Tuesday, 25 March 2025

TUESDAY, 25 MARCH 2025

TUESDAY, 25 MARCH 2025

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

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

SPEAKER: Eleven petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Allan Wallbank requesting that the House compensate landowners for carbon they sequester from their indigenous forest

petition of Speak Up for Women requesting that the House define that “sex” in the Human Rights Act 1993 has the biological meaning

petition of Christina Gillmore requesting that the House establish nationwide regulations and standards for laser tattoo removal

petition of Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand requesting that the House prohibit the advertising of gambling in Aotearoa New Zealand

petition of Tamati Warmington requesting that the House refer MP David Seymour’s actions on 10 February 2025 to the Privileges Committee

petition of James Bond requesting that the House require hospitals to notify the police immediately if a patient has an unexplained injury

petition of Heather Tanguay requesting that the House urge the Government not to reintroduce semi-automatic weapons in New Zealand when the Arms Act is rewritten

petition of Duran Nair requesting that the House of Representatives urge the Government to add skilled trade occupations, including welders and other essential trades, to New Zealand’s Green List

petition of Scott Savage requesting that the House urge the Government to pay each survivor $3.5 million for the abuse experienced while in the care of the State

petition of Walter Hicks requesting that the House urge the Prime Minister to advise the Governor-General to dissolve the 54th Parliament of New Zealand and call a new election

petition of Dannielle Davis on behalf of He Tangata Facebook group requesting that the House urge the Prime Minister to remove David Seymour from his portfolios.

SPEAKER: That’s very good. I’m sure the House will gather itself after that and look forward to similar affirmation from the public for themselves. Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. There have been four papers delivered by Ministers for presentation.

CLERK:

Government responses to the petitions of:

Christian van der Pump

Anne Henderson, and

Stop Institutional Racism.

Government response to the report of the Māori Affairs Committee on its review briefing on the 2022-23 annual review of Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori (Māori Television Service).

SPEAKER: I present the reports of the Ombudsman, entitled:

The Chief Ombudsman’s Reflections on the Official Information Act

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Te Tari o te Pirimia me te Komiti Matua

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in Kainga Ora Housing New Zealand

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in the Pharmaceutical Management Agency Te Pātaka Whaioranga

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in The Treasury Te Tai Ōhanga

OIA timeliness obligations: Compliance and practice in Transpower New Zealand.

SPEAKER: I also present the annual report of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards for the year ending 31 December 2024. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Twenty-five select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the 2023-24 annual reviews of:

Callaghan Innovation

New Zealand Growth Capital Partners Ltd

Commerce Commission

Meteorological Service of New Zealand Ltd

reports of the Health Committee on the 2023-24 annual reviews of the:

Ministry of Health, and

Pharmaceutical Management Agency

reports of the Justice Committee on the 2023-24 annual reviews of the:

Crown Law Office

Department of Corrections

Electoral Commission

Human Rights Commission

Independent Police Conduct Authority

Parliamentary Counsel Office

Public Trust, and

Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill and the Report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990

report of the Māori Affairs Committee on the 2023-24 annual review of Te Puni Kōkiri—Ministry of Māori Development

report of the Parliament Bill Committee on the Parliament Bill

reports of the Petitions Committee on the:

petition of Deb Hayes

petition of Erin Tiplady

petition of Kath McDonald

report of the Primary Production Committee on the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the Parliamentary Counsel Office Annual Report on Legislative Practices 2023-2024

reports of the Social Services and Community Committee on the 2023-24 annual reviews of the:

Ministry of Disabled People, and

Ministry of Social Development

reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the:

2023-24 annual review of Auckland Light Rail Ltd

Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading, and the Annual Report on Legislative Practices 2023-2024 is set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK:

Plain Language Act Repeal Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading. [Interruption] You ready?

Hon Chris Bishop: Yep.

SPEAKER: Good—well, you’re next.

Hon Chris Bishop: My apologies.

SPEAKER: That’s all right.

Parliamentary Service Commission

Membership

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate regarding membership regarding the Parliamentary Service Commission.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That under section 15(1)(d) of the Parliamentary Service Act 2000, Glen Bennett be appointed as a member of the Parliamentary Service Commission.

Motion agreed to.

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 our actions to go for growth. Wasn’t it absolutely great news last week to see Stats New Zealand confirm that the economy grew by 0.7 percent to finish 2024, with the first increase to GDP per capita in two years. We know that growth matters, on this side of the House, and more growth means more jobs, higher wages, more opportunities for all New Zealanders to beat the cost of living and to get ahead. That’s why just in the last two weeks we’ve been at it hard, fighting hard for trade in India, making sure we’re taking action to scrap and replace the Resource Management Act, and hosting investors worth trillions of dollars here in New Zealand so that we can build the roads, energy, and homes Kiwis need to thrive. There’s always more to do, but it’s very exciting to say that growth is back, and I’m sure that member, in a bipartisan way, would fully support and endorse those comments.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he agree with the statement made by Christopher Luxon in September 2023 with regard to the school lunches programme: “We’re very supportive of it. I just want to make sure that I’m sure it can be improved, I’m sure it can be optimised, I’m sure it can be enhanced.”; if so, is he confident that the school lunches programme has been “improved”, “optimised”, and “enhanced” under his Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes. The free lunch programme is there so that hungry kids going to school can actually focus and get something to eat so they can learn. There’s been some practical issues, which the Associate Minister of Education’s working his way through very well, and again I just say I think it’s fantastic that savings have been generated, and those savings can be generated back into health and education to help support our kids.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did the Government select Libelle and Compass to deliver the school lunches programme, given Libelle had lost nearly 60 percent of the schools it had been serving under the old programme due to quality concerns, and Compass had lost 23 of the 53 schools that it was serving?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: There was a standard procurement process. But if the member wants to direct more specific questions, feel free to direct it to the Minister.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So why did the Government—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, just a minute. If questions are serious enough to be answered, they should be listened to, by and large, quite seriously.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did the Government ignore official advice that Compass had failed to meet the nutritional standards required in more than half of the assessments of its meals under the previous programme and had prolonged issues with undersized meals and inconsistent portioning, while Libelle had been the subject of 163 complaints about food quality, food safety, and food suitability?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I think the member would understand that I don’t have that detail in front of me around a procurement process, but I would encourage him to put his question on notice.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary question—supplementary question. You’ve had three.

SPEAKER: The Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you very much.

SPEAKER: I can count.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Oh, can you?

SPEAKER: Yeah. Surprising.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I’m glad to hear that. Can I ask the Prime Minister as to whether he was aware that those three supplementary questions were all written before the primary question from Chris Hipkins, which meant that, no matter what the Prime Minister said, he wasn’t paying attention?

SPEAKER: I don’t think that the Prime Minister has any responsibility for anyone else’s concentration span.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Good to see he’s awake, though. Does he agree with the statement of Christopher Luxon in August 2023, with regard to the school lunches, that a Government led by him would “make sure we get better delivery and better execution”; if so, why did they award the exclusive contract to deliver school lunches to Libelle and Compass, who had amongst the highest rates of uneaten lunches and food waste in the previous programme—almost double the average?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, I’d just say to the member, I’m not party to the details of a procurement process. If he wants to put his detailed questions on notice, feel free to do so. But this is a programme that has been able to generate savings that can be redirected back into health and education. Yup, there are some practical issues; the Minister’s working his way through them.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why didn’t David Seymour bother to tell the Minister of Education that the major provider of school lunches, Libelle, was going into liquidation, given he’d found out five days before it happened, yet the Minister was left to find out about that through the media after it happened?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, I’m very comfortable with the delegations and accountabilities that we have between our Ministers. The Associate Minister and I talk all the time. We’ve talked about the school lunches. We’ve talked about many other things as well. I’m comfortable with it.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he agree with the statement of Christopher Luxon in September 2023: “I’d work harder on education to make sure we give people healthier choices in the school lunch programme.”; if so, why is the nutritional value of school lunches now being provided consistently lower than under the previous school lunches programme that his Government scrapped?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I agree that we are working harder on education, because I remember who was the Minister of Education when kids stopped going to school, when half our year 8s are not at the standard they need to be at on reading, and 80 percent of our kids going into high school are not where they need to be at on mathematics. Who was the Minister for 5½ years?

Hon David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister aware that last week the healthy school lunch programme delivered 99.8 percent on-time delivery, and surplus meals of 5.7 percent compared with 9 percent surplus last year, and is he then surprised to hear feedback from a teacher just last night: “The meals are varied, wholesome, and, in my opinion and that of the majority of my class, far more filling than last year. They are a meal!”?

SPEAKER: That was more an advertorial than a question, but OK.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Can I just thank the Minister for his hard work in working through the issues so well.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he agree with Christopher Luxon’s statement in July 2023: “I’m not interested in how much money is being spent; I’m interested in the results that are being achieved.”; if so, is his spending less achieving better outcomes so far?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What we’re impressed about is that we’re getting more value for money. The money that’s being saved is going into education and health for our kids and the issues that are being worked through are being worked through.

Hon David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister agree that the Government’s approach to the healthy school lunch programme has been agile and adaptive, changing its approach whenever things start to go wrong, which is a lot better than Chris Hipkins’ approach to this line of questioning?

SPEAKER: Yeah, well, that’s—none of that question actually complies with the requirements of the Standing Orders, but the Prime Minister may make a brief response.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Look, I appreciate that there is a lot of effort going in to improve and work through the issues with the new providers, and I commend the Minister and encourage him to keep going. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: When we’re all ready—when we’re all quiet.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and especially our action to crack down on criminal activity and to restore law and order. Kiwis are sick of the large discounts and the short sentences regularly handed down, even in instances of serious offending. The good news is that, this week, the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill will return to the House for its third reading. That bill will cap discounts and bring in tougher consequences for serious and repeat offending. It doesn’t stop there, though, for convicted criminals, because the last few weeks have, sadly, shown the longer you spend in prison, the more likely it is you’ll get visited by a Green MP of a convicted criminal.

SPEAKER: No, sorry, that last part of that question, the answer is not acceptable. So we’ll have no more of that.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Do the companies that the Prime Minister is asking to build our schools, roads, and hospitals want to make a profit?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, they may well do, and I would hope they would want to see a return. But what I’m excited about is that there is massive interest from investors who want to build public infrastructure in New Zealand, and the benefits to New Zealanders economically, socially, and environmentally are profound. If we can pull forward infrastructure development, get more roads built, more wind farms built, more energy delivered, that’s only good for New Zealand.

Chlöe Swarbrick: When our country has to pay for the profit of shareholders on top of the cost of building public infrastructure like our schools and hospitals, does that equation ultimately cost New Zealanders more or less?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: This is a strange line of questioning, and it just speaks to the degrowth agenda of the Green Party—the degrowth agenda of the Green Party. Not only do they want to abandon prisons but they now don’t want to grow the economy. To that member: we want investment in this country. It is capital thin. We need to get public infrastructure built. Iwi want to get on and actually get projects built, and private companies in our growth sectors need support too.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Will the profit that the private companies make through his Government’s intended public-private partnerships stay in Aotearoa New Zealand or go offshore?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, our focus is on attracting investment to New Zealand so we can get public infrastructure built. The member seems to be confused about how economics works. We want New Zealanders to get ahead. We need them with more money in their pockets. We want them to have higher standards of living. One of the ways we do that is we attract investment to New Zealand as well as use domestic pools of capital as well.

Hon Chris Bishop: Is it Government policy that profit is a good thing or a bad thing?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Profit is a good thing.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister accept that his plans for public-private partnerships will ultimately, then, cost New Zealanders more and send that profit offshore?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No. We are looking at the right funding and financing tools and mechanisms to support the right infrastructure. We need to get a lot more infrastructure built in this country. The member may disagree with us, but we are going to grow New Zealand because it’s good for New Zealanders. And part of that is getting infrastructure built faster, quicker, and if we can do that in partnership with private capital, we will. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: The Hon David Seymour—are you all right?

Hon David Seymour: I’m sure he’s fine, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, just a minute—wait on. Questions are heard in silence. I thought there was an issue down here.

Hon David Seymour: Has the Prime Minister seen any reports that profit is not a cost that you just add on and charge the customer but a surplus that remains if you do a very good job of using your resources more efficiently, and could failing to understand that be a reason why someone’s one-time business of a little hole-in-the-wall cafe on Mount Eden Road only lasted a few weeks?

SPEAKER: No, no, no. No, just a minute. These little digs across the House are not acceptable, particularly from Government Ministers having a go at the Opposition. It’s also a trend that I think—

Hon Marama Davidson: Can’t even run school lunches.

SPEAKER: I beg your pardon?

Hon Marama Davidson: Sorry, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: That would be a good thing to be. I’m not saying it’s a trend, but there has been a little bit of a move towards personal reflections, which are completely unacceptable under our Standing Orders, so they are to stop.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Who can borrow money cheaper: the private companies that the Prime Minister wants to build our public infrastructure, or the Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, as I’ve said to that member, we’re going to find the right funding and financing mechanism that supports the right project. But I make no apologies for wanting to partner with private capital—international or domestic—to get things built for New Zealanders. You may disagree with us ideologically on that point, as a degrowth party, but we want growth in New Zealand, and that’s what we’re going to do.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Last week, Statistics New Zealand released the latest GDP figures. These showed the New Zealand economy expanding 0.7 percent in the December quarter of 2024, led by a pick-up in tourism-related spending. Growth of 0.7 percent in the quarter was stronger than economists were predicting. For example, both the Treasury and the Reserve Bank were forecasting quarterly growth of 0.3 percent. In terms of per capita growth, GDP per person rose 0.4 percent in the December quarter—the first such increase in more than two years.

Dan Bidois: What is the significance of the GDP result?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The significance is that it marks a turning point. It marks the end of a protracted and painful downturn in the New Zealand economy, and the beginning of an upturn, with per capita GDP having fallen around 5 percent since the third quarter of 2022. From 2021 to 2023, of course, members, uncontrolled Government spending helped push annual inflation to more than 7 percent. Interest rates were hiked to bring inflation down, and there was little to no growth in the economy over the past two years. Inflation is now back within target, interest rates have come down, and last week’s result is the confirmation that growth has returned.

Dan Bidois: What do more recent economic indicators show?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Of course, the GDP results are backward-looking: they tell us what happened in 2024. More recent information indicates what is happening this year and identifies positive signs, challenges, and risks. On the positive side, goods exports are doing well and tourism is stronger than expected. The most recent BNZ—BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) indicates that the manufacturing sector is continuing to expand. BNZ economist Doug Steel said that the improvement in the PMI this year is “one of several indicators that suggests the broader economy is turning for the better.”

Dan Bidois: What are some of the risks to the economic outlook?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: As members know, one of the biggest risks is from the global environment. The OECD has just reduced its forecast for global growth. In its latest economic update, the OECD warns that rising uncertainty around tariffs will lead businesses around the world to defer investment and that higher prices will reduce consumer spending. That could impact the New Zealand economy. Forecasters expect the economy to continue picking up over 2025, but the journey could be a little bumpy.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Yes. In particular, I tend to make the same statement to one audience as I do to another, unlike that member, who took so many positions on public-private partnerships last week that she ended up having to apologise for the confusion she’d caused.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with Nicola Willis, who said in October 2023 that the Government “will never hit surplus and debt will blow out even further than it is today” when she has shifted surplus out, will not deliver in the forecast period, and debt is growing under her watch?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, I stand by all my statements, and I welcome this turn of fiscal prudence from the Labour Party, in which, suddenly, for the first time, that member, instead of encouraging me to get out the money hose, is saying that she cares about debt and surplus. Stick to those guns, Barbara.

SPEAKER: Look, the Minister of Finance knows that referring to someone by their first name is not appropriate in this House—their full name, if at all.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with Nicola Willis, as reported by the media in July 2022, that “the government could not keep blaming external events”, and, if so, why is she now concerned about international headwinds?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Absolutely, because under the last Government, what we had was a spending approach which was so excessive compared to other countries around the world that now numerous studies have shown that our inflation went higher and stayed higher for longer and that our interest rates needed to soar higher to control that, and that was not a result of global factors. It wasn’t global factors that made every former Minister sitting opposite me spend like a drunken sailor on bureaucrats, go-nowhere projects, and wasted initiatives. It was your Government that chose to do it; it drove up inflation, and it caused real pain for New Zealanders.

SPEAKER: OK, I’m just going to say this once before anything else comes. The Standing Orders make it very clear that the Government cannot use its own questions or answer questions that are an attack on the Opposition. They can refer to matters that affect their portfolio, but not be an out and out attack that might be more in the nature of a public meeting somewhere. So we’ve just got to calm things down a little bit.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: She’s got to stop with the patsies, then.

SPEAKER: By the same token, the question—I beg your pardon? By the same token, questions that invite political comparison—for example, asking a member, effectively, if they agree with themselves—is virtually like saying, “I’ve got you here.”, and then it’s going to get some sort of answer along the lines of the one we’ve just had. It’s very difficult to walk the balance between the two.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with Nicola Willis that “we have”—

SPEAKER: Now, there we go!

Hon Barbara Edmonds: The Minister of Finance. Does she agree with the Minister of Finance that “we have huge amounts of Government debt”, or does she agree with her statement at the international investment summit that “We have relatively low levels of government debt compared to other countries,”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes—yes—another set of wise statements by Nicola Willis, because, on the one hand, the previous Government added more than $100 billion to debt with just about nothing to show from it, which I believe was pretty reckless, and, on the other hand, because of the great work by Sir Bill English and other prudent National Party finance Ministers, our debt had started in a low position, and so it ended up in a lower position than some other countries. But if that lot had stayed in, I can guarantee you this: the debt would have got out of control.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why did she tell the international investment summit that “we need more capital investment” while cutting back Government investment into schools, hospitals, and housing?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The member should be very cautious before she makes statements in this House that cannot be backed up by the facts, and I would sincerely ask her to go back, look at the words she used in that question, and see if she can find factual verification for them, because this is a Government that in its first Budget invested more money in school buildings, invested more money in transport infrastructure, invested more money in housing, such that we have added more than 4,000 public homes since we came to office, such that we have added more classrooms, we have built more schools, and we have more than $6 billion worth of roads under construction. So get your facts right. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just wait. It’s your own colleagues that are holding things up. Just a minute; just a little bit of time here. All right.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why is it that she says one thing about the Government’s books to international investors but is more than comfortable to say the complete opposite to the New Zealand public?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: This is like patsy hour! I’ve given the member the answer, and I’ll give it to you again, which is this: on the one hand, we have had years of prudent fiscal management, including by Sir Bill English, who managed to get debt down to extremely low levels. We then had the spendthrift days of the Labour Government, who brought that debt up to 40 percent of GDP, and because we started from a good base, because of the prudent work of previous National Governments, it meant that, relatively, our debt is still quite low compared to some countries in the OECD. But I would caution the member this: New Zealand is a country that is prone to significant economic shocks, be they climatic events, be they seismic events, be they trade-related events. So it has been the longstanding position of both Labour- and National-led Governments that it makes sense to keep our debt at low levels. If the member wishes to depart from that longstanding consensus, I would suggest to her that most New Zealanders would not agree.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary question.

SPEAKER: The Rt Hon Winston Peters, just a minute. A question like that will get a response like that, which makes it very difficult to apply in the strictest sense the Standing Orders.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the finance Minister as to how she’s been able to deal with the much-vaunted promise of economic recovery by mid-2024 of growing GDP, higher wages, higher incomes, higher housing, and the actual facts that she had to deal with when she found out the truth?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Deputy Prime Minister makes a very good point. I think it is highly regrettable that the previous Government made promises that it had put in place strong economic foundations that would lead to recovery and job creation. The facts are clear. Actually, what they left was record inflation, soaring interest rates, and a crushing effect on the economy, which has led to a very high cost of living for New Zealanders, destroyed jobs, and taken this economy backwards, and we on this side of the House are fixing it.

Question No. 5—RMA Reform

5. TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister responsible for RMA Reform: What recent announcements has he made regarding the replacement of the Resource Management Act 1991?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): Yesterday, the Government announced that we have agreed on the shape of the Government’s replacement legislation to a far more liberal planning system with less red tape premised on the enjoyment of property rights. In our first year, we repealed the previous reforms of the last Government and made a series of targeted amendments. We also passed the Fast-track Approvals Act, and now we are getting on with the job of replacing the Resource Management Act (RMA) completely. We set 10 principles for the new system. We’ve received a report from the Expert Advisory Group; I want to thank the chair, Janette Campbell, for the reports—an excellent high-quality piece of work that Cabinet has now endorsed—and we’ll be getting on with developing the legislation.

Tom Rutherford: What are the key features of this new, more enabling planning system?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, Cabinet has agreed to two new Acts, a narrower scope, property rights at the core, simplified national direction, clear environmental limits, more standardisation, streamlined council plans including spatial planning, and stronger environmental compliance enforcement and monitoring. Standardised zoning will be a key feature of the new system, and it might surprise members of the House to learn that across the country there are currently 1,175 different kinds of zones; in the entirety of Japan, there are 13. It’s our view that elected representatives should spend more time focusing on and talking to their communities about where density should and should not occur, and less time focusing on the enormous number of technical details that go into regulating that density. Standardised zones make up just one part of the new system but do give a sense of the ambition that we are aiming to achieve.

Tom Rutherford: What are the key benefits New Zealanders can expect to see from this new planning system?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, there’s been some preliminary economic analysis done by Castalia which estimates a 45 percent saving in process costs compared to the RMA. There will be further economic work done as policy is developed and as bills—plural—are prepared, and that is before we consider the wider economic benefits. The broader point is this: we need to change the culture of “no” that permeates decision making in this country. Whether it’s aquaculture off the coast of the South, or a new green six-star building replacing a heritage gravel pit next to a train station in our biggest city, the RMA has obstructed growth instead of enabling it. Our aim is to change that.

Tom Rutherford: What response has he seen—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a minute. Away you go.

TOM RUTHERFORD: What response has he seen to this announcement so far?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It’s been quite overwhelming in terms of support. The Employers and Manufacturers Association said they strongly support the direction of travel: “The proposed changes will allow for more efficient development”. The Planning Institute welcomed the announcement: “Spatial planning … is a no-brainer. This will be a game changer for proactive planning”. Business New Zealand also welcomed it. Following announcements yesterday, today I have written to the relevant spokespeople from the Opposition, from Labour and the Greens, inviting their involvement in the process to replace the RMA. Our core policy intentions remain obvious, but we do want to try and work—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: You said yesterday you weren’t going to listen.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, Judith Collins wrote to David Parker in 2021. We’re still waiting for a reply, so we have reached out in good faith and I’m looking forward to meeting with the relevant spokespeople and providing a briefing from the chair of the expert group.

Simon Court: How is the Government going to protect property owners from busybodies seeking to impose restrictions on their enjoyment of their private property rights?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, that is a very good question. The ability for people all over the country to object to quite minor developments is one of the real battlegrounds in the RMA right now. For example, I saw people in I think it was Waipukurau objecting to the building of a McDonald’s in Wānaka. Why the people of Waipukurau get to have a say on what gets built in Wānaka is beyond me. The entry points for people into the system are too easy. Participation should be targeted at the plan-making process. Of course, only those materially affected by an activity will be able to participate in consent processes, and there’ll be more limits around the notification process. We don’t need every Tom, Dick, and Harry trying to have a say in how people use private property.

SPEAKER: Hold on.

Simon Court: Minister, how is the Government—

SPEAKER: Hold on. Just wait on. I’ll call you. Simon Court.

SIMON COURT: How is the Government going to ensure people can get on with building, developing, and farming without having to get consents for everything?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There will be fewer consents required as the system is more permissive. The new Acts will also not control as many effects and there will be a higher threshold for those it does control, focused on the economic concept of externalities. There will be more standardisation of plans. Spatial plans and national policy direction will make it clearer where environmental constraints are and where they aren’t. Where councils want to impose regulatory controls on private property that have a regulatory impact akin to a taking, there will be compensation required, because the free ability of councils to impose regulatory restrictions that devalue land on private property has led to regulatory overreach by councils doing exactly that. On this side of the House, we believe in private property as the foundation stone for a market economy that grows over time. That’s what the RMA changes will do.

Question No. 6—Economic Growth

6. Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she agree with the statement of Hon Nicola Willis, “On our watch there may be fewer people wearing lanyards on Lambton Quay, but there are going to be a lot more people wearing high-vis and hard-hats”; if so, why?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister for Economic Growth): Can I first welcome the member to her new role. Yes. That statement was said in a previous capacity, during a time in which I was the Minister for the Public Service, and I am happily informed by the current Minister for the Public Service that the Government is continuing in our success in moving roles from the back office to the front line, with a significant reduction in money spent on lanyard-wearing consultants and an 8 percent reduction in policy roles, which has allowed us to invest more in front-line roles, including more than 2,000 additional front-line nurses.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Why has there been a reduction of over 13,000 people working in construction, wearing high-vis and hard hats, since her Government took office?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I thought the member might use this dubious statistic that a number of members opposite have been using in their media releases and so I would encourage the House to listen. Certainly, the construction sector has been affected by the downturn, but she is over-egging the impact of jobs, because she is using a novel data series that Stats New Zealand says only “has provisional status”. What Stats New Zealand says are the most reliable job-related statistics for New Zealand come from the quarterly employment survey (QES) and over the last year—that is December 2023 to December 2024—the QES shows a slight increase in construction jobs, up by 400.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does she agree with Engineering New Zealand Chief Executive Richard Templer, who said the pipeline of infrastructure work had “all but dried up” and that it was having “a devastating impact on the profession”; if not, why not?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: What I do agree is that when interest rates soar as high and quickly as they have in recent years, one of the most sensitive sectors is construction, who, when those interest rates are high, are less likely to borrow for more projects. That has certainly had an effect on the New Zealand economy and many people in the construction sector have felt it. However, I would also note that, since coming to Government, we have built more than 5,171 social houses. [Interruption] We have more than $6 billion worth of New Zealand Transport Agency projects in construction. See, the members laugh because they are so unacquainted with the facts that when I use them, they find it laughable. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Please stop. That barracking will stop like that. The Minister will pick up her answer halfway through.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: I totally respect, sir, your role in maintaining order in the House. However, when we have a situation where the Prime Minister has previously claimed in this House to have built so many houses, the housing Minister has said in this House that they have funded none, and now the finance Minister is making a similar claim, what option have we got but to call that out?

SPEAKER: You do have an option, and that is to refer the matter as a matter of privilege. Misleading the House is an extreme breach of privilege and if the member thinks that it’s happening and Ministers are doing that, then he should bring a privilege charge.

Hon Nicola Willis: Point of order. I do feel my honour has been impinged, so I would like to refer the member to the source, which is the change in public homes dashboard, which shows the net change in total public homes, December 2023 to January 2025: 5,171 homes added, including 4,096 Kāinga Ora public homes and 1,075 community housing providers public homes. Those are the numbers I’m relying on. I don’t know which ones he’s using.

