been through the select committee.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. And thank you to Minister Jones, who has provided some clarity around his intentions for this committee stage, keeping us on our toes—we were wondering whether he would come to the House tonight with some more amendments. But as the chair of the previous Māori Affairs Committee, I’m happy to hear that it is his intention to proceed with the bill as it is now.

My only question about the preamble is that, you know, members of this House who have been here for as long as I have—I’m in my second term—will not have engaged in the committee stage, but the preamble is the first part of the debate. I want to ask the Minister whether that is because this legislation was drafted around the time—2015, I believe—when the independent review was conducted. And perhaps the Minister could comment on why it has taken this long for the legislation to reach the House, given that the independent review was conducted in 2015?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): During the period of time 2017, 2020, this bill did not enjoy a level of urgency or priority. It, obviously, fell to the recently departed Government that it should be expedited. I have inherited that role and I am moving it forward.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Minister’s tabled amendment to the preamble be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the preamble as amended stand part.

Preamble as amended agreed to.

Part 1 Amendments to Preamble, Title, and Parts 1 to 6

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 4 to 94, “Amendments to Preamble, Title, and Parts 1 to 6”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Chair, and it’s a pleasure to take a call and to engage with the Minister on some of these issues—like my colleague Arena Williams. The preamble, which exists in terms of before the committee, is something that is new to, I think, many members in the committee in terms of being available for debate.

But I want to acknowledge, first, that this is, as we know, a bill that has taken a number of years to get here; that many Ministers have had this in front of them, and I congratulate the current Minister on having this landed on his lap and being able to bring it back to the House—albeit post the select committee of the previous Parliament—to progress some of the changes. I do want to very briefly just acknowledge the work of the Māori Affairs Committee—that was very apparent that it was constructive and supportive as a process.

There is an Amendment Paper in the Minister’s name, and no doubt we will come to them, but at this stage I do want to signal to the Minister that the Labour Party will be providing general support for the amendments that are suggested in his name.

But when I reflect on the second reading debate, there was a lot of commentary on suggestions around clause 37 and clause 25. The two clauses that they relate to: 37 is the nature of representative Māori organisations and effectively the voting capacity. Whereas clause 25, which is in Part 1, relates more specifically to the ability for there to be specific involvement for a representative Māori organisation around votes and decision making that relate to the number of directors on the board; the relativity around the appointment of directors, specific or otherwise; but also they relate to the potential removal of a director or directors.

The National Party differing view sought changes to those two clauses, and so my question to the Minister is: what has changed in his mind where there are no amendments that have been tabled or seem to be willing to be progressed at committee stage in light of that? So that’s the first question I have for the Minister.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): The member raises a very good point. What has changed since the point of that select committee proceeding and today? A momentous event called an election.

JAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): Point of order. I seek leave to take all provisions as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There’s no objection.

Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 to 3, and clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 to 3, and clauses 1 to 3 stand part.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the Minister for his answer. What was interesting is in previous contributions, post that momentous event known as the election, there had been comments that had been made by the Minister in the House that related to a willingness to engage with stakeholders around wishing to progress particular changes by way of amendment or not. So my question to the Minister is whether or not that engagement with stakeholders took place or whether those were words that Ministers were able to say but weren’t able to fulfil; if so, what is the nature of the engagement with specific stakeholders that has led to the path of not seeking any change to clauses 25 and 37?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Obviously, my officials did engage, but at the end of the day, judgment has to be exercised. Yes, an engagement did take place with representatives from the representative Māori organisations, but I have zero interest, both as a Māori parliamentarian and as a former chair of this organisation, to see those debates, that level of discord brought from recent Māori history into this Chamber.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I turn to the proposed new section 162, which, effectively, provides rules or criteria around mandated iwi organisations in relation to actions related to the ability to sell settlement quota, noting that that would only take place under the new section 162 if the constitutional documents expressly allowed that the sale of the settlement quota was to take place, but also that the transaction would be in line with what was outlined in the specific requirements of the organisations’ constitutional documents.

So my question to the Minister is whether he believes that that goes far enough and whether or not there should have been any time frames associated with those when looking at the specific action of a transfer or sale of settlement quota, but also what was contained in constitutional documents that would be held by the relevant organisation.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): The member’s identified quite an important area in this full and final settlement. Upon what basis should iwi be entitled to alienate their full and final quota legacy and upon who should it be made available?

The kaupapa, if I can put it like that, was laid down in the original legislation. What is proposed here is to ensure that it can happen efficiently, but there was an injunction and a desire that we not see the dissolution or the dissipation of this full and final settlement right back to 1992. This bill does nothing to weaken that injunction.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): I thank the Minister for his comments in response to that specific question. I think it is very helpful for the committee, so I do thank him for that.