SPEAKER: I’ll just make the point that that’s the last time someone is going to use a point of order to attack another part of the House. That’s not acceptable. [Interruption] Excuse me. Put your hands up. Who wants to go? [Interruption] Mr Bishop, do you want to go on your way? I’ve made the point, and I think people should just take it on board. Ginny Andersen.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Why did her Government suspend—

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Mr Speaker? I hadn’t finished my answer. We had the back of—

SPEAKER: No, well, I’d finished listening to it. [Interruption] And that is disorderly. Don’t do that. When the House goes quiet, ask your next question.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Why did her Government suspend Kāinga Ora’s build programme when the construction sector themselves warned the “indecision or pause [for] Kāinga Ora is actually contributing to the recessionary effect on the construction sector.”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: This is a very important point and it’s one that I would encourage the member to get acquainted with the facts on, because I have seen that this is an issue that has caused a lot of consternation for members opposite. Go and look at the public housing dashboard. What that shows is in the period since December 2023, more than 5,000 public homes have been added, and that is because the Kāinga Ora build programme has continued. In addition to that, at the last Budget, our Government—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Sorry, stop. It can’t carry on. Keep asking questions if you want to, but barracking across the House is not helping, nor is the intensity of the answers being given. Factual answers: good; heavily emotional answers: not good. The Minister may continue.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In addition to that, in our first Budget, the Government made additional funding available to deliver social housing places from community housing providers, and I am advised that since December last year, more than 1,075 new community homes have been added to the public housing stock. So I welcome a debate with the member—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: You’ll have delivered homes that are not yet funded for—that’s just wrong.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —but to say that we have stopped building public houses is factually, completely, wrong, and Mr Hipkins should stop saying it.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker—point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, the Minister has just made a very misleading claim in the House herself, where she talked about funding that her Government had allocated for some new social housing and then said how many had been delivered. The new funding the Government’s allocated doesn’t come in till next year, so she’s made a claim that is simply not true.

SPEAKER: And there will be—obviously I can’t know that, but there is a remedy for you if you choose to use it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In the interests of planning going forward, could the Minister tell us as to whether there’s been any period in the last 40 years where the housing construction has shrunk in the way it did between 2020 and 2023?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the Deputy Prime Minister highlights a very important point, which is one of the most difficult periods, of course, for the construction sector—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, hang on. Wait on, sorry. We’re just going to go into silence for the rest of this brief answer.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: A very difficult period for the construction sector was during the lockdowns, during COVID-19, and, subsequently, additional challenges for the construction sector have come from very high interest rates.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does she agree with the National Party’s infrastructure spokesperson Chris Bishop, who said in 2020, “the construction sector is crying out for certainty. Jobs literally depend on the Government getting on with the job.”, and, if so, why does New Zealand have the lowest number of people working in construction since June 2021?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, yes, I completely agree with the Minister for Infrastructure, which is why as a Government we’ve taken steps to fast track major developments, which those members have opposed. And when the hundreds of construction jobs that result from those projects come on board, I look forward to members opposing those too. It is why we have introduced new reforms to the Resource Management Act, so that construction activity can get under way faster. It’s why we have an extensive programme of reform being led by the Minister for Building and Construction, to make it cheaper and faster to build homes. We are a Government on the side of construction and building and doing it faster. Fewer people like Duncan Webb saying “No” to supermarkets, and more people saying “Yes”.

SPEAKER: How many times do I have to say don’t bring attacks on Opposition members into it before I take some action? I’ll get a ton of letters tomorrow saying I’ve been far too lenient, so I won’t be from this point on. Is this a point of order or a question?

Hon Chris Bishop: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Supplementary question, the Hon Chris Bishop.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Minister confirm that in 2024 the Government built more school classrooms than in 2023, with better value for money, through standardised design and modular off-site builds?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, I can confirm that. That was a result of the additional $1.5 billion dollars that we invested in school property. The cost, I understand, has gone down from $1.2 million on average per classroom to $800,000 per classroom. Of course, what that means is we can build more classrooms with taxpayer money, which is a good result for New Zealand students and their families.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Supplementary. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, just a minute.

Hon Ginny Andersen: When she said that there would be more people wearing high-viz and hard hats under her watch, was she just referring to people in the National Party caucus?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well—

SPEAKER: No, sit down. The question’s out of order.

Question No. 7—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How can he justify Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms that, according to Cabinet minutes, will “require changes to be made to settlement redress,” without first having consulted with those iwi settlement agreements?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: There will, of course, be—we will honour our obligations in our settlements that we have made; there just won’t be a generic open-ended Treaty clause statement.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What does he say to the 65-plus iwi we spoke to this morning, who had no idea these reforms were taking place until they saw it on the news last night?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, there has been targeted consultation with iwi since the end of last year.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How does he plan to recognise Treaty settlements through the RMA reform, when his reform will violate every settlement that has been reached to date?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I reject the characterisation of that question. This is a Government that wants to get RMA reform and planning under control so we can get things built. I found it very interesting that there are a number of iwi that are actually wanting to work with fast track—for example, because they find the planning laws incredibly frustrating and constraining.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What does the Government plan to do if it cannot reach agreements with iwi on potential changes to their settlements?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we are going to make sure we change our planning laws, period. It is happening. We are revoking what has been in place. We’re putting two new laws in place. We’ll have our first reading in the House before the end of the year. This is a complex area. We’ve got lots of conversations to have with lots of stakeholders across the piece, over the next few months.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Minister responsible for RMA Reform has written to many iwi on many occasions about RMA reform, and that the Minister has extensive meetings with the pou taiao branch of the Iwi Chairs Forum in relation to these matters on a regular basis?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, I can, and that’s why I don’t understand where the members questions are coming from.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Can the Prime Minister advise the House which iwi said that they support the changes that are being proposed to the RMA?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, they haven’t seen the changes. What we’ve announced is a high-level approach that Cabinet has taken decisions around to actually rewrite our planning laws, because we need to get things built in this country. I’m sure there are many iwi, as we’ve seen through the fast-track process, that actually want to be freed up so they can actually build things in partnership with others, as we’ve seen.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How will the Prime Minister guarantee to New Zealanders that these reforms won’t ignite further legal action from iwi against the Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we’ve seen iwi, actually, through their partnership with us in the infrastructure investor summit recently—we’ve seen iwi submitting projects under the fast-track legislation because they want to get things built and done. We’re very aligned on that; we both want to get things done.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How does the Prime Minister explain to iwi that he deeply acknowledges the power of the Māori economy, but not their Treaty rights under iwi settlements?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How does the Prime Minister explain to iwi that he deeply acknowledges the power of the Māori economy, but does not acknowledge their rights within the iwi settlement?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I reject the characterisation of that question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister: is it not the fact, though, that the Māori people can be assured things are on the change, as Hone Rankin recently said, because they are sick and tired of this sort of woke leadership from certain parts of Māori politics and they’re coming back home?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I can just say Māori, or non-Māori, want this Government to deliver for them and improve outcomes. One of the ways we do that is we change our planning laws because it’s been holding New Zealand back for a very, very long time.

Question No. 8—Internal Affairs

8. TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: What recent announcements has she made about the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Five years ago today, New Zealand was placed into COVID-19 alert level 4, or “lockdown”—a decision made by the Government at the time that had significant impacts on families, businesses, health, and education. Last year, I announced there would be a second phase of the independent inquiry into COVID-19 to cover outstanding matters of public concern, including the use of vaccines and lockdowns. The inquiry is now open for submissions from the public. Today, on the anniversary of the first lockdown, I reminded all New Zealanders that they have the opportunity to tell the inquiry how the Government’s response to COVID-19 impacted them, their family, and their business.

Todd Stephenson: How can members of the public submit to the inquiry?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: It is easy for any New Zealanders to make a written submission about their own personal experiences living through the COVID-19 period. This could include how they were impacted as an individual or their family or their business. Submissions can be made through the online portal at covid19inquiry.nz—submissions close at midnight, 27 April.

Todd Stephenson: What issues are in scope of the inquiry?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: ACT’s coalition agreement included a commitment to expand the terms of reference for the inquiry after public feedback. The Government then expanded the scope of phase 2 to include the use of vaccine mandates and safety, public health tools, extended lockdowns in Auckland and Northland, and the impact on health and education. The full terms of reference are available on the inquiry’s website, and I would ask any member of the public to please read the terms of reference before they make their submission.

Question No. 9—Infrastructure

9. DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) to the Minister for Infrastructure: What recent action has he taken on infrastructure growth?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister for Infrastructure): Earlier this month, the Prime Minister and I hosted the New Zealand Infrastructure Investment Summit in Auckland, which was attended by over 100 world-leading investors and construction companies. It was great to have New Zealand firms and iwi leaders there, too. We talked about our infrastructure vision and pipeline, how we’re making it easier to do business here, and other investment opportunities in our growth sectors and the Māori economy. It’s a real demonstration of our plan for economic growth and was a huge win for New Zealand.

Dana Kirkpatrick: What announcements did the Government make at the investment summit?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It was great to announce investable and developable opportunities in public infrastructure, including Christchurch Men’s Prison and the Northland road of national significance, the Northland Expressway. We also announced exciting market soundings for tolling concessions on our roads and the second harbour crossing in Auckland, so we can get expert feedback on how to maximise the efficiency and public benefit of these nation-shaping projects. Of course, we also showcased our long-term infrastructure pipeline, to try and give the private sector confidence to stay here and invest in people, plant, and equipment.

Dana Kirkpatrick: What tangible outcomes have come out of the summit so far?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There have been many outcomes. To give just a couple of examples: Plenary, which manages more than $100 billion in assets worldwide, is opening an office here in New Zealand. They’ve committed to bidding for public-private partnerships over the next five years, partnering with local suppliers to ensure local businesses benefit. And it was great to see the Italian tunnel company Ghella, which was preparing to leave New Zealand after completing the 16.2-kilometre Central Interceptor. But after the positivity of the summit, they have decided to keep their workers, expertise, and tens of millions of dollars of plant, equipment, and associated services here. It was also great to see the Italian company Webuild. Their executive vice-president said, “The Italians are coming back.” Fantastic news. They helped build the Tongariro hydro scheme in the 1960s, and the Italians are coming back.

Dana Kirkpatrick: What feedback has he heard about the investment summit?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It’s just an enormous dose of positivity. Civil Contractors’ Alan Pollard said, “This holistic, united approach renews our confidence in the pipeline. It is what we need right now.” There was also the chairman and CEO of Spanish investor Acciona, José Manuel Entrecanale, who said the Government was to be congratulated for bringing investors together at the summit and indicated interest in bidding on the Northland Expressway and the second harbour crossing. And, of course, global investment group CDPQ, which has had an interesting history in New Zealand, was also encouraged by the messages. The Sydney-based managing director, Jean-Étienne Leroux, said, “We are looking for predictability and stability. I have been covering this region for more than 10 years and we are now very happy to feel our capital is so welcome in this country.” It was a great success.

Question No. 10—Health

10. Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement regarding the health workforce, “understaffing—more fake news”; if not, why not?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health): In the context of talking about Labour’s bloated bureaucracy, yes, as I went on to say—and I quote—“They’ve talked about leadership. All they’re focused on is the bureaucracy. We’re focused on the front line, and on delivery. I will be relentless in my focus on the five health targets and making sure New Zealanders can access their GPs. I don’t stand here not conscious of the challenge in front of me, and in front of this Government, because we know how important this is to every single New Zealander.”

Hon Peeni Henare: Is it “fake news” that understaffing at Whakatāne Hospital means that families are having to travel long distances to access basic maternity care such as epidurals and caesareans, putting pregnant women and their babies at risk?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As the member will know, there are always services where there is need for healthcare workers. In that instance, there has been a resignation, I think, of a couple of the surgeons, and that has left vacancies. Health New Zealand is rapidly filling those and intends to have that service up and running again as quickly as possible.

Hon Peeni Henare: Is it “fake news” that a new mother who couldn’t be cared for at Whakatāne Hospital because of understaffing was taken to Tauranga Hospital where she was told that her care couldn’t be prioritised because they too were understaffed?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I’m not aware of that particular instance but I suggest the member put that question in writing. Health New Zealand cares for tens of thousands of people around the clock, across the country, and provides care. My mission and this Government’s mission is to ensure that all New Zealanders can access the timely and quality access to healthcare that they all deserve.

Hon Peeni Henare: Is it “fake news” that palliative care for children is understaffed when there is nobody available to give terminally ill children end-of-life care?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As that member will be aware, it has been traversed in the newspapers. It is a highly specialised service. There has been a senior clinician who has taken extended leave. Health New Zealand is backfilling with other clinical teams at Starship to ensure that those children get the care that they need. At the same time, they are recruiting for additional roles, and there is work under way around a national model of care for paediatric palliative care, which is, of course, an issue in an area where there is a lot of interest by all New Zealanders.

Hon Peeni Henare: Does he stand by his Government’s decision to spend $216 million on a tax cut for tobacco companies when it would cost an estimated $8 million to fund end-of-life care for children throughout New Zealand, and why won’t he fund it?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As I just said in my previous answer, there is work under way around a national model of care for paediatric palliative care. This Government has invested significantly more money into health. We’re spending around $30 billion a year in health, and our expectation is that Health New Zealand delivers the timely, quality access to healthcare that all New Zealanders deserve.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. In that question, there was an allegation of $200 million spent in tax cuts for tobacco or cigarettes. That is demonstrably false and has been repeated in this House over and over again, and I’m asking you to next time demand that that sort of question comes up with the evidence behind what they’re saying. It is a total and unfathomable lie that it’s got away with for month after month now, and we’re not going to stand here and take it any longer.

SPEAKER: Well, if I sat here and required validation or confirmation of any claim that’s made inside this House, the House would make no progress whatsoever as I was wading my way through it. What I would say to you is the same as I said to the Hon Kieran McAnulty earlier—if you believe someone has misled the House by way of statement or allegation, there is a remedy under the Standing Orders.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir. You are quite right to point out the proper process, and we will pursue that but it is totally inappropriate, regardless of what point any member wishes to make, to accuse another member of lying, and the Rt Hon Winston Peters did just that.

SPEAKER: No. I was listening very carefully—very carefully—and there was a general statement that the claim that was being made was being made too frequently in this House. It wasn’t directed at any particular member, as I can recall.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Speaking to that, sir. There’s only one member that he’s referring to, and that is the member who was asking the question.

SPEAKER: No. I’ve heard it said by many members, actually, over the last 18 months.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: When any member says that a statement is a lie, is it your ruling that that is appropriate language in this House?

SPEAKER: Well, he didn’t say it was a lie.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: He did, sir—he did.

SPEAKER: Then I’ll look at it and do something about that at a later point. I’m not getting into the argument today.

Hon Peeni Henare: How can New Zealanders have confidence in his leadership when hospitals are having to operate without doctors, mothers and children aren’t getting the care they deserve, and he stood up in this House and called understaffing “fake news”?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, as I said in my primary answer, I was referring to the bloated bureaucracy which the last Government focused its six years on while wait-lists ballooned. They let wait-lists balloon, they removed the targets, and they focused on bureaucracy, rather than on delivery. That’s what I’m focused on—getting this thing fixed.

Hon Peeni Henare: Why won’t he just apologise for those comments when every single day there are more real-life examples of mothers and children going without care?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: If that member wants to talk about wait-lists, we can talk about the 2,500 percent increase in people waiting for elective treatment under that Government. We are turning the health system around. We’re investing more money. We’re making sure we are putting the focus back on front-line services rather than the bureaucracy that he and his Government were focused on.

Question No. 11—Prime Minister

11. Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he agree that millions of dollars of Government funding going to private hospitals to do elective operations could help many more patients if it was invested in the ailing public system?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No. Many Governments under different political persuasions have had contracts between Health New Zealand and with private hospital providers. It makes a lot of sense, frankly, when we’ve got things like knee replacements, hip replacements, cataract surgeries, to use the private hospital capacity as well. When you’re lying on a bed, looking up at a ceiling, you’re less hung up as to whether it’s being done in a public system or a private system; you just want relief done as quickly as possible.

Hon Marama Davidson: Then, does he agree with Dr David Bailey that “Had that money been available over the last 12 months, we could have treated many more patients than they are going to do with this. This is a political move to make them look good.”, and, if so, will he instead put this money into the public health system?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve just explained to that member, we want to make sure we have a very strong public healthcare system, but we also use private health system capacity in order to deliver for patients. What matters most here is patient outcomes. Given the remarks I’ve just heard, I just would point to the former Minister of Health, who said, in 2020, “I am not opposed to the use of private providers to help speed up treatment.” Of course, that was the Leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think New Zealanders will be happy to know that our collective resources are being spent on helping private companies make profit off healthcare?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I think, when New Zealanders are facing massive wait-lists for elective surgeries and getting access to first specialist appointments, what they want is a Government that’s focused on patients and outcomes for patients. And as to how it’s actually delivered for them, they want their issues fixed and they want their service delivered. That’s what this new Minister is focused on—is patient centricity.

Hon Marama Davidson: Then, did he prioritise equity when his Government decided to invest in private hospitals, considering that this is likely to disadvantage people with acute health needs?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I think the member is misunderstanding this conversation and was part of a Government, and a Minister in the previous Government, that also had contracts with private health providers in order to deliver health outcomes for New Zealanders—that’s what we’re focused on. Private healthcare capacity should be used. Public healthcare capacity should be used and continue to be built up. It’s an “and”, not an “or”.

Hon Marama Davidson: Then, what does he say to the Associations of Professional and Executive Employees union, who gathered at Parliament this morning to warn against the failures of corporately owned private lab testing that results in lab workers being paid less?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, we are here to deliver outcomes for patients and New Zealanders. If that means we are using public and private healthcare resources and capital and capacity to deliver those outcomes, we will.

Question No. 12—Trade and Investment

12. SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Trade and Investment: What recent announcement has the Government made regarding New Zealand’s trade relations with India?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister for Trade and Investment): Last week, the Prime Minister and I announced New Zealand has formally launched negotiations on a comprehensive free-trade agreement with India. This is a significant breakthrough in the economic relationship, with the last negotiations ending almost 10 years ago. This comes after a concerted period of increased engagement led by the Prime Minister. Through these negotiations, we aim to deliver economic opportunities to benefit all New Zealanders.

Suze Redmayne: When will negotiations on the New Zealand - India Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement start?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, yesterday, I published a call for submissions for interested New Zealanders to share their views on the comprehensive free-trade agreement with India. Negotiators will have their first discussions this week and they will start to exchange texts in the coming months, and I expect the first in-person negotiations to take place in New Zealand next month. Both sides have made the conclusion of this agreement a priority, however we’ve also agreed that we must take the time required to secure a high-quality deal that delivers for both New Zealand and India.

Suze Redmayne: How will a comprehensive free-trade agreement deliver on the Government’s growth agenda?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, when we came to Government 16 months ago, we committed to making our relationship with India a priority. Over the past six years, Australia increased their exports to India by $7 billion per year and concluded a trade agreement during that time, while our exports fell by $550 million per year. Since then, led by the Prime Minister’s close relationship with Prime Minister Modi, we’ve lifted our engagement across all levels, including a very important visit by the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister Peters, last year. Every New Zealander can be assured that through our free-trade agreement negotiations, we aim to level the playing field with Australia so that New Zealand exporters can also benefit from greater access and lower tariff rates, which in turn will grow our economy.

Suze Redmayne: How else is the Government strengthening ties with India?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, the comprehensive free-trade agreement or negotiations are only one part of the Government’s commitment to stepping up all parts of the New Zealand - India relationship. Just last week, the Prime Minister led the largest ever trade mission to India—over 120 delegates—during which 33 business memorandums of understanding and six Government memorandums of cooperation were signed. These included Air New Zealand and Air India committing to better air connectivity between our two countries, including direct flights by 2028, and increased cooperation on defence, customs, horticulture, education, sport, culture, and forestry. This is all part of our ambitious goal to lead more trade missions than any Government during this part of Parliament and to double exports by value in 10 years.

Bills

Appropriation (2023/24 Confirmation and Validation) Bill

First Reading

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2023/24 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a first time.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the remaining stages of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill; the third readings of the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, and the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill; the remaining stages of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill and the Customer and Product Data Bill; the third reading of the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill; and the remaining stages of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill, the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill, and the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

Again, I’m not moving urgency with any particular pleasure, but the very necessary amendments to the Bail Act in the Parliament’s last sitting period, which took a considerably longer length of time than, frankly, was required but also was expected, has led us to this point. The first two bills in the urgency motion must both be assented before 1 April, coming up in a few days, so we need to progress the remaining stages this week. There are three bills in the urgency motion the Government has committed to passing by the end of the month, which we will do. The dairy industry restructuring and the social workers registration bills both have provisions that enter into force in May, so we’re looking to progress these measures as well.

As I say, the real reason for urgency is the Bail Act amendments in the last sitting period that took up a lot of time. I’m not moving it with any pleasure, but it is what it is. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

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.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for further consideration on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill.

Bills

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 13 March.

Part 4 Amendments to Goods and Services Tax Act 1985, and Schedule 1

Bills

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CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 202425, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill. When we were last debating this bill, we had finished the debate on Part 3. Members, we now come to Part 4. Part 4 is the debate on clauses 154 to 186, “Amendments to Goods and Services Tax Act 1985”, and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 4 stand part.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): It’s good to be back here debating the committee stage of this bill. Just to remind the committee, we have been working through it clause by clause—

David MacLeod: Question.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —in a pretty orderly fashion—a very orderly fashion, Mr MacLeod.

I note that we have now been moved into urgency because this whole bill must be passed, as a constitutional matter, by 31 March. The GST section itself doesn’t need to be passed, but the whole bill does. However, I do want to go through some of the amendments that are being made to the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985. Of course, many of the terms used in GST are very similar to the terms used in income tax and other taxes, but there are some notable differences and some real attention to our accounting detail in the GST Act.

So, just to begin with, I have a fairly simple question for the Minister of Revenue, but, I have to say, it is one that as a former accountant—and I know that the Minister is a former accountant, as well; Mr MacLeod looks quite interested over there, too—I find quite interesting. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to clause 155, which is on page 153 of the bill as reported from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and it has got a very simple set of changes to definitions in section 2 of the Goods and Services Tax Act. But the one that I’ve found interesting is that in clause 155(2) and (3), we’re repealing the definition of a “credit note” and repealing the definition of a “debit note”. Now, it does seem like a very, very small change, but, of course, in order to account accurately for GST and in order for a business to account accurately for it, they need to be able to work out what the GST portion is on each transaction and record it in the GST section of their accounting system. Then, where money goes flying back and forth and where, perhaps, goods are returned so there’s a credit note, and further goods are sold, or all sorts of things go on, so that there’s a debit note, it just seems to me that those credit notes and debit notes are basic bookkeeping records.

No matter how much we have transferred our bookkeeping away from the old-fashioned books and ledgers and the old-fashioned writing it out by hand—which, frankly, is the way that I first learnt to do accounting, which does date me a little bit. We use computers and very sophisticated software to do our accounting, and a lot of the time people can’t even track where a transaction happens. Nevertheless, sitting right beneath it all is that old-fashioned system of books of account, of journal entries, and of those documents of first record, and in the event of an audit—

Hon Simon Watts: So what’s your question?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I’m getting there, Minister; I’m getting there. In the event of an audit—

Hon Simon Watts: Yeah, come on—we’re wasting time.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, you can’t call from the chair.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —we actually need to know where those items go back to. We need the evidence of them, and yet here we are, repealing the definitions of “credit note” and “debit note”—some of these basic accounting records.

So, presumably, something has changed, whether in accounting systems or the like, and those definitions are no longer needed. But I would like the Minister to explain exactly why we actually no longer need something which has been an integral part of our bookkeeping systems for a very, very long time.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a series of questions which relate to clause 159(1). These are of particular interest to communities in South Auckland who both rely on the port and the airport for jobs. We are very proud to have 16,000 jobs at the Auckland Airport, and half as many at the two ports that function together at the Auckland port and the Wiri port. So I’m asking here about zero-rating of vessels, which is impacted by these rules, but I’m going to ask the Minister of Revenue some particular questions about the impact on workforce because of these changes.

Just to explain this, GST has always been intended to be a tax on goods and services consumed in New Zealand, so it would make sense perhaps to zero-rate goods and services that are associated with vessels which are not intended to be in New Zealand for any length of time. This is a change that makes that sort of update, but it will have an impact on not only those places in South Auckland but also on the people who work around them. This bill changes the GST zero-rating rules for international vessels.

It’s a technical change, but the real-world impact is that for these people who work in these areas, particularly in the marine jobs, and are represented both by the Maritime Union of New Zealand and other unions in this area and in the aviation sector by the Public Service Association and by E tū, there are some real questions around how jobs will be affected, or if they will in fact have more opportunities to work on international vessels that are here in New Zealand and are sort of transiting because of this effective tax treatment they’re getting.

So the services provided directly to commercial vehicles that are temporarily in New Zealand are zero-rated under this. That means that—I assume and want to test with the Minister—repairs, maintenance, refuelling are all included in that. My question is really about: if there is no tax take on those activities, what is the expected outcome on the number of those activities and the impact on those industries, and should this as well include other vessels? Did the Minister consider the effect—if it’s aircraft and ship vessels, does that also include, say, military vessels? Does it apply to goods transiting through Auckland as well, say through China through to South America and using Auckland as a hub? What will be the expected impact of that?

The workforce questions in particular are around, you know, New Zealand’s strong maritime workforce. We’re incredibly proud of that workforce. Engineers, dock workers, wharfies, fuel supply—all of those people might be impacted by this, and we wanted to flesh out with the Minister how they will be impacted. Does this change bring more ships into our ports to New Zealand for servicing, and, if so, will it increase those work opportunities?

Thinking through the impact of, say, our maintenance and repair industries, what’s our workforce plan there? These are some of the construction jobs that just this question time we were asking about the impact from the perspective of making sure that we have enough people to work in our maritime industries now. Do we expect the workforce to have significantly different sorts of opportunities, given New Zealand might be more effectively used as a hub for these sorts of services? We know already that many of our ports around New Zealand are used in this way for transiting vessels, and so is there an opportunity here to increase that, and, if so, what is the likely impact on the workforce going to be?

In our shipbuilding industry as well, are we expecting more work in this area, particularly around those shipbuilding hubs like those in Auckland that have grown up over the years with our incredible reputation on the world stage as yacht builders? Will we expect any change there?

My final question to the Minister on this is: how do we ensure that any impacts on our industries around the sector—particularly our maritime and ports—make sure to prioritise those skilled workers in New Zealand here first? In many of these large-scale projects with construction and maintenance and skilled work that requires machinist skills in New Zealand for many decades, we have had a reliance on the migration in this sector. So I want to ask the Minister: what will the impact be of these changes and can they be used to benefit New Zealand workers first?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much to the members for their questions. The first question raised was in regards to subclauses 155(2) and (3), the removal of “credit note” and “debit note”. This is in regards to the supply correction information changes that were introduced as part of the 2022 omnibus bill, which means that, as a result, these two elements are now redundant, and that aspect has replaced that concept within the Goods and Services Tax Act.

The second question that we’ve had is in regards to the zero-rating of GST on commercial vessels coming through temporarily. I mean, what this is doing is fixing a disparity between the GST treatment that’s applied to the services that are provided to those vessels that are temporarily here in New Zealand. It’s obviously not the intent or the policy intent for GST, too, to be applied to services, particularly where the vessels are merely passing through New Zealand to get to their ultimate destination. The reason for this change is because the consumption of goods and services will most probably occur outside of New Zealand in that context. And ultimately, the change that we’re putting through reduces the compliance costs on foreign entities that operate commercial vehicle vessels here. It is only limited to shipping vessels; it isn’t more broad than that. I do know that the Finance and Expenditure Committee did get into this point in significant or in a reasonable amount of detail, but I won’t repeat that.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Minister of Revenue for his answers there. As my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell indicated, we are working through this clause by clause. In particular, I want to now, I guess you could say, leap forward to clause 157 and ask the Minister some questions around that, particularly as it pertains to the transfer of an emissions unit and the rules for transferring assets. So what we have here, an emissions unit, for the purposes of the Goods and Services Tax Act, is a unit as defined in section 4(1) of the Climate Change Response Act. And the supply of an emissions unit is almost always zero-rated under the GST Act. However, the technical notes to the bill say there’s an error with the interaction between one of the deregistration provisions in the GST Act in the zero-rating rules. What the bill’s commentary doesn’t go into any detail around, though, is specifically which deregistration provision in the GST Act—what is the mischief that we’re trying to rectify here through these amendments in clause 157?

I guess, as well as that, there are some broader questions around that. Why are emissions units deemed to be equivalent to assets; in what circumstances are they like financial services, which is the broader area that it’s falling under here; and how is the ownership and transfer of emissions units determined? Further to that, just in terms of the policy formulation of this part, whether or not there was interplay between the Minister’s own streams of advice in terms of the market for emissions in terms of what advice he may have received from the example of the Climate Change Commission around what it might do in terms of the ebb and flow of emissions. I mean, we’re obviously talking about secondary markets, but I do just want to clarify that this is just pertaining to the secondary market for units and won’t affect the options as they go through. So it’s quite a small area and there are some very specific questions there. I think, in terms of that zero-rating rules and the deregistration, we are looking for some more clarity on exactly which of those provisions in the primary legislation is the mischief that is trying to be rectified through this clause.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Following on from my colleague’s very learned question, I just want to go back to clause 156, because I do have a couple of questions around 156. Now, what 156 is is it amends section 3A, and that is the meaning of input tax. For people watching along at home, input tax is the amount of GST that’s charged when a business buys goods for use in their own business. So it’s the amount that the business itself pays. It’s a tax on the inputs to the business.

There’s a difficulty for people who buy second-hand goods for use in their business—second-hand traders, obviously, because they’re buying from people who aren’t registered for GST. And typically you can claim an amount of GST you’ve paid because someone has charged you an amount of GST. But, of course, if you’re buying from the garage sale down the road, where the person isn’t registered for GST, the way it’s sorted out is you claim a notional input tax deduction, so it keeps all the GST records fair and square and enables businesses to claim what they could ordinarily claim. It’s a nice point and the stuff around that input tax deduction to the purchase of second-hand goods has been there right since the Act first came in 1985.

But there’s an interesting little bit going here in replacement section 3A(3BB)(b), inserted by , and it seems to contemplate a scenario where the GST-registered person who buys a second-hand good or buys a good or a service from someone who is—well, it’d have to be a good—unregistered can claim a greater input tax deduction than would ordinarily be the case. This is where I find it hard to follow—in the circumstance where the particular good has changed hands several times between unregistered people. It might particularly apply to land where it happens. So it seems to be that through the way that the law was written, it contemplated allowing this deduction, but the way it’s written enabled a circumstance where people could possibly swap back several times, swap land around several times, and then the eventual purchaser gets a rather more substantial input tax deduction than they ought to have gotten.

It’s a little complicated and probably needs diagrams to show exactly what’s going on and the flows of money back and forth or input tax deductions back and forth and so on. But in terms of putting this sort of clause in, you’d have to think that there had been some mischief actually going on. It’s a good point for us lawmakers. If you look at—just bear with me for a moment—Henry VIII’s court, Henry VIII issues repeated regulations banning small dogs from his court. So he’ll ban the small dogs, but then just a few months or a year or so later, the same ban is out there again, and then they creep back in and the same ban is there again.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Did he tax them?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: No, he didn’t tax them. The point is you only make bans against something that’s actually going on. So this is a rule that’s been put in place. But what I want to know from the Minister of Revenue was whether there was any actual mischief going on or whether it is just a possible mischief that could have gone on. So I get that we need to shut down possible loopholes as well as actual loopholes or loopholes that are actually being exploited, but if the Minister could just give us some insight into what was actually going on and whether it was a significant amount of revenue that was involved. Of course, if it was something that was actually going on, well, it’s great to see that particular loophole being shut down. People should pay their taxes—no more and no less than they ought.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): I thank the members for those questions. I’ll start with clause 156 and then come to clause 157. The member may recall, from select committee proceedings, that the New Zealand Law Society identified a scenario on this exact point. The purpose of the amendment here is to address an integrity issue where taxpayers could potentially generate unintended GST refunds, in certain circumstances, by selling the same land multiple times between a chain of associated persons. That’s the purpose of what the amendment’s doing. The Law Society identified a scenario where that could play through; hence, the select committee made some amendments but accepted and put this change through, and it’s got retrospective impact back to 30 March 2022, in order to remove that risk. So it is a remedial item to deal with a scenario which may eventuate, and that’s what it does.

The member’s question in regards to clause 157(1)—a question, I recall, in regards to amendments to ensure that there’s a deemed supply in regards to emissions units, particularly in the circumstances when these emissions units are deregistered from GST—the purpose here is to ensure that, when they are deregistered from GST, this is zero-rated instead of standard-rated. Now, the member noted, in regards to emissions units—I mean, these are generally always zero-rated for GST purposes; however, there is a minor technical error with the interaction between deregistered provisions within the Goods and Services Tax Act and the zero-rating rules, and so this technical amendment here is dealing with that error. There is a potential risk with the current law, as it can derive unintended consequences around a deemed supply in regards to those emissions units; hence, the proposed amendment, which the select committee considered and didn’t make any changes to, will deal with this.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to continue the debate in relation to Part 4, specifically in relation to the Minister of Revenue’s Amendment Paper 247, which he has tabled. I think it’s always important that if an Amendment Paper has been tabled by the Minister, we do have the ability to scrutinise it a bit more, because it hasn’t gone through the select committee process. There’s a number of pages here, so I do want to try and work my way through the Amendment Paper just to get a bit more information around the policy intent of the changes which the Minister intends with the Amendment Paper. Again, we weren’t able to contest it as part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It’s quite clear that since the report back and the revision-tracked version that the select committee put through, there were additional changes which officials recommended to the Minister.

Why I say this, why we need to debate the Amendment Paper in particular—I remember many, many, many, many moons ago, having to be an IRD official in the place of the Minister’s officials and having to ensure that, actually, if there was a remedial amendment that was put through a Supplementary Order Paper, you can’t depend on the select committee report to provide you with the policy intent. You, basically, have to go through Hansard, through the times where the bill’s actually debated in the House, to figure out, OK, first of all, hopefully, the Minister has talked about that Amendment Paper, and then, second of all, about the provision.

So I just want to ask some clarifying questions for the Minister in relation to his Amendment Paper, particularly around new clause 155B. New clause 155B, which is on page 12 of the Minister’s Amendment Paper, brings in, within section 3 of the Goods and Services Tax Act (GST Act)—basically, provides the definitions that are used within the GST Act. It says section 3 has been amended, the meaning of the term “financial services”—so it’s obviously a subparagraph in there. It says “services provided by the collection agency under section 24 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act 2023.”

Now, we have debated the reason, in previous clauses, around this particular provision, the resale right for visual artists, but I want to be able to ask the Minister: does this mean, by including it within the definition of “financial services”, if you look further down into the clauses—you look at clause 157 and it adds a new subsection (29), that “The amount of a resale royalty retained by the collection agency under section 20 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act 2023 is treated as a fee paid by the right holder for the collection agency’s services.”

Then again, at clause 170, there’s a new insertion there, new subclause (1B), and then a new subparagraph (ib), “in the case of a registered person who receives a resale royalty during the taxable period for the resale of an original visual artwork under section 18 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists … the tax fraction of the amount of the resale royalty retained by the collection agency under section 20 of that Act; and”. Then, it continues with new clause 176B, inserting new section 26B, “Resale royalties”, and then it says, “This section applies to … registered [persons]” and then it gives a breakdown of those registered persons, how they fit into that test.

So just while I go into those tests, my question to the Minister is: are you clarifying—because, again, this is a new Amendment Paper—that services provided by the collection agency under section 24 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act is now a financial service and is therefore subject to—because financial services are exempt under GST. So are you saying it doesn’t apply for GST? Then it talks through the different—again, under clause 157, 170.

So just while the Minister considers that, I’ll go through the test for resale royalties where it does apply—new clause 176B, and that’s “This section applies to a registered person who—(a) receives a resale royalty under section 18 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act 2023 … and (b) was notified by the collection agency under regulation 10 of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Regulations … that the resale of the original … artwork which gave rise to the resale royalty was not a supply that was charged with tax under section 8.”

Then there are some qualifying subsections underneath it, such as subsection (2), which says “subsection (3) applies, the registered person must add to the output tax under section 20 for [that] taxable period in which they receive the resale royalty an amount equal to the tax fraction of the amount of [that] resale … including any percentage”—I won’t continue with that particular clause, because it is quite long, but if you go down then to subsection (3), “If the resale of the original visual artwork was zero-rated under section 11” of the GST Act—or is it the resale royalty Act?—it’s “paid to the right holder by the collection agency [and it] must also be zero-rated.”

So my reading of this—and, again, it’s an Amendment Paper by the Minister—under the GST Act, financial services are zero-rated. So they’re subject to GST, but, actually, the amount is zero. Are we bringing in, via the transaction for services provided through the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act, are we saying that that third transaction—so it’s been sold, a royalty’s been paid, then it’s been resold after that; is that not subject to GST because we’re now classing it as a financial service and we’re clarifying under clause 176B what is not a financial service, unless those other criteria apply? Or are we saying it’s subject to GST, it’s a financial service, it’s zero-rated, however it is not classed as a financial service because under clause 176B, if it meets those tests, which I’ve set out, under subclauses (1), (2), and (3), actually it is subject to GST at the 15 percent rate?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): I do have a follow-up to the discussion we had a little bit briefly on clause 156. I was asking what mischief there was amongst this that was actually there, and the Minister of Revenue, on 156, did actually say that there was no particular mischief that had occurred, but the possibility was there, that it had been brought to our attention by the New Zealand Law Society, and so the fix was in.

But I guess the follow-up question to that is just the point: why weren’t the existing associated persons rules sufficient? Because we do actually have associated persons rules already sitting in the Income Tax Act 2007—I just can’t recall whether the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985 ones just piggyback on the Income Tax 2007 ones or not. But there are associated persons rules all through our tax legislation, so why were those rules insufficient to deal with this particular potential mischief?

Again, I’m just concerned that—I appreciate the New Zealand Law Society might have identified this particular potential issue, but whether or not we really needed to go to the extent of changing the law to fix it is a different matter, because, surely, our associated persons rules could have dealt with it, because, as the Minister said, the particular mischief only arose in the case of a number of associated persons being involved. So why weren’t our existing rules good enough, Minister?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much to the member, and I just acknowledge those at home watching this; hopefully you’re enjoying it as much as we are here. In regards to technical queries in the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985—isn’t it exciting? Those particularly in the gallery watching, I’m sure are intrigued.

The point that you were raising there, if I recall back around the New Zealand Law Society, was in a scenario where you’ve got a farmhouse that sits on a piece of farmland and, in effect, the potential for the farmhouse to have a different categorisation under GST purposes than the farmland. That was the scenario that was played through and hence what triggered the amendment around a potential loophole. So that’s the background context around what was going on there.

We had another question by a prior member in regard to clauses, I think, 155B, 170, 157, and 156—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Clause 176.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): —clause 176, that’s right, and 185. Anyone, any other bids? No, that’s all.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): It’s good coverage.

Hon SIMON WATTS: They will relate to artist resale royalty tax changes. So just for the member’s interest, the amendments that we’re making across all of these clauses will ensure that GST is payable on the resale royalties that are payable to artists under the Resale Right for Visual Artists Act 2023. What we are simply doing here is ensuring that the artists and right holders of that artwork are entitled to a resale royalty on the resale of qualifying artwork, and that that is subject to the Act that I noted before, and then making sure the appropriate GST, where appropriate, is considered.

In effect, these changes are ensuring that there is an economically equivalent position—I think you would refer to it as—to non-GST-registered artists and right holders. So the amendment would ensure, in effect, that the appropriate GST treatment of amounts is withheld by the collection agency from the resale royalties by classifying them as fees. So, in effect, that’s what those amendments are doing. As I recall, the Finance and Expenditure Committee spent a bit of time on these clauses, obviously, and didn’t look to make any changes in regards to that.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair. I will take a brief call on both the Minister of Revenue’s answers to the clause 156 questions and to the clause 159 questions, which have really only just begun. Firstly, I will mention clause 156, given the Minister’s answer about farm land and farmhouse land being treated differently for GST purposes and that not being a change which is about intra-group transactions, which would be covered by the added persons rule, which my colleague Deborah Russell spoke about; I want to ask him: is this change going to have an unintended consequence on those businesses that are in the trade of second-hand sales? For example, an excellent Manukau business, 266 Bikes, will buy up second-hand bicycles from community groups, organisations, churches, and individuals and families as well as accepting donations, and then repurpose those to different uses, whether it’s parts of other repair cafes or to sell on to, say, the school bike programme at Manurewa High School—an excellent programme too.

Is this this technical change for an integrity issue about another thing that will then affect some sellers who make a business from transacting with second-hand goods that might have an unintended consequence for some of these smaller retailers? I do think of every electorate MP here in this House who will have experience of these businesses that do great work to repair, and this Parliament is moving forward on further legislation that will actually incentivise more of this sort of retail where businesses are encouraged to be able to repair and prepare parts for repair for consumer use.

My further question is on clause 159(1). He answered that this was simply about fixing a disparity for those vessels that are not intended to consume those goods and services in New Zealand, because that’s not what GST is for. But my question to him was: then doesn’t this rule in the legislation now create further disparities around similar sorts of vessels that are not covered? I think his mechanism makes a remedy to the Customs and Excise Regulations 1996, but those regulations don’t cover all of the sorts of vessels that might logically be included in this change. It doesn’t cover, logically, military vessels, for example, where the consumption will certainly not be in New Zealand. It doesn’t cover certain types of air vessels. There are certainly lots of other categories now that will be knocking on his door, and I want to know what advice he has had about this being a logical extension of these GST rules—so where should he be drawing the line?

I also want to ask him this: Auckland Airport has a real aspiration to be an airport hub for many of the routes that will travel past New Zealand. Is there an impact here on goods that will be transiting through that service—for example, if you are fumigating goods in the whole of craft, should you be exempting that and should you not be exempting services that are to do with those goods? I want the Minister to clarify for us where he has drawn the lines here and whether that does make sense. If he says that it’s about fixing a disparity, then, surely, there shouldn’t be more disparities after he’s done with his amendments.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to the Minister of Revenue as well for his response in relation to clauses 155 to 167B. If I understand the Minister’s response, it’s, effectively, that it is subject to GST unless clause 176B(3) applies, which is where the original visual artwork was zero-rated under section 11, then it must also be zero-rated. So, therefore, economically, it’s the same equal treatment, if I’ve got that right. I just want to acknowledge the Minister for his response and I bet you a policy analyst or a senior policy analyst in 30 years’ time, when they look at this bill, will be very thankful for that response.

Going now to the Minister’s Amendment Paper and to amendments to Student Loan Scheme Act. This is the wonderful about tax omnibus bills.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Sorry, that’s actually in the wrong—

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: OK. My apologies. That goes back to clause 185B, so I will wait for that call to go through that and I will let the member take another call before I go to the next call.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to take another call from the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, but I would like perhaps more questions than—we’ve had a reasonable period on this part, and I’m happy that there might be some more questions, but I want questions rather than, you know, full speeches on this piece. And I’m not pointing at that member; I’m talking generally here. I’m listening for new questions but not speeches.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you for that direction, Madam Chair—I notice that you’re always a very fair Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, I just think this is what the committee of the whole House stage is—it’s about opportunities to ask questions of the Minister. So I think we’ll home in a bit on that.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: In that case, I do want to move on to a clause we haven’t mentioned at all yet: clause 157, immediately after clause 156 which we have discussed. In particular, it’s around the meaning of the term “supply”—a supply is an amount you supply and you pay tax on it. But clause 157 amends section 5 of the Goods and Services Act, and subclause (2) adds, as far as I can tell, new subsection (6E)—oh, no it’s a replacement. But it adds a little bit of information there, that “a payment in the nature of a grant of a subsidy—(a) includes a suspensory loan or advance when the loan or advance becomes non-repayable by reason of its conditions for non-repayment being satisfied:”. So that’s really quite straightforward. It’s basically: had a suspensory loan, the conditions for which the suspensory loan suspends entirely play out, so, in effect, it turns into a grant, and therefore that gets a different GST treatment.

But, again, the question is the same as the one I raised in relation to clause 156, which is, again: was there any mischief being done in this case? Was it something where officials noted that there was a potential for mischief and therefore it should be tidied up, or was it a case where there was an actual problem, where people had noticed a way around the law by sort of using suspensory loans and then converting them to grants, that enabled people to do something was perhaps not quite, shall we say, as straight as we’d like people to be with their tax law?

So a pretty straightforward question there: what mischief was being done, if any; how much of an impact was it having; and why was it worth us taking the time to change the law, unless there was some particular mischief being done this circumstance? So if the Minister of Revenue could answer that, that would be fantastic.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to allow time for the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, the member who spoke previously, to have her question responded to. I just want to check, in relation to clause 161, which amends section 15B of the Goods and Services Tax Act, “Taxable periods aligned with balance dates”—so it’s a remedial change. And it’s a taxable period—for those who aren’t aware—for GST purposes. It’s basically the time period, whether it’s a month, two months, or six months, that people use for accounting for GST. So it basically allows people to align their taxable period with their standard balance date for income tax purposes.

I just want to check in with the Minister of Revenue: is there a scenario where the provisions under clauses 161; 162—I won’t go through it—163; 164; and 165, which replaces section 15EB, would differ in any other case? Again, just making sure that we’ve covered all the different scenarios, because they had come through in submissions. Also, these provisions operate with the Commissioner of Inland Revenue’s approval, so are these circumstances—and, again, it’s a discretionary measure; there are some different discretions within the different tax Acts for the commissioner to use. But clarity is so important, whether that be in a tax information bulletin that’s published by IRD or a standard practice statement, which basically explains when the commissioner’s discretion will be used. Certainty is so important when it comes to tax, particularly around your taxable period, because you could get penalties or you could get use-of-money interest applied. So are there circumstances that the Minister is aware of—knowing that, again, it’s a discretionary measure; we don’t have those tax information bulletins or standard practice statements because usually they’re not released until after the bill—where the Commissioner of Inland Revenue would refuse to allow someone to change their GST taxable period?

So I have two particular questions in relation to clause 161. Would it differ in any other case, in relation to that taxable period? And given it’s at the commissioner’s discretion, are there circumstances in which the commissioner would refuse to allow someone to change their GST taxable period, given we don’t have the supporting documents in order to clarify the intention of the commissioner when applying this discretion in the future?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much, members, for your questions. The question in regard to second-hand goods was raised—clause 156. Just clarifying that this amendment would not impact a typical second-hand goods business, as identified by the member within her electorate.

There was a question in regard to non-taxable Government grants and subsidies, under clause 157(2), (3), and (4)—just out of interest, it does impact clauses 185 and 186 as well. In effect, what we’re doing here, these aren’t policy changes, they are consequential changes to move and improve the accessibility of some of the definitions. So, in effect, we’re moving the content into the Goods and Services Tax Act and removing it out of what was an Order in Council. The reason is Order in Councils can be difficult to find and aren’t that accessible; again, the Finance and Expenditure Committee considered that, thought that was sensible, and put that through.

I think there were some other questions in regard to clause 157(8)—again, that relates to artist resale royalty tax changes—and I think the question was in regard to: “Why?” I mean, in effect, this was a matter, and that’s why it’s in there. Why in the Amendment Paper? Well, basically, the issues relating to artist resale royalty tax changes were identified subsequent to the bill coming into the House, and hence why it was put through as an amendment. But, again, the impacts of that deal with points that, in effect, are remedial in nature and improve the effectiveness of the bill.

The last question the member raised, in regard to clauses 161, 164, 165, and the discretion of the commissioner: well, it sort of goes without saying that the commissioner does have discretion, and we’ve got a very competent commissioner of IRD who’s well respected. Obviously, there will be circumstances where the commissioner may use their discretion to refuse a situation—again, that’s an operational matter that’s within the discretion of the commissioner, obviously, but we’re simply allowing that to ensure that appropriate decisions are made in regard to taxpayers’ situation.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. A further question to add to my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds’ questions around the taxable periods and the circumstances in which people can get the commissioner to approve a change in their taxable period—sometimes it’s aligning with balance date; there are various reasons why. I just want the Minister of Revenue to think for a little bit and to consider the circumstances in which a GST-registered person could repeatedly change their GST taxable period. I think these rules allow the space that a person could change one month and then change back the other way a few months later, and then change again.

Of course, the backstop against that would have to be the commissioner’s approval, but the rules do seem to contemplate that a person is able to do that—that it is permissible within these rules. So, unless the Minister can point me to a particular clause that says a person may do it, say, only once within a particular calendar period—I couldn’t see it sitting in these rules in here, but perhaps it is elsewhere within the GST Act. It would be useful to know. There would be the opportunity for some interesting tax planning there if the commissioner’s discretion was fairly freely granted. So I want to know what protections are in place against that particular sort of behaviour—whether it’s within these clauses. I couldn’t find it within the Act itself. Or are we just relying, in that case, on the commissioner’s discretion?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Well, obviously, taxpayers have the flexibility of choosing what their reporting requirements are in the Goods and Services Tax Act. The circumstances may and can change, hence why there’s flexibility around that. In regard to taxpayers that are deliberately using that for purposes that are deemed by the department as either avoiding or evading tax, then there are provisions within the broader tax system to enable the Inland Revenue Department to deal with those circumstances, which they do regularly.

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.

That the Minister’s amendments to Part 4 set out on Amendment Paper 247 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is,

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 4 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.

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.

Part 4 as amended agreed to.

Part 5 Amendments to other enactments

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to Part 5. Part 5 is the debate on clauses 187 to 204, “Amendments to other enactments”. The question is that Part 5 stand part.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll just take a call on this. I’m looking here at the amendments to the Income Tax Act 2004. What I’m interested in is clause 200C. I’ll remark here that it is remarkable that we’re amending an Act that was repealed by the Income Tax Act 2007, but yet it seems still to be relevant.

But what’s happening here is that the definition of “business use” has a small change so that the words “and exclusively” are added. So business use in the 2004 legislation is defined as “for a motor vehicle and for a person, means travel undertaken by the vehicle wholly in deriving the person’s income”. So I presume that they will now read, “for the usage undertaken by the vehicle wholly and exclusively in deriving the person’s income”.

I’m interested in why “and exclusively” is needed, and does not “wholly” already cover it? I mention that because I think there was a bill introduced today about plain English or something, and “wholly” would already seem to mean that everything was included, so the inclusion of “and exclusively” would seem redundant.

So I’m interested in why this bill includes “and exclusively” and if that means that the word “wholly” in other pieces of legislation—and I’ve not reviewed all the other legislative references to “wholly”, but if there is now an indication that when something applies to something “wholly”, that that means that there can be other things that somehow are not part of the “wholly”, which is why we need the “and exclusively”. Thank you.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): I’m looking at clause 188, and in particular 188(4) and (5), where it talks about “QROPS”, which is a new acronym that’s being introduced into the Act. Interesting, given we’ve just had that plain language bill introduced, and yet we have another acronym coming in. Now, in order to know what “QROPS” is, we have to go back to Part 2 of this particular bill, where it’s defined. It’s “a superannuation scheme in New Zealand”—so a New Zealand KiwiSaver scheme, a New Zealand Super scheme—“that is a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme”—a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme, or QROPS; and this is the interesting bit—“for the purposes of the Finance Act 2004 (UK)”.

We didn’t actually discuss this much during our Part 1 debate—I don’t want to go back to—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That’s good, because we won’t.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —the Part 1 bit or even the Part 2 bit or whatever it was, but I do want to talk about this QROPS accumulation, which is sitting in clause 188(5). It talks about, “in relation to a member of a KiwiSaver scheme, [it] means the net value of the foreign superannuation withdrawal derived by the member from an interest in a superannuation scheme”. It’s quite a complicated little definition there, about where a person has accumulated super scheme amounts.

What I’m asking from the Minister here, in relation to this, is it amends the KiwiSaver Act, but it does seem to involve some quite complicated calculations and analysis and sort of trawling through transactions and so on that is required in respect of the QROPS schemes, of the QROPS accumulation. In particular, this is because it goes back to the Income Tax Act 2007 and that has been reinvested in KiwiSaver schemes before 17 July 2015. So we’re already going back nine years on that—well, nearly nine years on that. So going back quite a few years doing some complicated transactions.

What I want to know from the Minister is: what are the compliance costs associated with this for KiwiSaver schemes in New Zealand? We know that this particular section of legislation has been changed in order to ensure that people don’t end up with a double tax burden or with an extra tax charge, but there’s also a compliance cost for the schemes in terms of calculating all this and keeping track of all these records. I wonder if the Minister could just talk us through the extent to which compliance costs were taken into account when working out whether or not it was sensible to make this change to our tax law.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much for the members’ questions. In regard to clause 200C, interestingly, at that time the Minister of Revenue was Dr Michael Cullen, and he made a decision to remove the word “exclusively” from the definition.

Hon Rachel Brooking: A very, very sensible man.

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, no, in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t, because, subsequently to that, there’s been a lot of confusion. We’re simply 19 or so years, or not 19—21 years later, we’re reversing it back to what it was before 2004 and adding “exclusively” back in there. So, there we go—a little bit of history for those that are studying taxation law, or whatever they’re doing at home while watching this, no doubt.

With regard to clause 188(4) and (5) and the term “QROPS”, just for those that are wanting to know, basically, if you go across to the UK, get a pension over in the UK, and then you return to New Zealand, you would want to bring that pension back with you, that’s the model. The UK legislation has rules where those pensions have to be within a specific entity in New Zealand, and that entity is called the QROP. That, basically, maintains the same structure and form as what it is in the UK, and then, when you hit your retirement age, you can also get that money out. It just stops people taking retirement savings from the UK and spending it on whatever they like, and there’s no integrity between countries.