One of the aspects of this piece of legislation—and I’m trying to take your earlier advice, sir, of being interactive with the Minister, so I don’t intend to take a lengthy course, but perhaps a few questions to come—is around the independent nature of a review that might be undertaken. This review was undertaken back in March 2015. It seems to, on face value, and perhaps in practice, have been rather collaborative in terms of the involvement, although it has taken some time. My question for the Minister is on the nature of reviews moving forward. How does he see this piece of legislation as informing whether the regularity of reviews would be questioned or not, where they would fall, and whether it’s an independent nature of the review, and, if so, in what circumstances it would be independent or otherwise?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): In the past, there was a South Island member of Parliament who became a Minister. He was a vet—largely incomprehensible, but his name was Dr Pete Hodgson. I understand he’s recently been guiding the development of the Dunedin Hospital, but I’ll leave that story to speak for itself.

Mr Pete—he was a doctor; a vet—Dr Hodgson. Pete Hodgson, after engagement and lobbying from Ngāi Tahu in the form of the late Tahu Potiki settled upon a 12-year period for an operational review of Te Ohu Kaimoana, something that the chairman of that time was deeply opposed to, but the sovereignty of Parliament outstripped the ambitions of Māori organisations, something I hope to see visited upon the Waitangi Tribunal in short order, but that’s another matter.

The reference to the review—yes, it was called operational. It has led to major—well, it has led to significant restructuring. It is my hope that future reviews are infrequent, not costly, and focus on boosting economic resilience and ensuring that the legacy remains intact for the mokopuna.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Chair, thank you. One of the most significant changes that this bill would enact, and what the committee considered very carefully in the detail of it, is how it is appropriate to change the powers to appoint Te Ohu Kai Moana directors. I want to invite the Minister to comment on the current state of the appointment of Te Ohu Kai Moana directors and then, in his view, how this legislation will change the appointment going forward, and to give an assurance to this committee that the independence and capability of the directors will be of a high standard given the law change.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Te Ohu Kai Moana, when it was created, was built around an electoral college, and there was a sense that that diminished the right of iwi to directly participate in the governance direction, the governance nomination, and the governance voting process. That particular innovation was designed to prevent rivalry and to bring some stability to the iwi community lying behind Te Ohu Kai Moana—a wee bit, I presume, like the nominations committee, which I unwisely agreed to in an earlier Government, of the Climate Change Commission. But that’s another matter. So this is an attempt to reflect a better institutional expression of rangatiratanga, where there is direct influence enjoyed by iwi and, as I’m sure they will say, not through the sieve of an electoral college.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Mr Chair, thank you. I take the Minister’s response around the nature of reviews being timely and frequent, cost is a factor, and resilience and economic productivity being increased as well. There is a suggestion with this piece of legislation that when reviews are undertaken, it’s at a time that is between seven and 10 years post enactment of the legislation, as is the case in relation to special resolutions that some organisations that are iwi-mandated may have, as is the case. So I wonder whether the Minister is comfortable with that as a time frame, or whether the suggestion of a default period kicking in post-enactment is something that he might be more interested in.

Can I also ask the Minister this: the House has, obviously, arrived at this point after a lot of work over a lot of time, and if there are any future proposed changes to this bill, either in theory or in practice, does he commit to ensuring that that follows a similar process, albeit timely, rather than it appearing in an omnibus bill, or something similar like that, in terms of addressing some of these issues which might arise in the short to medium term without it being just sort of swept in, so to speak.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): That’s an uncharacteristically shrewd observation. I think that the point is well made. This was a National settlement, and it should be subject to a collaborative approach by all parties in the House because we all have a vested interest, given the great drama, promise, and compromise that was entered into at the time that this settlement was enacted. So to the extent that I can provide satisfaction to the member, I probably can provide that level of satisfaction for maybe nine to 12 years.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): I very much thank the Minister for that level of satisfaction that he has, and also it’s good to hear on this side of the Chamber, as well. But my final question for the Minister is around the commencement—since we’ve taken this all as one—and there is obviously feedback that the two-year time frame post - Royal assent for commencement is ideal in order to give time for the relevant changes and amendments to be made. My final question is whether the Minister believes that that two-year time frame is sufficient, and, if not, why not?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): As these exchanges draw to a close, I think the member is demonstrating a growing skill in protracting debates where perhaps there’s no substance. If only the earlier speaker on immigration had showed such shrewdness as he’s got.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Well, that’s an observation for the Chair, I’d point out to the honourable Minister.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper 33 and his tabled amendment be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

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

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

Report of Committee of the Whole House

Report of Committee of the Whole House

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. The committee has also considered the Māori Fisheries Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.