What we’re simply doing is adding flexibility in these changes. Where someone originally brought their pension over and, say, stuck it in one of the KiwiSaver funds or, hypothetically, one of the banks, at the moment they can’t change that and move it to another provider. So we’re bringing in flexibility to allow those individuals to move that QROP from, say, bank A to bank B, or to another provider which offers QROPS, and that’s, just again, flexibility.

The compliance costs in that actually give more taxpayer flexibility. It also means that, obviously, some KiwiSaver funds have better returns than others, and that allows taxpayers, in terms of personal responsibility, to be able to make more informed investment decisions around their retirement, which I think is a good thing. So those are the answers to those two.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the Minister of Revenue from his Amendment Paper 247, and this is clause 200H. I just want to say I’m learning a lot from this bill in terms of how taxation systems work. But I think for this one, with 200H, I know we explored some parts of the final-year fees-free scheme under Part 3, but I think new section 195B, inserted by clause 200H, is something I want to get clarification on from the Minister. So the Minister has given us clarification under Part 3 that when the final year is free, it, essentially, is a reimbursement after the completion of the degree, which is confirmed here.

Let’s say, in an example where a student needs to take on a student loan to pay for that final year, and upon the receipt of their qualification, that final amount is credited to them with that qualification. However, let’s say there’s a scenario where a student was intending on doing that, got a loan, and decided to take a gap break after one semester, and then decided to go overseas on work experience, which then would trigger student loan interest as a part of that, despite the fact that they would decide to come back to Aotearoa at some stage to complete the degree. Would the credit from the final year’s fees-free against the borrower’s consolidated loan balance include the additional interest that a student would accrue during the gap year when they no longer become a tax resident of Aotearoa and then triggers that international loan interest rate and potentially debt rate? Can I just check with the Minister on whether the final-year fees-free has taken this into consideration. Thank you.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, focusing on the Minister of Revenue’s Amendment Paper, because they are amendments that have not been through a select committee process, so I just want to ensure that we have the policy intention really clear. I’m looking at the Amendment to Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22, GST, and Remedial Matters) Act 2022. That’s on page 14 of the Amendment Paper, AP 247.

Now, I notice that there’s been a change of a previous Act. It’s been an extension to what looks like a sunset clause. So the application date for when this provision basically closes—so it’s been extended for two years from 1 April 2025 to 1 April 2027. It looks normal, right? It looks like a remedial matter until you look at, actually, what that section is extending and it’s extending Schedule 7 of the Tax Administration Act 1994—the disclosure rules. These are disclosure rules that were brought in during COVID-19 and, from my reading of it, it had a sunset clause of 1 April 2025, but that’s now been extended. New section 200I(2): “In section 231(3), replace ‘1 April 2025’ with ‘1 April 2027’.”

So you look at Schedule 7 amended by the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22, GST, and Remedial Matters) Act 2022, the disclosure rules, it makes changes to when the Commissioner for Inland Revenue may disclose the information, which is information for COVID-19 purposes, with other Government agencies, but only if the commissioner considers—and it’s got four different qualifying tests to get in there because it’s “and”, “and”, “and”, “and”. So you look at the clause that it’s amending.

You’re going through now the Tax Administration Act, which the Amendment Paper is now changing. It talks about section 18—which is the secrecy provisions for the tax Acts—“does not prevent the Commissioner disclosing to a government agency information about a person or entity for the purpose of enabling the government agency to provide or fulfil any duty, obligation, or other thing in relation to any person or entity in connection with COVID-19”.

Then, through that particular Act, it states all the different Government agencies where the secrecy provision doesn’t apply—so the New Zealand Customs Service, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, workplace safety, agencies for charities regulation, agencies for foreign trust regulation, Government agencies with voice recognition analysis, the Financial Markets Authority with the KiwiSaver information, Land Information New Zealand, the registrar of courts, credit reporting agencies. It keeps going: agencies for the gambling levy, the Department of Internal Affairs offshore betting charges, the New Zealand Film Commission, the Registrar of Companies—but I think that’s now being repealed under these changes—the Registrar of Companies again, KiwiSaver providers, agencies for R & D, agencies for Australian wine producer rebate, regulators under the Overseas Investment Act, the chief executive responsible for the administration of the Residential Tenancies Act. And that’s just Subpart 1 of those disclosures.

Working off a phone and it’s difficult to cross-reference different Acts which you don’t have a paper copy of, but if I understand it, all those disclosures, unless they’ve been repealed by subsequent Acts—so there’s been a couple of Acts between 2022 and this one in 2024. Is that correct? Am I reading that correct? I would like the Minister to correct me if I’m wrong; I’m happy to take it if I’m wrong.

Is it correct that now those disclosures which allow the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to, basically, breach the secrecy rules, the secrecy rules won’t apply to all that list of Government agencies has now been extended from 1 April 2025 to 1 April 2027? If my interpretation is wrong, I’m happy to be corrected, but I just want to check if that is the case, because it’s quite serious if it is.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I haven’t had the opportunity to participate at this part of the committee stage yet, so it’s always a pleasure to receive a call and to be able to do that. I wanted to focus specifically on the Minister of Revenue’s Amendment Paper and look at the changes to the student loan scheme. But I want to cover some different material from what’s already been discussed in relation to that.

One of the papers that has been tabled to support the Minister’s changes under the Amendment Paper to the student loan scheme is the supplementary analysis of the final year of fees free. This is a regulatory impact statement which goes over the impact of what the implementation of this policy would mean. The thing that really stood out for me, and I wondered if the Minister would be able to reflect on this, was the Treaty of Waitangi analysis that is included within this document. I also note that this particular document is dated 22 October 2024, so I have questions about how this was taken into account at the time when the policy was decided and also if the Minister has had an opportunity to reflect on some of the quite blunt statements which are included in this document. That is the overall opinion in this document: that the new final-year fees-free policy does not fulfil the Crown’s obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

It goes on to say that the new final-year scheme is not the best approach to address financial barriers to equity of tertiary education access and achievement for all learners, including Māori learners. There was also limited engagement with Māori learners, and the conclusion of it is the Crown’s obligations under article 3 are not fulfilled by this particular policy. This has real implications for learners, Māori and non-Māori, in the implementation of this particular policy.

The Minister, as well—I have a question around this particular policy and how much advice, if any, he received around the particular implications of the employment statistics at the time that information was gathered about the first-year free policy and then looking to change that to the final-year policy. Because, of course, it is very well known that in situations where there is high unemployment, tertiary education enrolments tend to go up, and in situations where there is low unemployment and plenty of jobs available for people, then there are fewer enrolments. So it seems to me that the data collection in relation to first-year fees free was impacted by periods of time under the previous Government where there was significantly more job opportunities available for people and now we’re seeing—and I’ve heard this reported recently—the increase and, in fact, the financial increases, which will, I’m sure, be of interest to the Minister, especially the budgeted financial increases in relation to tertiary education. So the statistics, when you look at them side by side, really don’t necessarily tell the full picture.

One of the big things that has been advocated over many years in terms of engaging populations that haven’t historically engaged in tertiary education, especially university education, to the same degree as other population groups, has been the deterrent factor of the expense of education and the fact that that is a significant cost outlay—different cultural approaches towards going into debt, which are different between different cultures. We shouldn’t assume that taking on debt is seen as acceptable in every single culture. My experience and information that I’ve heard about from different people is that it’s a vastly different proposition to some cultures to take on a student loan, compared to other cultures. I think that is something that needs to be taken into account when the switch occurs.

My question, really, is in terms of this quite substantive advice and also adding to the fact that due to the time lines available, there wasn’t enough time to do significant stakeholder consultation—did the Minister consider that at the time? Has the Minister considered this advice further? Has he looked specifically at the differentiation in employment data between when the first-year fees free and last-year fees-free scheme was implemented, and has that caused him to reflect and perhaps think of changing any of those decisions in relation to that?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Working our way through those questions, we had a question in regards to extending the date of repeal of information-sharing provisions—new clause 200I. This is particularly focused around extending the repeal which relates to the current authorisation for provision of information sharing between IRD and the Companies Office. It’s making sure that the repeal of that aspect is on the same date that the proposed new information-sharing agreement will come into force. So it’s dealing with the Companies Office and IRD, and that’s the purpose of that clause.

There was a question from the Greens member in regards to student loans, around interest. Obviously, if a student loan borrower goes overseas, in that instance, they would be subject to interest on their loan. However, when the individual returns and completes their final year, which, I think, was the question raised, they will only be credited back for the fee portion of their fees—they won’t be credited back for the interest portion—which is the policy intent.

Lastly, the last member notes around the fees-free—I mean, it’s not within my scope to be commenting around the broader policy intent. Obviously, that is a policy that is being implemented by our Government; we think it’s a very effective and appropriate policy. It makes a lot of sense to do fees-free on the last year, versus the first year. It turns out that people stay on and finish their degrees, surprisingly, under that little incentive, versus just doing it and then deciding to do other stuff. It’s a common-sense policy, very practical and realistic, but what we’re really talking about here, in the context of the tax Act, is how we deal with that flowing through in terms of student loans. I didn’t hear a question in that regard.

One member also just asked a question about not having a physical copy of the legislation. For those members who haven’t been here too long, there are copies of the legislation sitting on the Table in front of us, if they want to refer to those.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): I want to move on to—this is in Part 5, so it’s clauses 197 through 199, which are amendments, of all things, to the Stamp and Cheque Duties Act 1971. Interesting that we’ve still got this, given that most of us no longer have cheques or use them—I can’t recall the last time I wrote out a cheque—but, of course, it does have particular relevance in this particular tax bill, in particular because this is where the Minister of Revenue asserted that there was a growth measure in this bill. When we asked him to name, way back in the Part 1 debate, one measure in this bill that was something that would promote economic growth, this was the particular set of measures he cited, the AIL clauses—or the approved issuer levy rules.

So here it is, the actual particular clauses he was referring to—also, 128 and 141. In particular, this clause 199, what it does is it allows the circumstance where someone has forgotten, through oversight, to register that they are paying interest as a New Zealand borrower paying interest overseas, and they’ve forgotten to register for the approved issuer levy—the AIL. The impact of this is paying, I think, a 2 percent interest tax rather than 15 percent and so on. What it does is it enables this to happen when there’s been an oversight and someone’s made a mistake somewhere along the way, and they get to put it right and therefore get a lower tax burden because they have the opportunity to put things right.

Now, that’s a little unusual. Most of the time, people are expected to know what the tax law is and they’re expected to comply with it. Turning up to Inland Revenue and saying, “I didn’t know.” is usually not taken to be a reason for getting some kind of concessionary treatment. Indeed, one still has to pay one’s taxes, and, in fact, one ends up paying fines on it as well if you’ve gotten it wrong. So there does seem to be a circumstance here where a particular set of people who might be subjected to taxation are getting, maybe, preferential treatment—maybe the sort of treatment that lots of us would like to have through the income tax system.

Now, I know that Inland Revenue can be really quite good when people do make mistakes with their taxes or do make mistakes through oversight. We always encourage people, if they run into problems with their taxes, to contact IRD and to sort it out, and IRD do work with taxpayers to ensure that they get their taxes right. Nevertheless, we have legislated here provisions—so not just within the commissioner’s discretion but we have sat here and legislated a set of rules which, basically, say that if someone got it wrong and didn’t get something done in time, well, then they can claim this concession. That does seem to be quite an extraordinary thing to do.

I’d like to hear from the Minister, just for the benefit of the committee, for the benefit of those watching at home—and my dad will be watching, because that’s what he does on the afternoons. But just if you could explain it for the benefit of my dad—and, Dad, I will return that phone call—that would be good to hear, just the Minister’s explanation of that.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I move, That debate on this question now close.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you so much, Mr Chair. I’m just wanting to elaborate on the questions that my colleague Camilla Belich already raised. I think we’ll appreciate that this Amendment Paper hasn’t had a chance to go through the normal select committee process, particularly the changes around the fees-free scheme. I appreciate that the Minister of Revenue said that these changes were sensible and made sense, or something along those lines—I’m paraphrasing; I can’t exactly remember what he said—but I think it is worth exploring the policy rationale for this. I appreciate that the Minister said that he either wasn’t able to or wouldn’t get into that debate, but this is the reason why they’re changing this through the Amendment Paper. So it would be appreciated to have some engagement.

It’s really interesting that one of the key statements in the regulatory impact statement is “we do not expect a net benefit with final-year over first-year Fees Free, beyond moderate cost savings.” So, in fact, is that actually the real reason this is going to be put in place? I mean, there’s been some stated policy rationale for the changes to this legislation that they articulated here, which was to, “incentivise learners, particularly disadvantaged learners, to progress through and finish their programme of study”. The problem with that statement is that when you go through the cost-benefit analysis table—which is on pages 18-19 on the supplementary analysis report—they stated that the impact of that on rewarding successful completion of tertiary education was estimated to be low, and the evidence certainty that it would have a low impact at best was high.

Another reason that the Minister, I think, articulated in his previous intervention was for taxpayers to be able to have confidence that their spending would have a positive effect in terms of tertiary education. But, again, in the supplementary analysis report, the section that analysed whether the confidence that their investment has a positive outcome rewarding completion, the impact was estimated to be low. So, again, there’s been this rhetoric that this legislation is actually going to make a substantial difference, but the analysis that we have in the supplementary analysis report doesn’t seem to indicate that.

Worryingly, it appears to have quite negative impacts on the Crown’s relationship with Te Tiriti o Waitangi. If you look through the section it analyses, it says this policy does not fulfil the Crown’s obligation under the Treaty of Waitangi, and that this policy does not effectively address real barriers to equity of tertiary education access and achievement of Māori learners.

Again, is the actual point of this to save money? I acknowledge that the supplementary analysis report seems to indicate that it does generate substantial savings, that the table on figure 20 indicates about $180 million in the 2024-25 year, $261 million in 2025-26. So these aren’t trivial sums of money necessarily. But, I guess, if the Government’s intention was just to actually produce cost savings, then they should just say that, instead of going through this rhetoric about incentivising learners and rewarding learners when the evidence for that just seems skimpy at best.

Again, to the Minister: is the actual point of this just to save money? That’s certainly a valid objective; you are the Minister of Revenue after all. If not, just have that as the actual objective instead of going through this pretence that it’s actually going to improve outcomes for learners in any reasonable way.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Well, the member Francisco Hernandez and I are not going to agree on a point of policy in regards to whether we should have fees-free in the first year of university, which was the case, or moving it to the final year, which is the policy intent. We are here to talk about the taxation bill and the implications of that policy decision on the tax bill, which I didn’t hear a question on, so I’m not able to comment any further other than it’s a policy which is being edited, and the changes within this bill are, in effect, dealing with the tax implications of that policy decision.

In regards to the question on approved issuer levy that was asked previously: obviously, the approved issuer levy tax model reduces the cost of capital on New Zealand borrowers. The change in the bill that we are implementing here simply allows retrospective registrations, which allows people that have made a mistake with their registration to be able to go back and correct that. As a result of that change, that will mean that those people can take advantage of that piece of tax legislation, and that reduces their cost of capital, which obviously has an implication in terms of increasing economic growth, which we as a Government are very focused on.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s just a really quick question in relation to the response that the Minister of Revenue gave for new clause 200I. The Minister said that, basically, it was to repeal the Companies Office and that the repeal date of 1 April 2027 was to align with the sunset clause for all the other secrecy provision exemptions. I just want to confirm: are all the other secrecy provisions 1 April 2027; if so, why was the Companies Office the incorrect one—out of that huge list of Government agencies, why did that have a separate sunset clause date, given everything else was 2027?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Quite simply because the agencies have entered into a new agreement between IRD and the Companies Office, which will come in and be effective from the date on which this remedial change repeals the old model. So it relates to those two entities only—hence, why we’re repealing that date, to allow the new agreement to come into effect.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): If that’s the case, do all the other provisions, then, still apply for all those Government agencies under the disclosure rules?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): They do apply, but this specific remedial, under new clause 200I, deals with the agreement, in particular the Companies Office and Inland Revenue only.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Therefore, under section 231(3)—I just want to be clear, because it’s really difficult to find the application date for that previous Act, again, without having the paper copies to work through it. Do the rest of those Government agencies which had disclosure rules which applied during the period of COVID and subsequently—because I can understand why you might still need those disclosure rules to ensure that IRD can share information with other agencies, particularly around auditing, given the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme, I think, has payment dates which have come up. For all of those other Government agencies—and there was a huge list of them—is their sunset clause now 1 April 2025 or 1 April 2027? Just to be clear.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Just to be clear, as I said twice already, the specific aspect only deals with the Companies Office and IRD.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): So what is the application date for the sunset clause for all the other agencies?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to start by thanking the Minister of Revenue for his history lesson about “wholly and exclusively” and to say how pleased I am to be in the same boat as the late Michael Cullen on my thinking about those words.

Now, I just want to talk briefly, and I have a simple question around clause 204. So this is “Goods and Services Tax (Grants and Subsidies) Order 1992 revoked”. That order from 1992 made in the name of Cath Tizard when she was the Governor-General—talk about history!—goes through a number of grants and subsidies that are non-taxable. I see, of course, in the bill in front of me that Schedule 2 includes Government grants and subsidies: non-taxable amounts, and that this was part of the Part 4 discussion, the words in that schedule, but clause 204 is in Part 5.

So my question simply is: why is the order revoked, and is it because everything is transferred into the schedule, or are there some differences between what is in the order and what is in the schedule?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to go back to my previous question from the Minister of Revenue—and thank you, Minister, for the response that you’ve given. Understanding that, if a student takes a student loan in the final year and, halfway through between the two semesters or between that final year, the student goes abroad and no longer becomes a tax resident of Aotearoa, in which case they will accrue interest as part of their student loan. But consider a loan balance on that date does not include the additional interest that is accrued. Just for clarity: this is still the Amendment Paper 247, section 200H, the newly introduced section 195B.

But I wanted to check with the Minister: in that particular case, let’s say the scenario is that a student, for example, has a three-year degree. They have a $60,000 student loan and the final-year student loan is $20,000. Halfway through the semester, they go overseas, they come back for a year, they complete a degree. With universities in general, they allow you to pause your degree for up to three years and potentially longer, depending on your discussion with a particular university, let’s say. You know, they come back and then they complete their degree so they’re eligible for the final-year fees-free scheme. Therefore, the $200,000 is considered a credit against the consolidated loan. The student will still need to pay interest, but in that situation would the student be paying interest on the basis of $40,000 minus the final year, or on the basis of the entirety of the $60,000 loan? Thank you.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Well, as I noted to the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan before, if in that scenario the individual went overseas for a portion of time, at that point, interest would be subject to the loan—or the portion of the loan—that they’ve currently incurred at the point at which they depart New Zealand; interest would be applied to that. But, irrespective of the timing of that and the interest relevant, the only amount that would be accredited back to the individual relates to the fees portion only. There is no crediting back of interest under the model which we are putting in place.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I understand that, but, again, what we are seeing here is that a student did not actually, in fact, in those cases, have a $60,000 loan, because that $20k is supposed to be earmarked to be returned. This is, I think, fundamentally one of the concerns that we have when it comes to the previous system, which is that students apply, and that gets money directly to the university, whereas now the system is that a student has to take a loan first, in which case it actually does punish and penalise students further.

So, in that sense, are you saying that it has not been considered at all that student loans would be, or, at least, the interest amount, which is not going to be paid—I get that. But even the interest on the total sum of the loan isn’t going to remove the portion that gets consolidated as part of the credit as the final-year fees-free scheme.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Just reminding the Minister of Revenue of my very simple question about clause 204 and the revocation of the Goods and Services Tax (Grants and Subsidies) Order 1992, and is there any policy difference between what was in that order and what is in the Schedule? There’s COVID payments, which is obviously something that was added after 1992; there’s also the earthquake support payments; there’s payments made by the New Zealand Agency for International Development; and other loans of the Crown; and other various different benefits there. So a very simple question.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 5 set out on Amendment Paper 247 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

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

Schedule 1

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Schedule 1 stand part.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 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.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to our final debate. This is clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2: “Title” and “Commencement”.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’ll just help members with this point: the title of this bill is the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill. The title was chosen because that’s, in effect, what the bill does and that’s exactly what it focuses on. The commencement dates are outlined as part of this, which is very standard, and I’m aware that the Finance and Expenditure Committee, while undertaking a full six-month process, did not suggest any changes in regard to both those points.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m sure that there are other colleagues who may be speaking more fully in terms of the commencement date—where there are many, many, many, many subclauses. But I have a broader question around the commencement date, noting that a number of the commencement dates are retrospective. I’m just checking in terms of the consistency against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report that it doesn’t seem to mention anything in terms of retrospectivity.

I wondered from the Minister of Revenue’s perspective: was there any test or any advice that the Minister has received regarding if there were any sort of retrospective penalties—which, to be fair, often we think of from the perspective of criminal penalties, but it could also be financial penalties in some ways around section 26(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So because of the fact that there are substantial areas which are retrospective, I just want to check with the Minister if that has been a consideration.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Chair. And, yeah, two particular questions in relation to the application dates for both clause 138, which is the “Assessment of penalties related to crypto-asset reporting framework”. If we look at the commencement date for it, it looks like it’s 1 April 2026, so it’s in a couple of years’ time. Is that to align with the OECD when the crypto-asset reporting framework does come into force?

And then my second question is actually in regards to the donee status—so that is clause 115, page 128 of the bill; so donee status, or Schedule 32. Generally, if you are a charity in New Zealand, basically taxpayers, if they donate to you, you can get a tax credit back for that donation. If it’s an overseas charity, they need to be listed on Schedule 32, which shows—there’s a number of them that are new in clause 115(2), so there’s six new charities. But then it also deletes charities off the donee status list, so the Help a Child Foundation, Operation Vanuatu, Sampoerna Foundation Ltd, SpinningTop Trust, The Food Bank of New Zealand, Together for Uganda, and then at (4), it deletes Support Services for Humanity.

Now, if you look at clause 2(28), which is the commencement date for the charities that have been taken off, it does talk about clause 115(4), which is Support Services for Humanity. But just checking: should that also apply to clause 115(3B), given they’re also being deleted, and should those charities which I listed—Help a Child Foundation, etc.—also be deleted, from 1 April 2029?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Yeah, thanks, Mr Chair. I mean, the questions in regards to both the Green member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s point around retrospectivity, and the member the Hon Barbara Edmonds’ points around clauses 138 and clauses 115: in regards just to the point around clause 138 around crypto-assets, the member is correct in the context of the timing of when that legislation comes into play.

Clause 115 for standard adjustments around commencement when we are putting in place a new donee charity: in this case, we’ve got Le Quesnoy, which is the World War II charity in France, which is obviously well known and something that has been well supported across the board. That’ll make it a donee charity in the context of overseas charity status, but the context that the member mentioned about the removals and parts, those are standard aspects.

The point that the Green member made in regards to whether we consider that throughout the passage of the other parts: there were a number of questions asked in regards to clauses which had retrospective commencement provisions and, from my recall, we did talk about those as they came up throughout. But that is to be expected in a taxation bill of this size and scale which deals with remedial issues. Retrospective changes are not done lightly. They are well considered, but often the reasoning underpinning that is to ensure the integrity of the tax system and also to be flexible in regards to taxpayers being able to take advantage of that, such as the point that we noted before around making a mistake and being able to retrospectively fix it.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a question around the title clause and I just wanted to confirm my understanding of all the things that this bill is doing so I could potentially suggest some changes to that title clause, which is currently the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill. Now, look, I see the “Annual Rates for 2024-25” there clearly and I see the “Emergency Response” bits there quite clearly.

But there’s a number of provisions there that are quite substantial that aren’t reflected in the title clause—for example, the Auckland Future Fund and all the amendments that exist to kind of further enable that, and also all the amendments in the Minister of Revenue’s amendment that deal with the final-year fees-free scheme. Also—this was in the original legislation even before the amendment—the crypto-asset reporting framework. Would the Minister consider amending the title to either reflect all of these things that this bill actually considers, or to shorten it so that it just says “Annual Rates for 2025 and Remedial Measures Bill”, which I believe does cover all of those wonderful topics?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): No.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): I move, That debate on this question now close.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Really short question. Again, to clarify that clause 115(3B)—because there is an application date for clause 115(2) in clause 1(23) of 1 April 2024. I can’t find the application date for clause 115(3B), which is the deletion of the list of charities. But then in clause 115(4), that actually has an application date which the Minister clarified before, 1 April 2029. So I just need to ask the Minister of Revenue—because unless it’s an application date that is missing—when does clause 115(3B) come into force?

It is an important question because I can’t find the commencement date in those clauses. Again, my apologies if I’ve missed it. There are a number of commencement dates. But it does seem unusual that there is a commencement date for subclause (2), there is a commencement date for subclause (4), but there is no commencement date for subclause (3B). It could be the date in which the bill comes into force or it could be, again, back-dated to 1 April 2024, which you see in clause 1(23). Or you could see in clause 1(28) it comes into force on 1 April 2029, which are very different dates. One’s retrospective; one’s prospective. I just want to clarify: when does clause 115(3B) come into force?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): I appreciate the member Barbara Edmonds is as excited about getting this bill passed as I am, because the answer to the member’s question is: the point at which we pass this bill—hopefully, very soon from now.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Looking for new material—the Hon Barbara Edmonds.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Yeah, the Minister of Revenue responded that that provision should come into force very soon. What is “very soon”? It’s quite clear—again, I went through the dates. There are different dates for the commencement. I am responding directly to the Minister’s response. When does that section come into force? If the commencement date is missing from the commencement clauses, then that’s an issue. When does it apply? Is it a default position as to when the bill comes into force? Is it the position which was taken for retrospectivity around 1 April 2024 for clause 115(2)? Or is it prospective—1 April 2029—for clause 115(4)? Just a very simple question, but it’s important because it’s the commencement date of when these charities are deleted from Schedule 32. Again, that applies because taxpayers who donate to these offshore charities can get a tax credit for it. It can be quite substantial because it can be up to the amount of their income here in New Zealand. I just want to clarify: when does it commence?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): Yeah, I appreciate the member Barbara Edmonds’ questions. The commencement clause will come into force on the day after the date on which the bill receives the Royal assent, and that is noted in clause 2, which is the commencement of the legislation, which the member has in front of her.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): 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 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.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 247 be agreed to.

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 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.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue): I present a legislative statement on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill.

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

Hon SIMON WATTS: I move, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill be now read a third time.

Well, I’m very proud to be part of a Government that is all about going for growth and making it easier to do business. That is exactly what this bill is about. I would like to thank the House and the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their work on this bill, and their comprehensive input in terms of it. In the progress through the House, the bill has been considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who recommended a number of changes, which we have discussed through the committee of the whole House. The bill as it is now has also had further amendments added through my Amendment Paper through that process.

The first aspect in regards to that was the added measure in regards to helping implement the replacement of the first-year tertiary education fees-free scheme with the final-year fees-free scheme. We’re proposing data collection and sharing processes between the Inland Revenue Department and the Tertiary Education Commission to allow the two agencies to assess learner eligibility and to enable entitlements to be paid. This proposed change will allow eligible learner fees to be paid following the completion of a student’s qualification or programme. This is an important change as New Zealand needs a skilled workforce. A skilled workforce obviously means that we can boost the economy by increasing productivity, attracting investment, and fostering innovation. It will also, importantly, mean that Kiwis have higher wages and more opportunities, particularly in high-skilled sectors. That is why it is important that we incentivise students to complete their studies. This approach will also reward learners who complete their programme of study and, of course, reduce the overall cost of study.

Importantly, there are also changes in the bill which relate to the Le Quesnoy - New Zealand Memorial Museum Trust. This second measure honours our New Zealand troops who served in World War I. In the final week of World War I, the New Zealand division seized control of the French town of Le Quesnoy. Even today, the residents of that community continue to commemorate an important role that New Zealand played in its history, including by having a New Zealand memorial at that spot. That is why I am very proud that this bill includes another new measure within it that adds the New Zealand Memorial Museum Trust - Le Quesnoy to Schedule 32 and gives the trust permanent overseas donee status. This change means that the memorial museum will be treated the same as charities that operate here at home. I acknowledge members across the House, and past members, who have been working diligently to get this change made. At long last, that change has been made here in the House as a result of today, and that acknowledges those that have come before us.

A primary focus for the Government, as I’ve noted, is in the context of economic growth. We are very much committed around supporting the tech sector and start-ups—key drivers of growth and also the aspect in regards to higher-paying jobs and attracting capital. The existing way that we support that tech sector is through encouraging the use of employee share schemes. To keep the exempt scheme effective, the bill also proposes measures to ensure it remains fit for purpose. We want to also smooth the path for migrants wanting to move their overseas pension funds here to New Zealand. Amongst a host of other measures, the bill also contains amendments to provide greater flexibility for the tax system to respond to emergency events. Also, importantly, it introduces measures to enact the crypto-asset framework into New Zealand legislation.

As with many bills under this Government, it also includes a wide range of remedial matters removing the compliance costs on New Zealand taxpayers. The bill covers a wide spectrum of tax system changes, but only one thing remains constant: the need for remedial measures in future tax bills. We can all look forward to those. Remedials are vital. They are important because the world keeps changing and we need to keep our tax legislation up to date. As society evolves, so must the tax system. Business models also change and the tax system must change with them.

While headlighting tax policy changes may come and go, the key for New Zealand taxpayers and tax agents is ensuring that our tax system operates as quietly and efficiently as possible in the background. The private sector is keenly interested in our remedial work to keep the tax system fit for purpose in a changing world. That’s why the bill includes a wide range of remedials, many small but all, of course, very important. They keep the tax system running efficiently, which keeps the entire machinery of Government operating.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the policy officials from the Inland Revenue Department and the drafters of the legislation, all of whom do a significant amount of work for us in supporting our tax system. I acknowledge all of them as this bill is brought to its third reading. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): This bill has been through a long, long examination in the committee of the whole House stage, and I thank the Minister of Revenue for his persistence with that. I thank, also, the officials who sat there and supported the Minister and, through that, supported the House in examining this bill.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Democracy done well.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: It was a lot of work, and, yes, as my colleague the Hon Dr Megan Woods says, democracy done well.

The Minister said this bill was all about growth—growth in the economy. It’s an interesting claim for him to make, because when we asked him during the committee stage if he could name a measure for growth in this bill, he could come up with only one: the approved issuer levy. It took us to point out that the changes to the stock measures for shareholders in tech start-ups and the like was also a growth measure. It seems he didn’t quite know his own bill as well as he might have. But it’s an interesting thing, because just saying a bill is about growth doesn’t make it so.

There are a number of taxpayer-friendly measures in this bill, as would be expected—measures to tidy up the tax system, to make it function better, to ensure that anomalies are tidied up, that the tax system, as the Minister said, must move to meet new conditions. But the bill itself is named after the emergency measures that were put in place. Now, let’s just step back to this. These emergency measures are measures that are pulled out when we have black swan events—events like the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, events like Cyclone Gabrielle, events like COVID—where we needed to put in place special measures to help businesses through those times. Under our Government, we did that repeatedly, to the point where we said, “Actually, we need to have these measures ready to go when the next black swan event occurs.”, as it will—as it will. Now, I suppose that could be characterised as a measure for growth, but, really, it’s an emergency measure, and that is what the bill is named for. If we go through all the other measures in the bill, they are tidy-up measures—they are taxpayer-friendly, but they are tidy-up measures. It’s more the silences in this bill that matter, not so much what’s in here but what isn’t there.

As we went through the committee stage of the bill, the Labour Party voted for all the sensible amendments there are in this bill, because the actual technical detail of tax in this country is, by and large, a very bipartisan matter. We tend to agree on the technical detail, and that’s because the tax community, the tax policy people, the tax experts working in the big firms, even the politicians, tend to agree that we need to get the tax system right, that it shouldn’t be full of special little measures for this lobby group and the other but we should just be getting it right, and that’s the overall objective here. We voted for those measures, but the Labour Party will be voting against this bill overall, and that is because it fails to address a critical issue—absolutely fails to do so.

Back when that Government took office, in the briefing to the incoming Minister of Finance, Treasury warned very, very clearly that there is a structural deficit in our tax system; that the way that the tax system is set up, the way that Government expenditure is set up, means that over time there will be a permanent gap between the revenue that the Government collects and what it spends it on. That is because we have some needs in this country which we simply must meet—around health, around welfare, around homes, around education—expenditure that Governments are absolutely committed to no matter what banner they run under. There is a structural deficit in our tax system, and it is caused because there is a giant, gaping hole in the tax system.

That party will say, and parties have said over time, that we have a broad based - low rate tax system. That is simply not the case. We do have a low-rate tax system, but we do not have a broad-based tax system. We do not tax capital income. It creates a huge, longstanding gap in our tax system. In fact, the IMF has talked about it, the World Bank has talked about it, the OECD has talked about it, banks are talking about it, business leaders are talking about it. It is a critical gap in this bill. This bill does not address the overall structure of our tax system, and yet it is a critical need and it is a responsibility that that Minister of Revenue has. It is that Minister’s job to protect our revenue system, and he is notably failing to do it.

It has consequences. Failing to collect the revenue that this Government needs means that our health system is under strain, that there is unmet need in our health system, that there are people being pushed out on to private waiting lists where they are not getting seen, and it means that children are not being treated for palliative care. It means that people are queuing up at emergency departments because our health system is understaffed, and it’s understaffed because it is underfunded. Why? Because we are not collecting sufficient revenue. So we have a huge problem there.

We have an increasing number of people on the unemployment benefit. Why? Because that Government is not supporting jobs. It’s worth supporting jobs. We support jobs because when people are in work, there are all sorts of benefits, of course, to the people themselves, but that is part of what grows our revenue base as well. That Government’s short-sightedness in cancelling construction projects that has left 13,000 workers leaving this country has also left our revenue system short. Jobs actually matter, and that Government needs to support jobs. In supporting jobs, we support our revenue system.

That Government stopped building homes—it stopped building homes. It said it couldn’t afford to do it anymore. Why? Because they are not collecting the revenue they need. Jobs, health, homes—that Government is not supporting them, and the reason they cannot support them is because they are simply not collecting revenue. They are refusing to address the gaping hole in our tax system.

We’ve heard some hints from the Minister of Finance, we’ve heard some hints from the Minister of Revenue that there’ll be some work done on charities and the taxation of charities. There’s a discussion paper out at the moment. We’ve had some hints that there’ll be some announcements in the Budget; we’ll have to wait and see. So that Government, instead of going after the giant, gaping hole in our tax system, is going after the charities sector instead.

There might be a case for it when charities are engaging in the sorts of activities that aren’t real charitable work, but while they’re going after the charities sector, they’re also going after the small not-for-profits—the small not-for-profits in our communities who’ve been told in this latest tax discussion paper that they too may be up for taxation. I mean, that’s the local embroiderers’ guild. It’s the local potters’ club. It’s not sports clubs—they’re exempted—but it’s all the small, little, local groups that operate as not-for-profits, working in our communities, supporting our communities, being part of our daily lives. That Government is saying, “Perhaps we ought to consider taxing them.” They are certainly saying we ought to consider how we tax charities, but what they are not considering is how we tax capital, and that is the gap in this bill.

So I say to that Government over there that they need to grow up. They need to get past the slogans. They need to get past just saying growth, growth, growth, growth, growth as though it’s some kind of cargo cult. They actually need to do the hard work. They need to take a long, hard look at the structure of our economy, a long, hard look at the structure of our tax system, and then they need to take some hard decisions. But they won’t. No courage, no capacity to do it, no interest in doing anything that’s going to rock the status quo. So there’s some good measures in this bill, but overall this bill is a failure and we will be voting against it.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s welcome to hear the speech from the previous member, the Hon Deborah Russell. I’m glad that after having comprehensively ruled out a capital gains tax in the previous election, Labour seems to be following the Green Party’s lead and actually taxing capital, taxing wealth, and actually making sure that we have a fair tax system. Very welcome that we’re still leading the left. That’s welcome to see.

Now, what this bill—

Hon Member: Oh, yes, you are.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: It’s very acknowledged. Thank you for the acknowledgment, to that member on the left.

Now, this bill does several things. One of them is to implement the changes to the annual tax rate. That’s where we see a lot of the flaws—and I’ll get to that later—because what they’re proposing is actually deeply regressive in not only what it does but what it doesn’t do, and the previous speaker went into that.

What it also does is enable a generic response to emergency events. That is one aspect of the legislation we do support. It should be easier to provide tax relief and we should enable the extension of emergency end dates much better. The crypto-asset reporting framework is also an important step forward. Some members were able to hear a briefing from Binance through the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and we heard through that this is something that the industry does support and it is something that will enable better protection of consumers.

It enables the Auckland Future Fund, which is something that we have voted to support. But one of the things that it does do is that it enables the Tertiary Education Commission and it enables a lot of the frameworks around the final-year fees-free. That is something that we do not support. We don’t support it because the supplementary analysis material that came with it was very clear, very adamant that this legislation would actually not have a net benefit compared to the status quo, which is the first-year fees-free, beyond moderate cost savings.

The supplementary analysis paper also went into some detail about how this policy does not fulfil the Crown’s obligation under the Treaty of Waitangi and that this policy does not effectively address real barriers to equity of tertiary education access and achievement for Māori learners.

Now, I signposted earlier in my speech how the changes that this bill was enabling were deeply regressive. They’re regressive in that they don’t actually address the fundamental issue. The previous speaker was right; there is a gaping hole it doesn’t address: the fact that 311 households hold more wealth than 2.5 million New Zealanders. It doesn’t address that fundamental problem.

The tax rates that it enables are deeply regressive, for example—and I ran this through the Government’s own calculator. A deputy chief executive at a ministry—say, the Ministry for Regulation—making $348,000 a year would get a tax cut of $20.50 a week. A minimum wage worker would be getting $12.02 of tax cuts, and a single parent on the benefit would be getting a tax cut of about $2 a week. Now, if someone who’s at the top, someone who’s making disproportionately more—10 times more than a beneficiary—is getting a large amount of tax cut, then that just goes to show how regressive this truly is.

Now, one of the other things that we would have liked to see and that came up during the discussion was a question by my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan around the provisions around the emergency management measures and how, in some measures, it enabled tax relief for people earning an income, but we did ask a question about whether that could be potentially considered to extend to beneficiaries as well. But, alas, we, unfortunately, didn’t get a response from the Minister of Revenue, and I think that’s really sad to see. It’s really important, because climate—well, no, not just climate but disasters impact people unevenly. They impact people unevenly depending on the social strata and the socio-economic status that they belong to.

Someone who is on a high income, who’s making quite a lot of money, is able to respond to the shocks of disaster in general, depending on the level of disaster and how impacted their home has been, say, compared to a beneficiary on a more limited income. So we would have liked to see some consideration of the ideas that we are proposing.

I talked about what the actual impact of ignoring that gaping hole is, and it is the broader context of the fiscal and economic decisions this Government has made since they’ve taken office, and it’s the legacy of cuts and degraded public services. Around the country, from Auckland to Dunedin, I’ve talked to people, and a lot of New Zealanders are realising that something has fundamentally gone wrong with this country. They’re seeing that their dollar isn’t going as far as it used to, and they’re seeing that the critical public services that they used to be able to rely on get degraded and get cut so much that they’re not able to access what they need.

One of the things that this bill does is enable better emergency management response but, unfortunately, at the same time that this Government has enabled an easier emergency response, they’ve made cuts to the critical infrastructure that underpins our emergency management capacity, such as GNS Science. This is a quote from one of the media releases that described their work as “critical work helping New Zealand adapt to climate change and manage natural hazards and risks from earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic erosions.”

We’ve also seen the negative impacts of the cuts felt across our police and our law and order services. This is a media release from the Police Association and they’re saying, “We think that this will be a scattergun headcount-reduction exercise made in a silo by people who don’t understand the work people do, who they do it for, and who also won’t personally be affected by the outcome of the ‘realignment’ exercise.”

That was about the cuts in the civilian workforce, but we’ve also seen that there are 72 fewer police. This is something that is happening because the Government has chosen to prioritise tax cuts to the people making the megabucks that this legislation enables. We’ve seen the impacts of it: a 12 percent increase in thefts at retail premises.

Now, one of the other services that, unfortunately, is being starved the funding, thanks to the tax regime that this legislation helps enable, is the health service. We’ve seen the Public Service Association call out the nearly 3,300 staff going at Health New Zealand and the impact it has on the front line has been well reported. One doctor who was speaking to RNZ said, “One shift I made seven beds, answered a million phone calls, and fixed the printer. Is this a really good use of my time? I suspect I’m the most expensive person there.” But what that also shows is the bogus division between the front line and the back line, because, actually, a lot of the front-line workers know that they rely on the critical work that the back-line staff do, the administrative staff, the people who actually go on to support the critical work that the front line is doing.

But we’ve seen the impact of actually trying to do more for less; this rhetoric that you can somehow cut the funding and still get better or at least neutral outcomes. We’ve seen that in the school lunches programme. We’ve seen that in the impact of children having to put up with burnt lunches or plastic or just really degraded quality. That ideology fundamentally doesn’t work.

But help is on its way. We’ve got the Green Budget coming up in a couple of months and we’re presenting an alternative vision of what we think Aotearoa should be.

Dan Bidois: Degrowth.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: We’re presenting a comprehensive policy that will actually enable the critical public services that we rely on, that doesn’t rely on imaginary market-based mechanisms, that actually relies on making sure that everyone has what they need to thrive, unlike this Government with its record unemployment rate, with an economy that’s still actually—well, one member there was saying “degrowth”, but the economy is actually more than it was this time last quarter, so they’ve done the degrowth and we will green grow New Zealand. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to rise on behalf of ACT to speak on this Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill.

Now, the ACT Party does not like lots of tax, but some tax is all right, and you do need to have it. So I am very proud to be supporting this Government’s agenda to make business easier, to have an efficient background tax system that makes it efficient for New Zealanders to go about their business without the large admin costs—not just for the businesses and trusts and charities but also for the Public Service that is administering the tax system.

I think I can agree with one thing that the Opposition has said today: it has been through a thorough committee of the whole House. I think we spent a good amount of time getting into every little bit and asking multiple questions, sometimes on the same topic. This is going to lead to a swifter tax response in emergency events, providing earlier certainty for affected taxpayers I think we can agree that the work done in that space has been a good thing. There are some tidy-up measures, as Dr Deborah Russell has said, but she also said another thing, which was quite interesting: this is to address structural deficits in the tax system.

Well, I think the Piketty cargo cult that Modern Monetary Theory would just keep raining down from the sky on to the landing strip of a South Pacific island and all we have to do is dress up as if it was going to work for ever is really the definition of the “cargo cult” that Deborah Russell was talking about there. Industry supports it. I support it. Thank you very much.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): New Zealand First is proud to support this bill. It aligns, as far as I can see, with our commitment to fairness, to efficiency, and to economic resilience, and we believe that these changes are about an efficient and effective tax system. As we’ve heard, the bill has been through a thorough process. It’s about providing for a practical, well-balanced tax policy.

Look, what I’ve heard from the Opposition—it’s really quite interesting, they’ve basically said, “We like what’s in there; we don’t like what isn’t in there.” That’s a really strange approach to take, saying, “Well, we’re going to vote against it because you didn’t include a whole lot of other stuff.” Well, funnily enough, most legislation doesn’t include everything you want, but at least if it moves you forward, that’s quite a sensible thing.

So what does it do? Well, some of the things we’ve already heard about is that it improves the ability to be able to respond to emergency events and provide tax relief for people who are under pressure as a result of emergency events—that makes sense. We’ve heard about the FamilyBoost—that makes sense. We’ve heard support from the Greens around the way in which crypto is dealt with in terms of taxation, and they like the Auckland Future Fund, but they’re still going to vote against it. Why are they going to vote against it? Basically, what both parties across the aisle have said is they want to see a wealth tax—they want to see a wealth tax. That’s the approach that they’ve taken.

Deborah Russell stands up and says that there is a giant, gaping hole in the tax system. Well, part of that is because our economy got so damaged by her very party. We now are paying something like close to $10 billion a year, and rising, to fund the deficit—to fund the deficit. That is just the interest cost on that debt. That is part of that giant, gaping hole. If we didn’t have to do that—it’s like a family with a mortgage versus a family without a mortgage: you’re a lot better off. So that is part of that giant, gaping hole, and that is part of the response to that.

Across the other side of the House, their approach is just to say, “Let’s tax more and more and more.” The effect of taxing more and more and more is going to drive business out of business. It’s going to mean that people who would invest in New Zealand are going to say, “No, I’m not going to invest in New Zealand.” So what that will do is reduce the size of the economy, all other things being equal. That is not what this this Government stands for.

This Government stands for growing our economy. If we grow our economy, we start fixing that giant, gaping hole that Deborah Russell was talking about, because we have more money to be able to spend on the things which we all want to do. We want to spend more on health. We want to spend more on education. We want to spend more—actually, we want to have a high-quality lifestyle. We cannot do that by taxing our economy into the floor. That is what we’re hearing from the red party and the Green Party over there. They talk about growth as if it is a bad thing. But it is not a bad thing. That is what we have to do if we are going to remain a First World economy with high living standards and good quality services. What I heard, particularly from Deborah Russell, was, “It’s a good bill, but it’s not good enough, and therefore we are going to vote against it.” To me that seems to be a particularly strange approach, a very unproductive approach.

The other thing I heard from the Green Party: this bill simply confirms the tax rates and the tax brackets which have already been agreed through the Budget process. Now, you might not like those, but this is giving effect to those processes. Francisco Hernandez stood up and said, “Well, the people who’ve got the most money”—the higher tax brackets—“get a bigger tax reduction than the people who are further down.” Well, actually, all of those tax targets were about the lower and middle income at most. If you’re paying a whole lot more in tax, funnily enough, when you get tax reductions, it tends to benefit you slightly more, not in percentage terms—not in percentage terms—but in dollar terms. Funny that—because you’re paying a lot more tax.

Can I remind the people on the other side of the House that it’s only about half of our population that actually pays tax net of transfers—only about half of it. So those people at the top, the people you like to malign all the time, are the people who are paying the taxes. They might earn more, they might own more, but they are still paying a heck of a lot more tax than the people at the bottom who earn less.

This is a sensible, practical way of giving effect to decisions which have, effectively, already been made. It’s been through a thorough and rigorous process. I understand the Opposition not liking it, but it is a very counterproductive argument to say, “We like the bits that are in there; we don’t like the bits that aren’t in there.” Obviously, what we’re hearing from the Opposition is political speeches saying, “We want wealth taxes.” That is a message, loud and clear, that New Zealanders should hear: “We want wealth taxes, we want capital gains taxes, and we want to make sure that our economy is not a robust, First World economy.” This Government rejects that approach, and I would like to commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call with—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: I guess I’m doing the first split.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): —Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am particularly heartened by the fact that the other side of the House is listening very intently in terms of what the Greens’ vision for taxation is like, and I do find that heartening.

But let us just be very clear about this—and I think we do need to start off with some of the context—because we are in the third reading, and we do want to round up some of the conversations from the committee of the whole House stage. I think from the committee stage, one of the important things—and we discussed things around health and safety and emergency response. Those were key components of this bill which we did discuss. We did talk a little bit about FamilyBoost.

I want to just sort of mention in terms of the final-year fees-free scheme in particular, alongside my colleague Francisco Hernandez, the fact that what we are seeing is a policy that is ill-thought-out and will actually not benefit the students anywhere. Particularly when we are asking the Minister of Revenue about how the students are going to have that reimbursement if they go overseas and their interest rate was to be compounded as part of their original loan.

It seems like a lot of these sorts of nuances of our interest and loan—particularly in light of the fact as of next week, as of 1 April, we are going to be seeing New Zealanders overseas having their student loan interest rate increase by 1 percent, and the debt increase by 1 percent as well on the fact that they are already unable to pay for some of that debt. We are actually not getting that debt back. There is no evidence to suggest that the repayment has increased. We are actually just punishing our own people overseas. It is a concern when we are having a policy such as the final-year fees-free scheme which has not thought that part out, also, in light of record immigration of our young people to other countries because we have not given them the opportunities to stay in Aotearoa after they complete their degree.

That is a problem because we are taking—or more precisely this Government is taking—an austere approach to our economy. We have seen record numbers of unemployment. If unemployment is the growth that this Government is talking about, then, yes, we are seeing a growth in unemployment. We are seeing a growth in more homelessness, particularly in Māori communities. We are going to be seeing a growth in our prison population, particularly from Māori, as a result of the issues that we are seeing in this case.

But just in terms of when we’re looking at particularly this bill, and just to remind this House of some of those key stats that we have seen in the regulatory impact statement: the top 40 percent of people in Aotearoa will receive $1.6 billion in tax relief, which makes up 55 percent of the total relief package. The bottom 20 percent of Aotearoa, if you really want to look at—and you can talk about all of the pretty terms, of the fact this benefits low and medium income earners, but the bottom 20 percent of Aotearoa only will receive 5.4 percent of the relief package. That is not us making that up; that is in the stats and that is in the document that we have received as a part of this bill: 130,000 people will get nothing at all, and 8,000 households will be worse off as a result of this package. The top 311 households, as we know, hold more wealth in Aotearoa than the bottom 50 percent of the population.

These are numbers, these are facts, and this is what we mean when we say that we do not support this bill because what we want to see is a fairer tax system. It doesn’t necessarily mean that for some people we will be taxing more, but it needs to be fair and equitable. If we want to keep some of the money in Aotearoa as opposed to sending it overseas—just to give another example, Bupa, a retirement manager, as we have been told, made $900 million, but they paid an effective tax rate of $11,000. That is what we’re seeing when we don’t have a fair tax system. So we will not support this, because this is not fair for most people in Aotearoa.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I stand up here today, proud and sad, in some respects. I’m proud to support this, being the third reading of a bill which has had much deliberation, but sad because the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s father passed away in the early hours of this morning. So, whilst he can’t be here, I just want to acknowledge that loss of Cameron Brewer’s dad, David, and I know that David would be very proud of the big impact in a short amount of time that Cameron Brewer has made in Parliament, and now as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. So, while the family grieves, on behalf of Cameron and his family, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do want to acknowledge the previous speaker Ryan Hamilton’s condolences to the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Cameron Brewer, and his whānau on the loss of their father. I do want to echo those sentiments. This is still a House where people work and we may have differences of opinion and show them across the House all the time, but, ultimately, we have families, and when family calls, that’s where we should be. I want to acknowledge the Brewer family and the whānau.

It’s been a really interesting period. Since December, I have attended 10 funerals. That’s a lot. They were between December and March, and in one week in December, there were actually four funerals that I attended. For some of these people, a lot of it is in relation to dying very young. You realise your age when your friends around you and people who are not too much older than you pass away. So I do want to just extend those further condolences to the families of the people that I’ve attended—including workers from this House, with Jenny.

My very good friend Marina, or Bino, Akavi—she was 49. She had three children who were between the ages of 18 and 23, and she died from bowel cancer. Now, the reason why I want to mention in particular our friend Bino and why she died from bowel cancer is that she was a Cook Islander. There are statistics out there that show that for people who get bowel cancer, generally you get it younger if you’re Māori or Pacific, and a really important part of treating bowel cancer is being able to get it quickly.

I want to acknowledge that there have been some changes to the bowel cancer screening programme and that this will help more New Zealanders. However, it is a fact that Māori and Pacific people die earlier from bowel cancer, and so we want them to be screened even earlier. The question, and why it’s related to this bill, is that when the resources are stretched and when finance and funding for Government services, including healthcare, are stretched, it is really important that Governments make the choices, backed by evidence, to ensure that the scarce resources that the Government receives through revenue and through the way that we tax revenue—whether it’s a levy in other Acts or revenue from within the tax Acts—that it is sufficient enough to deal with the choices that Governments have to make.

This is my concern and it’s why Labour is not supporting this bill. The main reason why we’re not supporting it is because it has provisions that include tax cuts, but those tax cuts come at a price. They come in and they limit choices made by Governments, and we can stand on this side of the House, in the Opposition and in the Labour Party, and we can fire across the House every day, as we do—sometimes we stand there gracefully and just accept the fire coming back—but we stand here, fighting for those choices for people who have no voice in this House, which is why we stand here in this House, why we fight for those resources, and why we fight for that funding.

As we’ve seen with this tax bill—because, again, it confirms the annual rates for the next tax year, because it has to be done through Parliament—it gives a tax cut. But the Opposition has clearly shown to the Government that through its choices, it means that services to the everyday public are being cut, because you have to pay for the tax cuts—you have to pay for it. If you’re going to reduce the income tax rates, it means that there is a hole in the Government Budget. It means that this Government has made the choice to cut services and funding for key things like healthcare, and I don’t need to repeat the amount of examples almost every day that different members of this House are asking the Minister of Health about. What about the mothers in this area, what about these cancer patients, and what about these patients who are having to wait even longer for their surgery, even longer at the A & E—which is now being replaced in many places by telehealth?

These are the choices you make as Government, and I can hear members on the other side saying, “Bring out the banjos. Bring out the instruments.”—say that to your constituents when they can’t access their doctor or when they can’t go to their doctor because their GP fees have gone up too high because this Government has made a choice not to fund GP services by more than what was required by officials.

Dana Kirkpatrick: What did you do for six years?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Then I hear—no, no, this is for the annual year. It’s quite clear that I’ve hit a bit of a sore point with Government members. It’s quite clear, because you can hear the interjections—because they don’t want to face their communities and say, “I’m sorry your GP fees have gone up because we chose to fund it by only 4 percent, even though officials were saying 5 percent.” It is an annual formula. It is an annual decision. Your decision to give tax cuts comes at a cost. It comes at a cost, and that is the cost of these decisions.

As we’ve heard from other members on this side of the House who have talked about that structural deficit, they’ve talked about the spending that had to be done during a pandemic. But I can still hear New Zealand First members piping up, so let’s talk about those tobacco tax cuts, if the members of New Zealand First really want to go there. The tobacco tax cuts, or the $2.9 billion that was given to landlords—these are all tax choices, and, again, it’s the confirmation of the annual rates in this tax bill.

Dan Bidois: You didn’t mention this in select committee.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: And that member, who’s quite new to the select committee, says, “You didn’t mention this in select committee.”—Dan Bidois. You don’t mention this in select committee, because the purpose of select committee is to try and make a bill workable. That is the purpose of a select committee, and you’ll have your chance here in the House to defend your decisions to confirm the annual tax rates, to take more money out of Kiwis, and to take more money out of the healthcare system. Again, I remind the members, every day we are getting examples. [Interruption] And then we hear “More money for health.”, but do you know what? The assessment of the health budget last year showed that it wasn’t sufficient for inflation and it wasn’t sufficient for population growth, so it’s going to be really interesting to see how this year’s Budget is going to address a lag already for population growth and already for inflation.

But that will be a speech for another night, because, again, we go through this House fighting for the things that everyday people want us to fight for. They want to be able to send their kids on the school bus because it’s cheaper, they want to be able to see their doctor but sometimes they can’t afford it, and this bill, basically, creates the hole in which that Government had to make choices to take things away from everyday Kiwis, and what for? So that we can have a sicker population, so that we can have fewer people in jobs, and so that we can have fewer homes?

Do you know what, when you have this revenue hole, what they’ve had to do is borrow more money in order to cover the revenue hole, and it doesn’t make sense—it really doesn’t make sense—given that we’ve heard, time and time again, the Minister of Finance say that we don’t need to borrow for these tax cuts. It was pretty crystal clear in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update that the Minister of Finance had had to borrow for those tax cuts, but, again, it’s all come at a choice. These cumulative choices that the Government has made have meant that we are standing here in the House not supporting a bill, because all the choices that those members have made since they’ve come into Government have had a huge impact on Kiwis. They have meant that more people are waiting and that they can’t afford their GP fees. [Interruption] Every member on that side of the House will have a chance to respond, but these are the stories that we are hearing from the different electorates which we represent, and these are all the different—

Grant McCallum: Which electorate are you in?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I’m still the MP for Mana until 2026. At least I know where Mana is, unlike Tim Costley from Ōtaki.

Therefore, we do not support this bill. It provides pitiful choices for everyday New Zealanders, and this bill is a travesty because it is creating a bigger hole in our revenue system.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is resumed. The question before the House is that the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill be now read a third time. There are four calls remaining. The next call is a National Party call.

NANCY LU (National): Madam Speaker, thank you for reading that entire, long name of the bill for me. I’m standing to support and to commend this bill to the House. A little bit of myth busting, because our Opposition members seem to think that 3.4 percent of New Zealand taxpayers get most of the tax cuts and pay less of the tax income, but that is not the truth—they pay 30 percent of New Zealand’s tax income. That is, on average, $112,000 per person, compared to the remaining taxpayers, who are the 96.6 percent of taxpayers, who pay, on average, $9,000 per person. Regardless, this bill is to make sure that our tax system is more efficient, more up to speed, and more up to date for the modern society and for New Zealand as a whole, which will benefit all New Zealanders, no matter where you live and who you are. That’s why I’m commending this bill to the House.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and speak in the third reading of this bill. Our spokesperson on this matter has already made Labour’s position clear that we will not be supporting this bill in its third reading, and highlighted how going through a strong democratic process has truly teased out these important matters that find themselves locked in bills like this. It’s easy to have a look at the title of this bill and think it only adjusts the annual rates. It makes mention of the emergency response matters and other remedial matters. But it is important, as we move to pass this—well, as the House considers this bill—that we make sure that those matters within the bill are interrogated. It is true that the devil is in the detail.

I want to pick up on a couple of points made by Government members in the third reading of this bill. The first point I’d like to make is regarding a New Zealand First member who said that Labour’s stance on this bill is, at least to their mind, unfathomable. I can’t recall the word exactly that he used, but he did say that he found it odd that Labour supported bits of the bill as it was going through the committee of the whole House, but, in the third reading, opposes the bill in its entirety. It is the right of the Labour Party and all parties in this House to take a considered position on this bill. But I do highlight to that member and his party: it’s a lot like saying, “We support the Treaty principles bill but it’s dead in the water.” It just doesn’t make sense, on a scale far greater and far more costly than the accusations that were put towards the Labour Party just before the dinner break.

So to this bill. We spoke at length about some of the emergency matters in this particular bill, about how it was designed to streamline the way that we are able to respond with respect to tax matters during emergency events. I know members canvassed it well, but I still want to place this caveat for consideration, as members consider this bill in its third reading but also its implementation into the future. And that is this: every emergency situation is unique. Now, it’s easy for one to say a flood’s a flood, a drought is a drought, or whatever, but the fact of the matter is every single one—and, Madam Speaker, no stranger on the West Coast—no flood is the same, no particular emergency is the same. As we consider the application of the parts of this bill looking towards streamlining emergency response and support, in particular with regard to tax and business matters around regulation settings, we must make sure that we continue to remind ourselves that there are different circumstances as we look towards emergency matters.

Another part in the bill is we look towards adjusting the annual rates, and we’ve heard a lot of figures in this House, on both sides, speaking of what’s in there, what’s not in there—how, if you tinker, it looks like this; how, if you had made wholesale changes, it looks like this. One of the firm beliefs I’ve always had, and I said it in my second reading speech on this particular bill, is that Kiwis just want to understand that when they work hard and they go about their daily business, the tax system is going to do what it does, and it does it well and it does it fairly. One of the challenges—and my colleagues have pointed out how, in particular, if you tinker around the edges, there is also the fear that many of our taxpayers or all of our taxpayers out in New Zealand continue to be far more confused by what’s happening as a whole; but also the minor changes around the edges that we see dotted throughout this bill.

Just in the final 40-odd seconds that I have left, it was spoken about the World War I war memorial in Le Quesnoy—Le Quesnoy? I’m pretty sure?

Dan Bidois: Le Quesnoy.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Le Quesnoy. I remember the Rt Hon Sir Don McKinnon was a big supporter of this particular matter, and I sat on a number of boards with him where he would continue to grab my ear and continue to talk to me about why this was an important matter. I was defence Minister at the time. I’m really pleased to see that that particular matter has come through this particular bill. But as I stated at the start of my contribution, we will not be supporting this bill.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): The matters involved in this bill have been traversed extensively through this House. In fact, we spent more time at the committee stage in this House than we did in the select committee process, and all we heard from the committee stage is “More tax” from the opposite side. We are a Government that believes in an efficient tax system but, ultimately, a minimal tax system, and that is what this bill tries to do.

I commend the Finance and Expenditure Committee, of which I am a proud member, for doing the due diligence on this bill. I acknowledge and just want to shout out to my dear friend and colleague Cameron Brewer, who is dealing with the loss of his father today. Our thoughts are with you, Cameron. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to echo what my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds started with in her contribution: on this side of the House: we give our well wishes to the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Cameron Brewer. It’s never easy to lose a parent, and our thoughts are with the whānau as they work through this.

My colleagues have stood in this House and they’ve made it clear that Labour won’t be supporting this bill, and we’ve made clear our reasons. Although it doesn’t look like it—it sometimes looks like a very dry, very technical piece of legislation, when you have a tax bill in front of you—it is in taxation legislation where the values of Governments really are laid bare. And that’s what we see with this bill. The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25 Emergency Response and Remedial Measures) Bill is laying bare the values of this Government. We’ve heard members of the Government stand up and say that this is a bill that is about going for growth, despite the fact that, when the Minister was in the chair for 7½ hours in the committee stage, when we examined this bill, he could not point us to where the growth was coming in this bill; how we were going to create wealth in New Zealand. There is nothing in here. Seven and a half hours, the Minister had, to tell us where that was, and he couldn’t show it.

What we were able to drill down into—what we’re seeing in this bill—is the fact that there is not sufficient revenue to pay for what New Zealanders need. I think all of us have just spent a recess week back in our electorates. What have we heard? I’ve had people coming into my electorate office who are homeless. That’s not the celebration of saying you’ve reduced the number of people in emergency accommodation. This is now kids who are living in cars. These are people who cannot be housed. This is me going to visit one of my constituents in Hornby who had Kāinga Ora (KO) coming round to visit her that day because her KO house is now for sale. That’s the kind of Government that we have. Instead of building our public housing stock and people’s houses, what are they doing? They are reducing them.

Simon Court: Labour sold thousands.

Hon Matt Doocey: Did you sell KO houses?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I can hear bleating from the Government benches that they are increasing it. No, all they are doing is building out the funding that Labour put in. What we saw in this Budget, from these revenue measures, was insufficient revenue going into housing, going into keeping New Zealanders safe in their homes, and providing them the most basic of shelter and safety that they need. So, when the Government talks about how many houses have been delivered, make no mistake: these were houses that were planned, contracted, and funded under Labour. It is from June 2025 this year that we will see this Government’s values come into play, and that is the fact: that their growth in public housing is miniscule. In fact, what we will see is again State house sell-offs, and I know because I’ve spoken to constituents who have had KO visiting them. So do not stand here and tell us you’re increasing houses; the Government is running down the funding that a Labour Government put in to make sure that New Zealanders had that security of a home.

I don’t think there’s one of us that sits in our electorate offices and doesn’t hear and listen to constituents talking about the health system. We had a Government, during the campaign, that waxed lyrical about how they were going to fix the health system. Well, I’m having constituents come in who are waiting longer than ever before to see a specialist. I’m having constituents come in who are going to face increased charges at general practice. I’m having constituents come in who actually just cannot access that health system. What are we seeing? We’re seeing just a constant barrage of headlines about a Government that is not generating sufficient revenue to adequately fund a health system. Instead, we’re seeing headlines about job losses within our health system. We’re seeing the fact that people on sick leave won’t be covered. We’re seeing that vacant positions won’t be covered. These are front-line workers. These are the front-line workers of our health system that are required to make New Zealanders feel safe when they enter their health system, not to have it run down.

What else have we seen? We’ve seen people that are losing their jobs, and we’ve heard in this House today—we’re reminded about Nicola Willis who gloatingly said that we’re going to see a reduction of people walking down Lambton Quay wearing a lanyard. What we’re seeing is thousands and thousands and thousands of construction sector jobs disappearing overseas because this is a Government that has got its priorities wrong. It’s got its priorities wrong when it comes to taxation. We’ve seen that: we saw tax cuts for landlords rather than actually stimulating a housing market. We’ve seen pulling back on infrastructure projects. And it is inevitable that those workers who are not going to find work—and secure work—in New Zealand are going to up sticks and they’re going to move to Australia, and they are voting with their feet. We are seeing that. We are seeing the loss of that, and we are seeing the loss of that because of decisions that this Government is making.

When it comes to that job security, something that New Zealanders should be able to rely on their Government to have their backs when times are tough, we’re not seeing it coming from this Government. Instead, there are tax cuts for landlords and there are tobacco tax cuts in the Budget. That’s what we’re seeing in terms of the priorities. Meanwhile, our health system is crumbling and is not being adequately funded, and we certainly are not seeing the investment we see in that most basic of need: a home for New Zealanders, to make people feel safe.

There are other cuts, and the Government is trying to dress up these cuts all over the show. One that I’m most aware of is one that has just occurred in Christchurch, where the Government came down—the Minister of Transport and the Prime Minister came down—and said, “Christchurch, you are so lucky. Our largesse is going to mean we’re going to reinstate a project we’ve cancelled.”—that Labour had fully funded. What they did not tell the people of Christchurch is that they were robbing funding that had been put in place to pay for improving the public transport system in Christchurch—$78 million that Labour had put in place to improve public transport in Christchurch—has been pilfered by this Government to pay for other projects. The people of Christchurch deserve better. They deserve both projects, because that is what Labour had delivered for them. All we’re asking—all we’re asking—is that they do no harm. They haven’t put any additional funding into Christchurch. All we’re asking is they don’t take away what Labour had already put into Christchurch. They are halving what the people of Christchurch are getting. National is not backing the South Island, and it certainly is not backing Christchurch.

Hon Matt Doocey: More money than you did.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Instead of putting money in, it is taking away money that a Labour Government put there for the people of Christchurch, and any amount of yelling across the House that “it’s more money that you’re putting in” simply does not stack up. It is simply incorrect, and it is simply, at best, disingenuous to say that is the case. Christchurch people can count; they can see, when you take away funding from one project and then reinstate it by cancelling another, that it’s half of what you had before. That is exactly what the National Government is delivering to the people of Christchurch.

So, when it comes to what people should expect of their Government through a taxation bill, it is about generating enough revenue to pay for homes, to pay for an adequate health system, to make sure the kind of things that are going on—that we can have a place where people have security of work and feel like they aren’t going to have a Government that is going to start putting in measures that is going to cause them to up sticks and leave, like we’ve seen with 13,000 construction workers. And what we also think people deserve from their Government is for them to be transparent and honest about where funding is coming from. So, when you come to town and are delivering a funding cut, have the backbone to front up and tell people that’s exactly what you’re doing, rather than trying to dress up a funding cut—not you, Madam Speaker—as some kind of largesse, because people are not buying it. What we have is a Government that has laid clear its values. It certainly is not on the side of New Zealanders, and it is a Government that is letting down New Zealanders.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be the final speaker in this third reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill. I commend the bill to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): It’s an even bigger honour to be the final, final speaker on this bill. The reason that we reject this bill is that even though it has a technical sounding name and it has many, many technical elements to it—as we have heard through the 7½ hours of committee of the whole House stage—actually, the substantive part in the bill that would have afforded this Government to show that it cared for New Zealand is contained in Part 1, and they did nothing to make sure that they had enough money to look after the needs of New Zealanders.

I want to focus my comments on the key areas of jobs, health, and homes, because what this bill basically does is reinforce the movement from New Zealand to Australia of many of our most qualified people—including the 13,000 mentioned by my colleague the Hon Dr Megan Woods—who have gone to Australia or elsewhere from the construction sector because there is not enough money to be able to support the pipeline of construction projects.

When we look at health, there are numerous examples of where there has just been enough money in the last Budget to keep the lights on and there is no more money to support surgeries. We’ve heard this morning in the media about the Government contributing an extra $50 million to, essentially, buy private services to try and ease the waiting lists in the healthcare system because there has not been enough money put into health. The effective investment in health, despite what the Government says—and the new Minister Simeon Brown got it wrong and had to be corrected by my colleague the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall about the funding for health—the effective amount of health that has gone in to all the regions is a cut of between 4 and 16 percent across each of the regions.

No wonder we are hearing the social services saying that there is just not enough money to provide the services that Government need—either through the Public Service or through the NGO sector—which the Government funds. That is clearly the message that I heard when I was at the seniors sector expo last week, where there were numerous Government agencies talking about cuts to the front line—what it meant for them—which was cuts to NGOs, cuts to the type of services they can give, for example, to support families who have had people impacted by stroke or other debilitating medical conditions. So that is the area of health.

We’ve got Dunedin Hospital—months and months of waiting to get a half-decent response on the hospital because there was not enough money from the tax take to be able to simply go ahead and give the southern region the hospital that it needed. And still today there is no solution for pathology in the Dunedin Hospital. In fact, there was a picket at the front of Parliament because the pathology unit is not in the hospital, and pathologists in the public sector do not get paid the same amount as in the private sector because some time ago, under a National Government, pathology was privatised.

This is the kind of direction of travel we’re seeing from this Government. Now, they could have corrected that in this taxation bill by simply making sure they had enough tax revenue to look after the needs of ordinary New Zealanders, but they’ve chosen not to do that. That is why we are seeing in the education system the school lunches debacle—trying to squeeze lunches down to something like $3 a lunch rather than the previous providers under the last Government where there was no problem with the lunches being provided. The Government has shown that it simply cannot afford to provide the services that were provided under the Labour Government and so instead it is moving to what I believe is a privatisation agenda.

Finally, we look at housing. Every New Zealander deserves to live in a warm, safe, healthy home. What do we have in Dunedin, in the Octagon? We have, at the moment, NGOs trying to get tents for people who are homeless living in the Octagon because of this Government’s cruel and shameful approach to housing.

Now, all they had to do was make sure they had enough tax take to be able to afford a baseline for New Zealanders to get the services they need. They had that opportunity in Part 1. They have failed to do it. This is all about choices, and they can say this is a technical bill but they have failed New Zealanders on this bill and that is why Labour very proudly does not support this bill. We will do better in Government.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill be now read a third time.

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.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill

Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill

Third Readings

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health) on behalf of the Minister for Economic Growth: I present legislative statements on the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Those legislative statements are published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon MATT DOOCEY: I move, That the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m pleased to stand here before the House today for the third reading of the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill.

Regulatory systems amendment bills are a relatively recent phenomenon. The first such bills were passed in 2016, and around a dozen such bills have been passed to date. These bills are the seventh and eighth bills amending legislation administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), one of our largest regulatory agencies.

The current bills have been a long time in the making. Many of the amendments were agreed by Cabinet in 2019, and some of the changes came out of policy reviews done a decade ago. It can be a challenge to get priority to make relatively small changes to legislation, but these changes are important if we are to keep our stock of legislation up to date and fit for purpose. In that context, I note that eight regulatory systems amendment bills have been before the House in the current parliamentary term. I want to thank the Education and Workforce Committee and the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee for their thoughtful consideration of these bills, and submitters who suggested a number of improvements to the bills and raised issues for further consideration.

By their nature, regulatory systems amendment bills make minor changes that are non-contentious, so some of the important issues raised during consideration of these bills will require further policy work which may come back to the House in future. Between them, the two bills amend 31 Acts and associated regulations administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. In keeping with the broad span of MBIE’s responsibilities, the bills make a wide range of different changes. Some of the amendments will save businesses and other organisations time and money. Many of the amendments will allow MBIE, and other agencies, to operate more efficiently, ensuring greater value for money for the taxpayer. In the case of the change to the Health and Safety at Work levy provision, the ability for ACC to issue a single invoice will directly benefit certain levy payers by an average of $20 per year.

Many of the amendments will make legislation clearer and easier to navigate and more in keeping with the modern world. Several amendments will ensure that MBIE collects and publishes accurate information about people and organisations, and that MBIE is collecting the most relevant and useful information about people and organisations. Amendments to the Telecommunications Act 2001 will facilitate the continued uptake of fibre broadband services. Amendments to the Electricity Act 1992 and the Gas Act 1992 will make it easier to take account of technical standards that can be expected to change frequently.

Some amendments strengthen regulation where that is required to ensure that people are not unduly harmed by unscrupulous actors. For example, visa applicants can face significant costs when they are represented by unqualified and/or unscrupulous advisers, so tightening of a regulation here is warranted. In particular, the change is to the tighten up the regulation of immigration advisors. Other amendments to the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 will allow some people with a good knowledge of the immigration system to become immigration advisers or to administer the regulation of administration immigration advisers more easily, and will make it easier to make a complaint.

Some amendments clarify important legal protections, such as the requirement that an employer hold copies of employment agreements, intended agreements, and terms and conditions of employment, and that these are readily accessible. Other amendments clarify entitlements such as the right to a pre-term baby payment, additional to entitlements to parental leave and payments.

While few of these amendments are individually significant or exciting, it is important that regulatory agencies continue to identify such changes, and they are brought to the House for consideration. This will ensure that we give sufficient priority to maintaining and updating New Zealand’s large stock of legislation, which underpins economic activity and is an important contributor to economic growth. I commend the bills to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Madam Speaker, thank you. We’re coming to the end of this beautiful journey that the House has been on with these two regulatory systems amendment bills—one on economic development and one on immigration and workforce. It’s been great spending time with the minutiae of legislative maintenance, which I think was first recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2014. They ran the ruler over this House’s legislation-making performance and concluded that there was a need, actually, to set aside a bit of time to review and tune up laws so that they could be properly and efficiently implemented. That’s what we’re doing here.

I wanted to reflect on the consensus that this bill has attracted as it’s gone through the House. It has widespread support, and there was a lot of consensus at select committee. Now, that’s characteristic of bills like this and, in this time, internationally, actually, when we see so much political polarisation in political systems, it’s important to note that there is substantive agreement across the House on quite a bit of the legislation that goes through this Parliament. Often the public don’t see that; they see the areas where conflict is at its sharpest. So, when you consider whole parts of the governmental agenda—I’m thinking security, for one; large parts of foreign policy—there is quite a lot of consensus. In trade policy, I think, there’s a lot of consensus. I think about my own area of responsibility, immigration policy; on the fundamentals of immigration policy, I think there’s a lot of agreement—I wouldn’t say across the whole Parliament; not all the governing parties are on board with those policy fundamentals, but certainly, I think most of the parties in the House—on immigration.

But I wanted to say that this bill, and the consensus that it has attracted—the support across the House—should not distract people or disguise the really fundamental political and ideological differences on many key issues in the political debate. When you think about it—between the Government and the Opposition; between the Labour Party, the National Party; between the left of politics and the right—there are some very, very stark differences at the moment. If you take, for example, jobs—and there’s a number of provisions in these two bills that we’re looking at here tonight that deal with employment policy and workforce—really, there is quite a big divide, policy divide and political divide, between the different sides of the House. This Government has, through a number of decisions it’s made, driven the country into a deep recession, far deeper than any of our major trading partners, and it’s only just beginning to emerge from that.

We’ve got 5.1 percent unemployment at the moment in our communities. I see it on the streets of my communities in West Auckland and the damage that that level of unemployment does to people, to families. It undermines the wellbeing of our communities. This Government deliberately laid off 5,000 public servants and stopped dozens and dozens of construction and infrastructure projects. Then they wonder why demand collapsed in the economy and suddenly every tradie, every small business, is looking around, going, “Where’s the work? Can we actually make payroll this week?” For a party like the National Party that loves to talk about economic growth, they’ve done more than any Government in living memory to actually destroy economic growth in the first 18 months that they’ve been in office, and it’s our communities and it’s our people who pay the price for that.

Housing is another interesting example—and Megan Woods made some very, very perceptive comments, I thought, about housing. It’s quite interesting: there are some parts of the housing agenda where there is quite a bit of cross-party consensus, around the need to reform the zoning system to allow our cities to grow, to tackle the financing and funding of infrastructure that enables urban growth. But, actually, alongside that, there’s a massive debate and a clashing of the views about, for instance, the importance of public housing. With this Government, one of the most important things they’ve done in housing is take $1.5 billion out of the maintenance and construction budget of Kāinga Ora. In West Auckland, where I’m from, they have stopped several hundred houses from being built. There are vacant sections that were slated for new housing developments, and National deliberately decided to stop the construction of those projects.

At the same time as that, they have stopped—cut off—the provision of emergency housing, so that, right now, if you do not have a roof over your head, if you have nowhere to sleep tonight, and you turn up at a Government agency like Work and Income and you say, “I am homeless. I do not have shelter. My only option is to sleep outside or in my car.”, you are likely to get turned away or given a lecture and a flea in your ear by Work and Income New Zealand—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): And that relates to the regulatory systems bills?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, Madam Speaker, housing is one of the most important parts of our Government’s delivery, and I’m sure there are some aspects of, if not the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, the other one, that relates to housing.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): We’ll get back to that, then, shall we?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I use it as an example of what a huge difference in approach there is between our two Governments, regardless of the fact that, on a bill like this, on the little things, we agree. But, actually, where it really matters, there’s a huge debate, and we are seeing rising levels of homelessness in our communities right now—people who simply don’t have anywhere to go and are sleeping in their cars because of decisions that that Government has made, because they think that actually reducing the waiting list is not something you do by building extra houses and putting a roof over people’s heads; it’s by telling them they’re no longer entitled.

I also wanted to say that, in relation to the Charitable Trusts Act, this is very important, because there are many organisations who do much of the front-line work in dealing with homelessness who are charitable trusts, and the kind of governance reforms that you see in the regulatory systems amendment bill in relation to charitable trusts will have a significant effect on these organisations, and we rely on them. I was visiting one of them last week in my electorate, who told me exactly what is going on with the emergency housing that they provide. They are having so many people who are coming directly to them, desperate to get a roof over their heads, and they’re being turned away because of Government policy, because the gatekeeper role that Work and Income New Zealand plays means that they are, essentially, disentitling people to the kind of assistance that, on this side of the House, we think is a fundamental human right. The other really striking example in this area is health—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Rather than examples, can I ask the member to come back to the bill?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes—OK. Let’s talk about the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill provisions in relation to the Employment Relations Act, which is, you know, a useful thing, but we’ve seen so many reforms in the area of employment relations—

Tom Rutherford: Oh my word!

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yeah, it’s fine to support this, but, actually, what about the destruction of fair pay agreements, which would have given low-paid workers in New Zealand, at last, the opportunity to bargain to get a decent wage and conditions at work? It’s very important that we remove ambiguity in the current wording of the Employment Relations Act—that’s a worthy thing—but, actually, at the same time, we saw members on that side of the House, only days ago, voting against a bill that criminalised theft by employers against their employees. And there are so many other examples in the employment relations area where people on the side of the House we’re looking at over there are so out of touch with what New Zealanders want and need. Regardless, we do support this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired. It was a great general debate speech—thank you, member.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. So, yeah, this is the third and last call on behalf of the Greens—well, 10-minute call on behalf of the Greens; we’ve got a five-minute call coming up—on the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill that we’re looking at.

There is a reason why this has been relatively collegial and consensus-building. It is because the amendments here are relatively non-controversial. I do want to reflect before I go into the detail of the bill that there is a reason why we can’t agree on some of the fundamentals, like, for example, whether housing should be a human right, whether people should have level incomes, and that is because there are ideological divides in this House that prevent us from doing so. But at least we can come together for the maintenance of our legislation that we have in front of us.

What we’re looking at here were updates to a piece of legislation including the Electricity Act 1992, the Employment Relations Act 2000, the Gas Act 1992, the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007, the Mines and Rescue Act 2013, and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987.

During the select committee stage—if I reflect back to that—we didn’t get a massive amount of submissions. But I think we particularly got submissions that we engaged—in these changes to the amendments to Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007. Before I go into reflecting on those, I wanted particularly to commend a former member of the committee—Camilla Belich—who while I was quite focused on the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007, she was very focused on issues relating to the Employment Relations Act 2000, and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987.

I think, as I said in the second reading, what bills like this can help do as well is to bring a collective subject area expertise into bills, because, at the end of the day, as legislators, we have limited reach and knowledge. That’s just the reality of the human experience. But, actually, by working as a group you can actually put your heads together and focus individually on bits of this Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill that we each have a connection to.

When it came to the amendments to the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007, the bill itself looked at issues like whether we should have a 12-month stand-down period preventing former Immigration New Zealand officers from being licensed as immigration advisers in the two-year stand-down period—preventing them from being employed by the Immigration Advisers Authority. I wanted to touch on that because that was the subject of debate by submitters. I think there were some good debates being brought to us around the fact that the reality is that Immigration New Zealand officials—well, former immigration staffers—do hold knowledge around the internal processes of Immigration New Zealand that, say, an immigration adviser wouldn’t have, had they not worked in that space previously. It is acknowledged that gives them a competitive advantage.

But at the end of the day, there’s also the reality that when it comes to immigration advisers, their role, ultimately, is to help navigate people through quite complex immigration processes. In some ways, one could argue that, well, yes, people could have a competitive advantage if they came straight off working at Immigration New Zealand and then working as an immigration adviser, that that competitive advantage ultimately results in better outcomes for the people that they are meant to serve. So, for that reason, I think that was a quite a sensible change that was made.

There were also other issues that were being brought by submitters who hoped that we could also aspire to take a deeper look at the issue of offshore immigration advisers. This is an area that continues to be massively unregulated. As somebody who works with a lot of constituents who have been on the receiving end of really poor advice by immigration advisers onshore and offshore, what I can say is that submitters did want us to have a much deeper look at the reality that that area continues to be massively unregulated. The end result for everyday people who are receiving offshore advice is that they may end up paying a huge amount of money only to then realise that, actually, they were not supported to get the right visa, or they were promised, for example, false jobs that didn’t exist, and that has a real impact on people’s livelihoods.

My message on the third reading to the Government in relation to this part of the bill is that the Government does look—because even though, at the end of the day, it ended up considered to be outside of the scope of the bill, those contributions at the select committee stage, my message is that we do look and the Government looks at regulating offshore advisers to the benefit of our communities. Ultimately, it also benefits local communities too, because no one wins when we have people who are entering our country in debt or in hardship or with a wrong visa due to those professions overseas not being adequately regulated.

There are also other issues that were considered around that part of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act, such as clarifying that persons are prohibited from applying for a licence to be an adviser for the duration of an order preventing the person from reapplying for a licence made by the Immigration Advisers Complaints & Disciplinary Tribunal, and other issues such as expanding the person subject to restriction of being licensed to include a person convicted of an offence under the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act. This is important because, as I’ve mentioned earlier, we do have incidents where immigration advisers have not acted in good faith, or have acted negligently and, again, turned people’s lives upside down.

I worked with a Brazilian couple, for example, whose case ended up being in the media as we were trying to do a ministerial intervention. They were some of the people who had been done by an immigration adviser who acted negligently. I think to me, tightening the screws of ensuring that the people who are in that profession actually are held to really high standards is really, really important because the advice that they give can be life changing, and in some cases, if not given correctly, can be life ruining.

Then there are other issues in that area around clarifying that employees of a lawyer or law firm are exempt from the requirements to be licensed. The way I would see that is in relation to recognising that expertise; extending the circumstances in which the registerer must cancel the licence where an adviser is no longer fit to be licensed according to section 16 and 17 of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act; as well as modifying interim court orders which allow advisers to continue to provide immigration advice to act as a stay on the relevant order or decision being appealed.

There are other issues that have been brought forward which have to do more with the Immigration & Protection Tribunal. Those are really important as well because at the end—pardon?

Stuart Smith: You don’t have to.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: That’s OK. At least I’ll take a much more substantive contribution than I’m sure members on the other side will make on this. But at the end of the day, what we’ve got is tightening the screws on the processes that are available for people and for advisers to ensure that the profession is acting really, really well.

I do want to briefly comment on the other components of the bill—I think of other members of the Education and Workforce Committee who focus on areas in relation to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. Obviously, as the committee report talks about, it creates amendments to clarify and update statutory provisions to give effect to the purpose of the Act and keep the regulatory systems up to date and relevant. That also sparked a conversation around what else it is that we need to do in relation to making parental leave equitable. I acknowledge that some of those contributions by submitters not just in the immigration space could have been deemed as being out of scope.

But I actually think the contributions that we receive from members of the public when we have a bill that looks at such broad pieces of legislation should, I think, still be taken into account by Government when they look at what other reforms they need to do. I think, to me, just using language like “non-controversial” and “to modernise pieces of legislation” misses an opportunity to actually capture important feedback from members of the public and legal experts on what else the Government needs to put on their agenda. So I really hope that the Minister in charge of this bill—the Minister for Economic Growth—and other Ministers that would be overseeing the other relevant bills affected by this take the feedback from the submitters and put that in the legislative work programme where it is suitable so that we cannot just do these kind of non-controversial amendments but genuinely improve legislation to serve the needs of our communities.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support these two bills which are being debated together: the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill.

As we know, these two bills are omnibus bills, and it was through the agreement of the Business Committee that we decided to debate both these bills together. These bills make small fixes, but these fixes are important fixes. As time goes on, as technology advances, as we change our ways of doing things, there are many, many provisions, on an ongoing basis, in legislation that we have to change, and that is what these two omnibus bills do.

Listening to the previous speaker, Ricardo Menéndez March, one would think that these bills are just about immigration, but, actually, these two bills amend 31 Acts between them, and all these Acts are actually administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. We know that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has a huge portfolio and they implement close to 150 pieces of legislation. So 31 Acts; we are talking about close to one-fifth of the 150 pieces of legislation that we are improving, because, with time, we know that some regulations or some provisions may become irrelevant, so they need to be removed. There might be some provisions that need updating—that needs to be done. We want to make sure that legislation is clear and that people—those who are interpreting it, those who are implementing it—have good understanding, and because the provisions are clear, we are not causing any unnecessary cost to businesses or regulators. So those kind of things need to be kept in mind, and these kind of changes need to be made.

In my second reading speech, I talked about the changes that we made in the select committee and the feedback and the submissions that we received from submitters, so I won’t repeat that. One thing that is really good is that I am on both committees that considered these two bills. I chair the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, which considered the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, and I’m—

Dan Bidois: A hard-working committee.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: That is a very hard-working committee, thank you, Dan Bidois. I’m a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, which considered the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill.

As I mentioned before, these two bills are not just about immigration. If we just look at the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, it amends 24 Acts, and these Acts are across five portfolios: commerce and consumer affairs; science, innovation and technology; media and communications; justice; and energy. The Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill amends seven Acts across three portfolios: immigration, workplace relations and safety, and energy. We want to see that these changes are implemented as soon as possible, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. The ACT Party supports these bills. Thank you.

TANYA UNKOVICH (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill. I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee with Parmjeet Parmar, and it was a very efficient select committee. One thing I would like to also do is thank all of the staff, actually, who assisted us in understanding a lot of the technical changes in these bills. Now, they are small changes, across these two bills. However, collectively it does make very important, big change. It creates more clarity, cuts red tape, and streamlines processes that are identified over time. There isn’t much more to add. I would just simply like to commend the bill, on behalf of New Zealand First—both bills. Thank you.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā rā koe e te Pika, otirā tēnā rā tātou, e te Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mō te Pāti Māori i te pō nei. Ka reo Māori katoa tōku nei kōrero, i tōku nei kauhau hoki. Koinei tōku wā tuatoru kua kōrerotia ki tēnei o ngā pire. Hākoa te moroiti o tēnei pire, kua panoni i ētahi wāhanga i roto i tēnei kāwana, waihoki i ngā pire tae atu ki ngā rautau tahi mano iwa rau. Nō reira e tautoko ana mātou Te Pāti Māori i tēnei pire. Ko ētehi o ngā pire ka whai i roto i te ohu pakihi, waihoki i roto i te MBIE i raro i te wāhanga tekau mā rua o te Public Service Act 2020. He moroiti tēnei pire ki a au nei. Tētehi o ngā wāhanga e kaha taunaki i tēnei o ngā pire, ngēnei pire e rua, aroha mai, ko tā mātou pakihi Māori i roto i te ahumahi tāpoi. Waihoki, ko tā rātou mahi ka whai pēhitanga pai ki roto i te taiōhanga i roto i tēnei o ngā, arā koirā te kupu mō te economy. Nō reira ko ā mātou pakihi Māori e kaha tutuki ana i ngā wawata o te wā, hākoa ngā āwangawanga o te ōhanga o tēnei rā tonu.

Nā reira e mihi ana ki ngā pakihi, e mihi ana ki te ohu o MBIE, e mihi ana ki te Minita, a Matt Doocey, e kōrero ana ki tēnei o ngā pire. E tautoko ana tō mātou pāti. Tēnā rā koutou.

[Greetings to the Speaker, and to everyone in the House. I stand to voice the sentiments of the Māori Party tonight. I will speak te reo Māori only at this time. This is the third time I have spoken about this bill. Although it is only a minor bill, it impacts this Government and other bills from the 1900s. Therefore, the Māori Party supports this bill. Some bills relate to the business sector, that is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), under Section 12 of the Public Service Act 2020. This is only a minor bill, in my opinion. One group that fully supports these two bills are our Māori businesses in tourism. Furthermore, their task is to apply good pressure in the economy. Therefore, our Māori businesses are fully meeting the aspirations of the time, in spite of the economic worries of today.

Therefore, I thank the businesses, the people at MBIE, and I thank the Minister Matt Doocey, who speaks for this bill. Our party is in support. Thank you.]

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, as well, in support of these two bills: the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill. Now, first of all, I want to say that although during the committee stage there weren’t a lot of things that we felt needed to be discussed in depth—because, again, both of these two are really technical bills that provide quality of life within our legislative system—I was very heartened by one particular Minister’s response, saying that clearly us Opposition are not working hard enough by examining bills in detail during the committee stage. So I will be taking that advice to heart in every bill that we are seeing under urgency this week.

But to begin with, in terms of the immigration and workforce bill—and I kind of want to talk to both of them in turn. I think one of the areas—there are a lot of quality of life improvements, like I mentioned. It amends seven Acts and it went through the Education and Workforce Committee.

But one of the things that I really, really want to focus on, and I mentioned this during the committee stage as well, is the changes to the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007. One of the things I pointed out specifically which I think should be in the scope of this bill is the inclusion of offshore advisers for student visa or other forms of temporary visa as part of the requirement to be registered with IAA—or the Immigration Advisers Authority. The reason for this is that as we’re seeing that post-pandemic and our borders opening, and me coming from a background of having worked in international education and having worked with educational agents, I know for a fact that when it comes to international students—who are incredibly vulnerable when they are applying to an overseas institution—the most exploitation that we do see of international students is with predominantly offshore educational agents.

Now, Australia has had a system in place for a long time now whereby immigration advisers offshore must also be registered and there must also be a compliance process for these immigration advisers that’s up to the standard, as required by the Australian regulatory system and legislation. We are not seeing the same thing here. With the concern that we want to see more international students as part of, I guess, our immigration reset or etc., we are also going to be, as a result, seeing more exploitation of international students because we have not offered that particular protection.

That is also really concerning and really problematic: when a student arrives onshore and they realise that their agent didn’t apply them to the right course or has given them misinformation, or the private training establishment that they are part of also didn’t give them the qualification or has other nefarious reputations or ulterior motives. It is really, really, really hard for us as a country to say, “Well, sorry, you’ve been scammed. There’s nothing we can do about it.” when, in fact, through the changes that we can see in such a regulatory systems bill, we could actually make those changes to give those kinds of reassurances but also accountability and quality assurance to offshore educational agents. So that’s the big part that I want to mention in terms of the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill.

But in terms of the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, like one of the previous speakers mentioned, this bill does amend 24 Acts. It is something that is quite comprehensive and it covers a lot of different portfolios as well. Again, these are things that are incredibly necessary within our regulatory systems to be able to upgrade all of them to ensure consistency. But it’s interesting that this is sort of the bill that gets introduced in the House with reasonable frequency, but people kind of talk about it from the perspective of, like, “Oh, look, we need to cut red tape. We need to cut green tape. We need to cut all of the tapes.” But, at the same time, you can say all of that that you want, but these sorts of bills and the quality of life it provides are still really important. But if other people are politicking, I also think that it’s really, really important that we do have those sorts of regulations in place that are robust, that can give the people of Aotearoa the reassurance that they need in anything that we do in our day-to-day lives.

So, yes, as a matter of fact, in that case, regulations are incredibly important; regulatory systems are incredibly important. It’s something that we should be looking at where we just sort of hack and slash in that particular system, because the bottom line is they are important to our society. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and associated bills. These are sensible pieces of legislation that tidy up a lot of small changes, in many cases, to many different bills. I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee as we considered this legislation. There were many useful and interesting parts to it, and the advice that we had was excellent, so I thank very much the staff that were able to advise us, as well as the submitters on these bills. I commend these bills to the House.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Once again, one of these types of bills deserves the kind of scrutiny that these particular bills and the previous bill, the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2024-25, Emergency Response, and Remedial Measures) Bill, have had, not just in the House but through the select committee. I’m encouraged, as I read the legislative statements and a number of the comments from across the House, how well the committee worked together. You can see that in the legislative statements to the House this evening in its third reading, where recommended changes by the committee were considered and actually put in place and implemented. That doesn’t always happen that way, sadly, in our democracy, but we certainly try our best. I think that’s been fleshed out quite well on a number of matters because these are technical, these two particular bills—and I’m going to address each one separately.

It is important, though, that we don’t lose sight of that detail, and I want to start, first and foremost, by speaking to the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill. We’re the Labour Party and there are some assertions on the other side of the House that they’re the party for the worker. Well, we laugh in the face of claims like that and can say that the Labour Party quite proudly stand by our record in supporting workers and workplace safety.

Now, this particular bill does make a number of changes in and around workplace safety that must be scrutinised to make sure that when people leave their house and kiss their whānau goodbye or get on with their day to go to work, that they come home safely. There are a number of things in this particular bill that will look to make some minor adjustments around the way that instruments can be used to measure certain aspects through the workplaces that are defined here—namely the electricity suppliers but also gas suppliers and others. It’s important to make sure that we scrutinise those correctly in order to make sure families who have loved ones go to work, come home in the evening.

Out of curiosity, over summer I read a book around the history of the goldmining boom in New Zealand—predominantly in the South Island, of course, but other places around New Zealand. One of the points that the historians made about the boom of the goldmining industry in New Zealand was part of it was replicated on some of what was done in Australia. One of those is what they call “tourism mines”—“tourism mines”. The reason they did that was sometimes to save costs: you bring tourists in, allow them to think that they’re out there and they’re prospecting for the opportunity to, as a tourist, discover gold or get their small nugget or their flakes of gold, and then be pleased with their outing. What that did for those who owned the permits—owned the titles for particular areas of the river and other places where they were mining for gold—was they would use that to then scale up their opportunity, in turn, from the tourism mining operation into a full-blown commercial mining operation. It was quite a tried and true method.

Why I reference that is there are the amendments in Part 4 in the Health and Safety at Work Act in this particular bill that specifically reference this, then clarifies the difference between a “tourism mine” and a fully commercial mine. We’re going to keep an eye on this because we know that mining is on a strong part of the agenda of this particular Government, and so we want to make sure that as we look towards safety and making sure that the very precious tourism industry—

Hon Mark Patterson: Where was the Labour Party founded?

Hon PEENI HENARE: —that we have in the country, as well as the priorities that this Government have already been quite clear on with mining—the lines aren’t blurred. I think that’s really important because we know and we’ve seen it in the past and the historians have said this, that it was very lucrative.

I hear “Where did the Labour Party start?” Of course, it was in Blackball and it was because of mining. So it’s only our duty to our heritage and our whakapapa that we continue to look at these matters.

Another particular one that I know the Labour Party—and other parties in Parliament—have worked hard on is the immigration licensing matter. All of us, as members of Parliament, have been approached by certain sectors in our community who continue to speak of their unfair treatment. Some have spoken of how they’ve put their trust into a particular person to manage their immigration applications and visa applications—and, in fact, paid their entire life savings to get those things done for either themselves or their family—and have only been ripped off. That’s certainly something that members in particular this evening have already made comment on, and they’re important as well.

I come now to economic development, so the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill. Having read through this particular bill, I can say that there are a number of things that were started under our final term in Government, and I’m really glad to see that some of them have been carried into this sort of omnibus bill, if you will. Some of them are quite sensible, but some of them will continue to leave a question on the table and certainly on the conversation tables in our community. Those are around the changes to the charitables Act and the Incorporated Societies Act.

Madam Speaker, you’ve been involved in matters like this in your community, but also in your experience in the House, here, where there have been attempts to make fundamental changes to the Charities Act and the Incorporated Societies Act. For whatever reason, some of those organisations will continue to ask the question, “Well, why weren’t those fundamental changes made?” I do think that is a question that will have to be answered at some point in time. But in this particular bill, they do make some sensible adjustments and some minor incremental steps, if you will, towards what could be a possible answer to those questions about incorporated societies and the Charities Act.

Another part in here which I found quite interesting was one of the very simple—well, seemingly simple—in Part 13, where it speaks to the amendments to the Heavy Engineering Research Levy Act, a rather old Act which is 1978. I can hand on heart say it was before I was born, but it is important. The reason I say this is because one of the things it does there—it says removes gender-specific pronouns. Gender-specific pronouns are very hot topic—a very hot topic—at this particular point in time. I’m wondering if this Government’s signalling to the House and indeed the New Zealand public whether or not they’ll be taking a ruler, line by line, across Acts old and new and recent about looking towards, “Well, what does this mean?” Because we’ve had some strong rhetoric from the Government; we’ve heard terms such as “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and all these other things, but it seems pretty sensible here. But what does this signal to the community? That’s one of the points I want to make here for the House this evening.

Another one, as I looked across this and coming back to the incorporated societies, there was a recent omnibus bill that Minister Potaka had brought to the House that made some changes around the charities and the incorporated societies and how it related to, in particular, lands that were held under te ture whenua Māori. Now, our colleague Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, in her very good contribution this evening, made reference to the way Māori business operates and what does this mean with respect to the way post-settlement governance entities (PSGEs) have established themselves because not all of the land or asset base that they—in fact, very little of the asset base—control is governed by te ture whenua Māori. So it requires and behoves the House to look at these particular matters with keen interest.

We say that also as it signals the intent of this House when we think of upcoming matters such as the Resource Management Act that will continue to cross across boundaries, if you will, on PSGEs and matters of incorporated societies and charitable trusts. So we’re keen to continue to look towards those particular changes and make sure that we can give it the due consideration that is required.

Once again, in this particular bill, there was clear goodwill and hard work in the committee to make sure that some reasonable and sensible select committee recommendations were taken on board, and I want to acknowledge the Education and Workforce Committee for doing that. Some of them, once again, easy tidy-ups; others of them will make incremental steps which will ultimately have to be answered in a more fulsome way and fulsome question by either this Government or future Governments as they arise.

We do support these bills in their third reading and we look forward to continually working in that collegial way that we’ve seen across these two bills that I’ve mentioned this evening.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): Excellent, thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great honour that I rise to speak in this third reading of the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill. A lot of these two bills has been traversed already this evening. Of course, we have a whole range of legislation here in New Zealand, and often some of these pieces of legislation need to be brought up to date. These bills make changes to 31 different Acts, including the oldest, from 1908, and I think the latest one is from 2002. They’re all really sensible changes, therefore I’m happy to commend this bill to the House.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tēnā tātou katoa i tēnei pō. E tū ana awau mō te Pāti Reipa ki te whakaae i tēnei pire, arā [Greetings to the Speaker of the House, and to everyone here tonight. I stand on behalf of the Labour Party tonight in support of this bill], the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill, Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill—geez, Madam Speaker, you’re probably going to ring the bell already after just reading that!

Hoi anō rā e te whānau, I am here on behalf of Labour to support this bill. As you all know, I am the proud MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and several times I’ve stood up to acknowledge that Ikaroa-Rāwhiti is the food bowl of Aotearoa and therefore heavily productive and heavily dependent on having a really good workforce. This legislation is quite broad, but amongst other areas, obviously one thing that stands out for me is migrant workers. As a member of the Primary Production Committee—which I leave, very sadly, hoi anō, to move on to other equally exciting committees and portfolios—I heard throughout the rohe from various industries, including the wool industry, about the value of migrant workers and ensuring that we create positive work environments for them. So my contribution is not just about supporting industry but, of course, supporting our kaimahi we bring to Aotearoa and ensuring that they have good experiences in return for the quality mahi they do, that naturally contributes to our economy.

Sadly, my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare alluded to some of the negative experiences some of our kaimahi have had, and as tangata whenua I think it is incumbent upon us to ensure that when they come here to work for our country, we provide excellent manaaki for them—furthermore, not just for the worker but for their communities and the whānau that they bring with them. That has been an issue experienced in Tairāwhiti, sadly, and throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and, of course, throughout Aotearoa.

One of the other positive aspects of this bill is perhaps the clarity it will provide for employers and agents who bring, effectively, these manuhiri who come to make Aotearoa their home and contribute to our economy. I’m not up here just scathingly talking about employers and agents. Perhaps some of them purely need clarity, and the amendments in this bill can provide that.

Furthermore, talking about economic growth, however, I think we have to think about the fact that I’ve said in this House before: growth starts at the roots. We are the roots of this country, and we need to think about how we develop our own workforces and our own communities’ capacity and skills throughout Aotearoa. So that’s why I want to bring up, once again, progressive procurement and how disappointing it is that the opportunity, I think, has been lost. We see firsthand the direct impact that progressive procurement made on the expansion of the Māori economy, and I think if one of the focuses here is on economic growth, that’s an opportunity lost and something that I think we should all reconsider.

Hoi anō rā, I am very happy to commend this legislation for the protections, supports, and positive impacts it will have on the economic development and growth of Aotearoa. So, on behalf of Te Pāti Reipa, tēnei anō te mihi atu ki a koutou. E tū ana awau ki te tautoko i tēnei pire.

[So, on behalf of the Labour Party, I thank you all. I stand here in support of this bill.]

I commend this bill to the House.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill. I see harmony has broken out across the House and everybody is in agreement that these are very good changes. So, with that, I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): David, oh—Reuben Davidson.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Early in the evening.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: It’s my pleasure to stand up and take a call—lucky it’s a 10-minute call—on the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill. I am rising to speak in support of these bills. I did want to acknowledge the very sage words of one of my parliamentary colleagues, who called this a beautiful journey, earlier this evening, in his opening address to this bill. Part of that beautiful journey is because there is consensus in the House, and there was at our Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. But that consensus and that shared support isn’t always black and white. One of the issues with this bill and with the issues that this bill addresses is that the very people it serves are seeking, from bills like this, certainty. The risk, when these bills contradict what’s been promised or leave open opportunities for uncertainty—then that puts some members of our community and some people at a disadvantage.

So I want to come back, as one of the final speakers, to the summary of what this bill is. It is an omnibus bill that contains amendments to legislation administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The four points are: reducing unnecessary compliance burdens for businesses and implementation costs for regulatory agencies; clarifying and updating statutory provisions to give effect to the purposes of the principal Acts and their provisions; addressing regulatory duplication, gaps, errors, and inconsistencies within and between different pieces of legislation; and responding to the changing environment—for example, by ensuring that legislation responds to changing technology or is technology-neutral.

That’s really good, that that’s the aim: to provide what I’ve spoken of earlier—certainty—but it’s not necessarily the reality. That lack of certainty—and other members have spoken of this, too—is often what we see in our electorate offices around Aotearoa when people come to us with sometimes complex and sometimes what should be quite straightforward and quite simple immigration cases. Because of shifts and changes and because of contradictions, some of those very simple immigration cases can become very confusing, and, more importantly, they can become deeply painful for the people going through those processes. Every week, I have examples of that—obviously, I’m not going to go into people’s personal details about the complexities of the cases that come—but also about some of the promises that were made prior to the last election around some of the types of support for immigration and immigration visas that have not been kept in this term of Government. I think that the very human conversations you have with the people, on a weekly basis in our electorate offices—who are deeply and painfully affected by promises of action and, after the election, complete inaction in that space—are very, very sad to see. That, ultimately, comes down to the choices of what this Government is choosing to prioritise.

I want to read a passage from an article that was published on RNZ’s website—Radio New Zealand’s website—earlier in February, about thousands of overseas parents whose children have immigrated here who are waiting for news on applying for residence, and others are hoping for quick news on a long-term visitor visa to stay with their families: “More than 10,000 migrant families have submitted applications—on behalf of one or two parents—which are in a random ballot to be selected every three months. If they win a spot in the random ballot, they can apply for residence to settle here.” Now, the really tragic part of this is that the reporter goes on to detail that there are families who have been spoken to by RNZ who’ve had parents die while they’re waiting or become so frail that they cannot travel or they no longer qualify for that visa, on health grounds. I think that’s deeply disappointing, to see that the opportunity here in this bill was to go further and to move away from some of that grey uncertainty, and provide real clarity for those people and make good on promises that were made.

Now, another thing that I wanted to talk about here—and this is about immigration in the opposite direction—is about some of the other choices that this Government has made in this term around things like housing and around cuts to health and not being able to provide the basic services that all New Zealanders deserve. In one of my communities, deep cuts to the school lunch programme, which sees terrible, terrible meals being delivered to schools, if they even turn up in this community—we sat down to have a conversation around the table with one of those children in one of those schools. We talked to several children, and we asked them what they wanted to do when they left school. One of those children’s answers was to move to Australia. That is the aspiration. That is what happens when you don’t look after people and when you don’t provide the kind of support and services that all New Zealanders deserve.

Now, I want to get back to the point of certainty, which is what I think this legislation should be providing and what we’re not seeing—what the grey creates and what should be simply black and white. I want to reflect on what happened last week, which was that our Prime Minister took a trip to India. That was quite the contrast to the lack of certainty we see here. There were banquets, there was cricket, there was a handshake, there were promises of real-time free-trade agreements and direct flights. I have to say, I haven’t seen our Prime Minister looking so happy for quite a long time. One of the reasons that I thought—because on reflection, I thought, why is our Prime Minister all of a sudden looking so happy? I realised this is probably the furthest away he’s been from those unhappy voters who backed him in the election and now have buyer’s remorse. All of a sudden, he was having a holiday and he was getting some time away from those people, but no sooner had he returned, still—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Just like you’re going to return to the bill very shortly, aren’t you?

REUBEN DAVIDSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for your consideration. I’m coming back to the point of immigration here, because that was one of the key pillars of the regulatory systems immigration—I’ll read the full title, just to make sure for members on the other side of the House it’s not lost on them—the Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill. One of the key things that it deals with is immigration. That was one of the main topics of conversation, with regard to the free-trade agreement being discussed on the Prime Minister’s happy holiday.

No sooner than the Prime Minister returned to New Zealand: “New Zealand First’s Winston Peters,” it says here, “sees no need for a relaxation of New Zealand’s immigration settings in any trade talks with India.” If anyone wonders who this Mr Winston Peters is, he’s the man who claims he made Luxon Prime Minister. Yes, that man. On Morning Report, on the Monday after the Prime Minister returned from his free-trade agreement negotiations, Winston Peters said India “had the biggest population in the world now—1.4 billion people. Do you really think Immigration New Zealand is going to help? Get serious for goodness sake.” So the man who claims to have made the Prime Minister the Prime Minister doesn’t support the very thing that that man needs to have in place to be able to get his deal over the line. That’s why a bill like this needs to give people the certainty that in grey times, in changing times, there’s some black-and-white structure in place to give them the certainty they deserve.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): That was a long 10 minutes—for a bill that is unanimous in the House. On this side of the House, we are really keen to drive productivity and growth and efficiency. With that, I commend these bills to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bills read a third time.

Bills

Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m very pleased to present this bill to the House for its third reading. This is Parliament’s third attempt in about three or four years at introducing oral fluid testing for drugs at the roadside. Hopefully, it is third time lucky, because I for one do not want to be back here in 2026 or 2027 or 2028, legislating again to bring New Zealand into line with many other jurisdictions that see drugs out there in the community and want to make sure that people who get behind the wheel are not on drugs, because we know that they’re a major factor in many road deaths and serious injuries. We had a go back in 2022, but the approval criteria was incompatible with commercially available devices. We’re now making sure that police are equipped with roadside oral fluid screening as a road safety tool to enable the enforcement.

The way I think about it is it’s a little bit like breath testing for alcohol. They’ll be able to stop any driver of a motor vehicle to administer an oral fluid screening test—a key part of deterring drug-driving, making sure that people can be tested anytime and anywhere. A driver who tests positive on the first screening test will be required to undergo a second screening test and to provide an oral fluid sample for laboratory testing. Two positive screening tests triggers a mandatory 12-hour stand down from driving to address any immediate road safety risk. An infringement notice is only issued following a positive laboratory test. The Minister of Police will set out in notices what qualifying drugs, or families of drugs, will be tested for at the roadside and in the laboratory. The requirement for two positive screening tests before a person is stood down and a positive laboratory test before an infringement offence is committed are measures to address concerns about the accuracy of the devices. These devices have been used in Australia for many years. Two tests have 98 percent accuracy.

There were changes in the committee of the whole House stage, resulting in changes to the way oral fluid samples will be able to be collected for future independent analysis. This allows drivers the option to challenge the infringement notice issued following a positive laboratory test by paying a private analyst to test their oral fluid sample.

The Government’s moving quickly on this bill. We expect Police to be ready to implement the bill by the end of this year, once it becomes an Act. Before it is rolled out, they will have to procure and approve the devices and the laboratory services, and they’ll have to train police officers and develop regulations to support the regime. But it is a good step forward. I think many people will welcome it. As I said at the start of my brief remarks, drugs are a contributor to many deaths and serious injuries on the road, alongside alcohol. Now, of course, we will soon have a method of testing for drugs on the road. And I think we will look back in five to 10 years and we will say, “What was the fuss about? How crazy was it that you could be high on weed or coke or meth—”

Tom Rutherford: MDMA.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, “MDMA”, says Tom Rutherford.

Tom Rutherford: Butterick told me!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh my! Tom says Mike Butterick told him. I’ll just be a bit careful about what I say here, particularly in relation to Tom Rutherford, the youngest member of the National Party caucus.

It doesn’t actually matter—the point is drugs can impair your driving, and the idea that you could be high and drive is nuts. Up until this law comes into effect and is implemented, there is, essentially, nothing to stop you doing that—certainly not in the law, or certainly not any ability to check that. It’s a good bill. We’ve worked pretty hard on it, and I’m looking forward to seeing its passage through the House today. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure this evening to take a call as the Opposition’s transport spokesperson on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. This is a piece of legislation that Labour supported at first reading; was very constructive, I believe, through the select committee process; and supported at second reading. We did have some issues that weren’t resolved at the committee stage, but, despite that, we come to third reading and as a party we will be supporting this bill this evening.

It’s interesting, just listening to the Minister outline the Government’s belief that this will prioritise road safety. It’s interesting because, at the same time, of course, this is a Government that is not responding to the needs of communities when it comes to road safety, in relation to lower speed limits in communities where they have called specifically for that. So it is interesting to hear that from the Minister. But I do hope that the rationale, which is one based on road safety, is one that is one to be enjoyed by the House this evening.

When we step back and have a look at the impact of drugs in the systems of drivers of motor vehicles in New Zealand, it’s very clear that the data and the statistics indicate that a significant proportion of serious injuries—and, need I say, fatalities—are easily attributable to that particular criteria as well. That’s why, when Labour was in Government, we sought to introduce roadside testing. We had a very clear view that procurement should not be what drives this legislation. It’s something that has been expressed, I think, at all stages and did become perhaps more apparent through the select committee process: that this is a piece of legislation that, I still believe, should not be driven by decisions around procurement but should be taken from a principled approach as to how things would be rolled out and what is the right thing to do.

That is why, up to this point, Labour has been deeply concerned about the concerns that have been expressed right throughout by the Attorney-General around the potential breaches that an individual who might be going about their normal business, any day of the week, any time of the week, would be, effectively, detained at the roadside. This is something that we were hopeful the Government during the committee stage would not only turn their mind to but actually give some serious consideration to making some changes. It’s something that was contained in the select committee report, by all members, and the reason as to why there was no specified change in the select committee report is because we were not in a position, given time, to land ourselves on what an appropriate time limit would be, nor were officials able to provide the committee with what an appropriate level of time might be.

For the benefit of folks perhaps at home, what we’re talking about here is if someone is going about their business on any day of the week and they come across a random checkpoint, a police checkpoint—as they will experience when it comes to alcohol breath-screening tests at the moment—and it is for the purpose of a drug test, under this legislation it is possible that they could be detained at the roadside for any length of time, because the bill as currently drafted has no limitations on how long someone could be detained. It’s something that the Attorney-General herself did raise.

There is only one other piece of legislation in this country when it comes to land transport where there is a time limit, and that’s 15 minutes for the police to, effectively, detain someone for the purposes of establishing their identity. So there is precedent for this in legislation, and so it is disappointing that the Government and the Minister didn’t actually follow through on that. I am hopeful, though, given there is a review period and the review must be commenced within a five-year period, that the Government would look at the implementation of this bill and turn their mind to sort of time considerations to address the specific concerns that the Attorney-General had raised. I want to just really stress that these were concerns that were brought to the committee’s attention and brought to parliamentarians’ attention by the Attorney-General. The concerns that Labour has had and expressed through this process have been a direct result of the concerns that she has raised. So it is disappointing that we have landed there.

There are some really interesting changes that have come through as a result of this being in front of the select committee. One of the things that didn’t change is the nature of the consultation by the Minister of Police, who would be the person who needed to be satisfied that these would be devices that could, basically, detect a list of families of qualifying drugs. The change in the legislation is that the Minister no longer has to be satisfied that the threshold would be met at a level that there was impairment to be followed through. That is an extremely high threshold, in terms of the nature of the devices being approved for that purpose. So we would have liked to have seen the opportunity for the Minister of Police, in this circumstance, to be able to consult with others outside the Minister of Transport and the Minister of science, if that was the case indeed.

One of the interesting things that this bill does also provide is a pathway for the police to engage the compulsory impairment tests. The select committee heard from the Police that there is an undertaking to sort of roll out the numbers of trained individuals that would be able to administer these tests. If we are in rural communities where it might take some time to get a trained compulsory impairment test person to the particular site, that does cause some limitations in itself. So it is pleasing to see that there is going to be a pathway that’s available to the police there.

I have no doubt that the police are well-intentioned in this space. Actually, I spent Saturday night out with my local Palmerston North police, and they do a fantastic job. But there is a concern that there needs to be limits that are baked into this legislation that provide certainty around liberty, and the ability for folk who are just going about their normal business of the day or night to be able to do that. It’s really interesting that the ability for someone to elect for an independent analysis at the lab was something that was a new addition. I want to thank submitters for identifying that and the committee for bringing that in, because, as it stood as originally drafted, there wouldn’t have been that ability for someone who might have an issue with the laboratory process to independently seek—at their own cost—to have their sample tested. And then, of course, it needs to be bio-verified and authenticated in a laboratory. But provided that was followed through, then that was another safeguard within the legislation.

One of the interesting things that we’ve heard from the Government is that they intend to roll this out by Christmas. I hope that this is a procedure and a bill that’s really implemented in communities in a way that’s safe. That procurement is something that still needs to be worked through, and, again, I really don’t like the sense that procurement is what drives legislation. We should be looking at what good legislation is and then procurement falling within that. But I do hope that—you know, the Government have indicated they want to roll this out by Christmas; that’s not a very long runway. I hope that there is a lot of confidence in being able to do that.

But I also hope that whilst this is being rolled out in communities all around the country, there is also an ability to be able to collect the information for the review process that will follow, because one of the changes that we have seen with this bill is the review would have undertaken quite an explicit list of aspects—for example, the impact that this legislation may have on Māori and Pacific communities, which is something that submitters did raise. That was taken out by the Minister’s amendments. So I do hope that the review is able to be undertaken in a way that really does address and turn its mind to some of the real issues that were raised at select committee that haven’t been worked through in a fulsome way, in my view, by the committee of the whole House.

So, as I say, this is a bill that will be important, because road safety is absolutely important. As I’ve said, that is the reason why Labour, in Government, sought to do something about this. This legislation passing—if not tonight, then tomorrow—will be a further step towards ensuring that roads are safe and that communities are protected. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to oppose this bill for a number of reasons. But I want to say, first and foremost, that, yes, everyone should be free to travel around their communities and around our country without risking death or serious injury, and we can have that transport system that is free of death and that serious injury. Yes, it is true that no one should ever drive while seriously impaired. It puts themselves and others at risk. However, there is a lack of evidence that this bill or the drug-driving regime will address the root cause of dangerous or impaired driving, or of drug harm. I just want to unpack some of that, and what we observed in the committee stage.

I think one of the first things is the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill has often been equated with drink-driving, but the thing is, we must understand that the way that we quantify and look at drink-driving in terms of the interaction between ethanol and our body and our digestive system is vastly different from the myriad of drugs that have been discussed in this particular bill.

Indeed, in clause 4, when we’re looking at qualifying drugs—or a “family of qualifying drugs”, under the definition—one of the things that we did try to explore during the committee stage was around the idea of what it means when something shares a substantially similar chemical structure, particularly in light of benzodiazepine or amphetamine. Unlike ethanol, there are a lot of different compounds, particularly for medicinal uses. So, for example, anxiolytics or, potentially, central nervous system stimulants for ADHD treatment are some things that can have that particular chemical compound, particularly when we’re looking at benzodiazepine and having similar structures, which benzodiazepine, for example, have in terms of having both a benzene as well as a diazepine ring structure in its chemical structure.

The other concern that we have, for example, is the inconsistency when you’re talking about pharmacological effect. So, again, pharmacological effect is when we’re looking at the interaction between a particular drug or particular substance with the human body, and particularly when we’re looking at what is considered the first-pass effect through the liver. But when we are looking at some of these clauses—let’s say clause 12(3), which replaces section 64(6)—we’re looking at the idea of the proportion of the drug in the system. It is not simply about impairment, and it doesn’t take into account that certain people process certain compounds faster than others. So, naturally, we are seeing—again, unlike ethanol—possibly a discriminatory effect when we’re looking at people being stopped for these sorts of tests. I think nothing in this bill finds itself with the baseline of impairment, because a lot of these come down to the proportion of the available drug, or the proportion of a qualifying drug, in a person’s blood.

So it does beg the question, from the very definition of qualifying drugs: are we looking at a discriminatory element, especially when you’re looking at someone who is having certain mental health issues which will require certain drugs being administered—or, indeed, who has certain neurodivergences, such as ADHD—not being a part of this? We’re seeing that even in the primary Act, under Schedule 5. For what is considered a qualifying drug, it actually determines the amount that should be present in the system.. But this bill, again, doesn’t actually show those amounts, and we have no indication and no clarity from the Minister of Transport on when that Order in Council will be made that clarifies the actual amount within that, in terms of families of qualifying drugs. The example that I gave during the committee stage was bromazepam, which is anxiolytic, but it does share a similar structure to benzodiazepine, but it’s not currently in the schedule of the primary Act, so we do need to have an amount that’s specific to this.

The other concern—and it also ties up, in general—is that, indeed, very rarely, do we see a bill that fails the BORA test, and that’s the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act test here in Parliament. This particular one does require the Attorney-General to produce a section 7 report. But I think what has been quite a disheartening factor about that is even though there is a section 7 report that has been done on this, there are a number of sections which I think would have been pertinent for the Attorney-General, and also for the Government, to consider under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and which have not been considered as a result.

To give an example, when we are looking at—for example, I gave a couple of cases on this particular issue. One of them is the Taylor v New Zealand Poultry Board case, which was from 1984 and went all the way up to the Court of Appeal, which very much challenges the very essence of natural law theory and particularly the presumption against self-incrimination. Indeed, this particular one touches on the BORA principles in sections 23(4), 25(d), and also 27(1), none of which were explored as part of the section 7 report, despite the fact that, again, we have a section 7 report as opposed to a consistency report against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

This is a serious concern because, for many of us, we know that, under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, we have natural rights under natural law, one of which, the presumption against self-incrimination, very much doesn’t allow one an absolute right—potentially, if you want to argue that—against self-incrimination. By having a police officer pull you up and force you to take a test, that very much touches on, some would say, one of the fundamental rights against self-incrimination. I think one of the things that has been particularly evident in the Attorney-General’s report as a result of this was actually that, yes, maybe one could argue that, on balance, particularly if you are applying section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the limitations, maybe there is a reason for us to limit that particular right. However, we have also seen that the oral fluid test cannot prove impairment. That’s one of the major issues because it is not like alcohol, where the relationship between breath and blood levels is more strongly correlated with impairment. Yes, there may have been some things that have been said in terms of the accuracy of this particular oral test, but, to be honest, it doesn’t actually offer the same level of reassurance as what we’re currently seeing in terms of the breath alcohol test.

The other thing that I want to mention as also part of the same vein in terms of potential challenges in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is actually a very recent case where the ruling just came out a few days ago, which is aptly named Lawrence v New Zealand Police. This is a High Court ruling that talks about when a person—in this case, Mr Lawrence—was stopped by the police. He was allowed to consult a lawyer, as your natural right is to consult a lawyer. But one of the things that the officer failed to consider is that under section 23(1)(b) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the right to consult the lawyer also requires the right to privacy, as in you are supposed to consult the lawyer in private. Because of the fact that the police officer just happened to be in the car with Mr Lawrence at that precise time, it also meant that that particular test was considered inadmissible in court because of the fact that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act had been violated.

So we are actually going to be seeing a lot more potential challenges when it comes to this. With regards to clause 27 of this particular bill where it talks about how an enforcement officer must forbid a person to drive a motor vehicle for the 12-hour period if the person fails or refuses to undergo an oral fluid screening test without delay, one of the other things we haven’t managed to get clarity on during the committee stage is what “without delay” actually means. I think what it does is it opens our enforcement officers up for a lot of legal challenges under the court of law.

So, to sum up, the Green Party will not be supporting this. Not only, from a pharmacological component, have we not gotten the reassurance that—when we’re looking at qualifying drugs or interaction of drugs or even drugs that are available for certain treatment of anxiety and neurodiversity—it has the protection for those people, but we’re also seeing some severe challenges in terms of the fundamental New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, both through the section 7 report and also through some of the case law that I’ve expressed.

But there are other ways to deal with this. I just want to leave in saying that unsafe speed is actually a factor in more fatal crashes than alcohol or drugs. Thank you.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak on this third reading of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. It has been traversed by many others in the House, but I will do so again: driving while impaired is a dangerous activity on the road, and that is what this bill is trying to address. It’s not good enough for New Zealanders and their families to go about their lawful business on the road and have the risk of someone who is seriously impaired through drug-driving also sharing that road and creating a danger for all of us in this country. Serious impairment is something that needs to be picked up on, and the best that we can do right now is with the tests that we have. This bill is also supposed to repair something that has been in place already, and the Labour members have spoken on it, and we’ve had a bill of a similar nature trying to achieve a similar goal in 2022. It wasn’t, despite the good intentions of the time, able to achieve that, and so this bill is in place to try and remedy that situation.

I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which examined this piece of legislation, and as has been traversed, again, there were some issues raised at the select committee. On one of those issues, I took the opportunity to speak to the Minister who introduced this bill, to raise my concerns about the time which someone could be delayed from undertaking their lawful business on the side of the road and also the ambiguity around whether that person could be required to accompany a police officer to a further location than what would be deemed necessary by any reasonable person. I have been reassured, and something in the statutory review in the bill has reassured me, that we will be able to address this issue and others in future, because, as the select committee said in our commentary, we think that the statutory review process of the bill needs to happen. Our request for the Government is to consider further whether this bill should include a time limit in which enforcement officers may require a driver to remain stopped.

This bill contains within it a statutory review, which must be undertaken between three and four years from this bill passing, and I think, at that point, there are quite a few issues which do need to be traversed. Some have been traversed tonight; some, I’m sure, will be brought up by other members. But, for my part, I think some serious attention needs to be given to the time which a New Zealander or a visitor to our country can be delayed from going about their lawful business and how far they can be expected to remove themselves from an unsafe area, and whether that has been properly accounted for with the new knowledge that we have. Part of what the select committee was unable to make our decision on was the lack of options around suitable time frames. That was fair enough. The officials told us, “We don’t know what the procurement’s going to be right now, so we’re going to have to build some of this into the bill.” OK, we’ve accepted that, but that means, when the statutory review comes up, that’s the right time when this stuff needs to be taken into account.

There was one other issue that I think should be in the statutory review, and that came up during select committee, and that was the regime of random testing. Randomness was acknowledged by the officials as a euphemism for a strategic approach that can be applied through operational planning. It doesn’t mean random—just pick up every 20th car—it means that Police will use a strategic approach on how they operationalise this. I think that this House would see it as quite important that that also is included in the statutory review.

So, with that out of the way, I think it is important that this bill passes, so that New Zealanders can have confidence that, when they go out on the road, they are doing so amongst a community of safe drivers who are not impaired. I commend this bill to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I just want to follow my colleagues, mostly from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and say thank you to them and to the other members who doubtless will speak shortly for the hard work that they’ve put together and the collegial work that they did to bring this bill to where it is and to recommend a number of amendments to the House, many of which are part of this bill.

This bill is about road safety. We’ve already had Tangi Utikere talk about road safety in a broader context, and road safety best practice usually would say that’s about safer roads and roadsides, about safer speeds, about safer vehicles, and about safer road users. This bill is about the safer road users part of that because drug-driving we know is a major problem on our roads. We had 289 people who tragically lost their lives last calendar year on the roads. That is the first time below 300 since 2014 and, actually, according to the Automobile Association, is the lowest per capita rate of death since the 1920s. But it is still 289 people who died on our roads, and that is 289 too many.

Of those, 64 had drugs in their system, and a further 32 had drugs and alcohol in their system. So there is no doubt that drugs are playing a significant role in road death and injury. That is why this bill is here. This bill aims to put in place a drug-testing regime. The whole purpose of that is not so much to catch people but to discourage people from consuming drugs, being under the influence of drugs, and then driving, and then potentially causing death or injury to themselves or to other people.

As we’ve already heard, the previous Labour Government saw this as a problem and had a crack at fixing it. The intention was good. The problem was that for the regime that was put in place, the technology just simply doesn’t exist to be able to do the testing at roadside and be able to determine someone effectively guilty at roadside, because the technology is not there.

So what this regime does is, instead of doing that, it says we do a screening test at roadside and then we do a laboratory test to say, “We’re going to fine you.” That laboratory test is recognised as being much, much more robust. So the advice that we had from the experts was that they couldn’t stand behind the accuracy of the roadside test—the oral fluid test. It’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. There’s always that issue of saying—whether you like the numbers or not—it is better that 100 guilty people go free than that one innocent person is convicted. So I guess that that is what that thinking is about. But what they did say is that they would stand behind the lab test as being just as good and just as accurate as the blood test, which we already are familiar with.

So this regime puts in place that two-stage mechanism. The bill is based, in theory, on random, but random, as you’ve heard my colleague Cam Luxton say, actually is a bit targeted. It’s targeted to places where, while it is in theory anyone, anywhere, anytime—that’s true—it is likely to be operationally targeted. Part of that is because the number of drug tests is going to be very, very much less than the number of alcohol tests that are done at the moment. But it is still intended as a deterrent.

Look, that does take me to the one issue which did exercise the select committee and also, as we’ve already heard, the Attorney-General, and that is in the first instance, before somebody’s been tested—they’ve not been found guilty, there’s no behaviour, and there’s no evidence of drug taking at this stage. There may be later on, after they’ve been tested. But before they’ve been tested, what rights do they have? Now, the Attorney-General said, “You’re stopping somebody. You’re detaining them for a period of time. You are taking a saliva test, so there’s some level of intrusion.” So the Attorney-General and quite a number of the submitters expressed concern about that. The select committee spent some time thinking about that.

So, look, I just wanted to put on record that this was a concern that we raised. There was exploration of whether we should suggest a time limit by which the testing should be done. Look, I understand why there isn’t one that the Minister has taken up. Part of that is because, while Tangi Utikere said we don’t want to be led by the technology which is available, the reality is that until we’ve got technology, we don’t know whether it’s a 10-minute process, a 15-minute process, or a 20-minute process, and allowing for some time left over to make sure you do that process properly. So I understand that; any time that we’ve put in there at this stage would have been a bit random. But we were concerned—and I did want to put this on the record—about the potential length of detention. We were concerned, also, about the 12-hour stand down, which occurs, essentially, if you’ve tested positive at the roadside—you’re still going to get that 12-hour stand down, even if the lab test says “No, you’re actually in the clear.” So there’s an issue there. But it is an issue about road safety, so we thought that that took primacy over the inconvenience of that 12-hour stand down.

There were concerns expressed about prescription medicines, but I think the answer to that, really, is to say, well, look, if you’ve taken a prescription medicine, most of those things say to give yourself a reasonable length of time before you actually drive after using a prescription medicine.

The other one, as Cam Luxton also said, is the issue around accompanying a police officer. What we really anticipated there was that if you’ve pulled over on the side of the road, the police officer might say to you, “Look, we want you to move to a safer place.”—so you’re not on the road itself; you’ve moved off the road—rather than taking you 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or whatever it might be to a police station, particularly in the rural areas.

Look, we were concerned about the power of the State, I guess, and the Attorney-General said that as well, and we want to make sure that’s exercised properly. One of the things we did do was to say that we wanted to make the process more flexible, so we allowed the police to flick between the oral fluid testing and the existing good-cause-to-suspect regime. But, really, what I wanted to finish off with was to say, despite all of those concerns, which we want to put on record, those things, I think, can be dealt with by the process, which is in the legislation, of monitoring, of reviewing, and then, potentially, of changing as a result of those things.

I think, to put on record, these are the things which we think the executive of the Government should be paying attention to. With that, I think it will be a good regime. It will be a step forward for road safety, and the monitoring regime, hopefully, will provide—or we expect will provide—the protections for civil liberties and for our people. I commend this bill to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to give our last call on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill for tonight. I just want to say that I think, on principle, everybody here has acknowledged that impaired driving can be an issue and it can result in harm. Whether this bill actually addresses impaired driving is a whole other issue.

To me, the previous speaker, Andy Foster, gave us a lot of good reasons as to why we should be cautious about this bill, and there’s actually a lot of really good, valid reasons that would lead us to believe and argue that this is not the solution to the problem. One of the issues that was identified by the previous speaker was the sort of technology that was emerging in relation to having accuracy in those roadside tests, including in the laboratory. That is an emerging area that is developing. I think the problem is that we’re having legislation being introduced where the technology is not fully there, when we actually do have experts who have told us about the initiatives that can be put in place at the community level to reduce the harm that substance use can cause. So if the concern that we have is that drug use can result in harm—in this case, by people actually going on the road while being impaired—that can be addressed right now with the evidence-based stuff that we have available at our disposal. That needs to be funded by the Government in order for us to minimise the harm of substance use.

As many have identified—including the New Zealand Law Society, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and the New Zealand Drug Foundation—this bill fails to address some key issues, such as actually ascertaining whether a driver is impaired, which is very different from whether a test actually registers that there’s a substance in someone’s body. This is a really, really important distinction that needs to be made. There were examples of how medicinal cannabis, for example, could cause people to return a positive test while having no signs of impairment. That actually disincentivises people from seeking medical treatment when they need it, out of fear that they may face repercussions. While those penalties may not be put in place until the lab test comes back, actually, even the roadside testing may result in people being prevented from driving for 12 hours. That cannot be understated as a harmful effect of a piece of legislation that is not grounded in evidence. Those 12 hours could have quite severe real-life implications for people.

The previous speaker spoke about the randomness, I guess, of how this may be administered. But what we do know, and the evidence can point at this, is that, actually, Māori and Pacific communities are already disproportionately targeted by our authorities. So the reality is that because we do have that systemic issue within our Government agencies, what we will actually be seeing is the targeting of those communities in this piece of legislation when they’re already targeted in other parts of the system. When people are already profiled based on their ethnicity or socio-economic background, for example, and associated with drug use, I just cannot see how this bill—when it cannot present a robust, evidence-based argument for, for example, how accurately the technology that we’ll have will deliver a positive result when it comes to impairment. Yet we’re relying on the authorities to make calls in relation to roadside testing that will actually reduce harm in our communities.

If the Government was so, so serious about reducing injuries and deaths on the roads, what they would not be doing is campaigning on increasing the speed limits and taking selfies to celebrate increases in speed limits. Those are the things that actually can make our roads safer. Those are the things that are grounded on evidence. If the Government wants to reduce the harm that substances cause, I think we need a Minister in charge of issues that has a track record of actually campaigning based on the best research available. When we have Ministers that have shown very little knowledge on issues relating to the evidence when it comes to health, I think it is concerning to see, then, a Minister championing an issue that will actually not deal with the real harm that substances can cause in our communities, that can result in death. This is why our communities deserve far better than a dog-whistle bill that doesn’t address the fundamental, underlying issues that can lead to harm in our communities.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I’d like to begin by acknowledging the hard-working members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—past and present—of which I am a member, for shepherding this bill through the House. In particular, my colleagues Tom Rutherford and Grant McCallum, who have been replaced on the committee, but, no doubt, did a lot of work on the select committee—as did others from around Parliament: Tangi Utikere, Andy Foster, Cameron Luxton, and other members.

I think a lot of issues have been traversed tonight on the importance of the substance of this bill that we’re looking at. I think most of us here acknowledge the importance of making sure we keep our roads as safe as possible, and doing as much as we can in a practical sense. I’ve listened intently, as I’m a new member of the select committee. I’ve listened to the debate and it’s quite clear to me that there was a gap between rhetoric and intent and actual delivery on the ground. That is what this bill actually seeks to achieve: to develop a mechanism and a policy that can be operationalised so that police can go out there—as you will well know, Mr Speaker—and apply the best tools available to keep our communities safe.

I am certainly well and truly supportive of this bill. I do want to acknowledge, yes, there were many issues that have been raised in the last few speeches. But I think that is why there is a five-year review of this bill. I am encouraged by, particularly, my colleague Cameron Luxton, who did raise some serious concerns through the select committee and has reassurance that through the five-year term the bill will be revised and improved even more. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. First of all, I would like to note that there is a level of disappointment on this side of the House that the Government have not supported imposing a time limit on how long those drivers can in fact be detained at the roadside, because we know, as per the report from the Attorney-General, that this would have mitigated those concerns raised in that report. It sought to have a 20-minute time frame for drivers to be detained for the initial oral fluid screening test. We would have liked to have seen the ability of the Minister of Police to have the option of consulting with any other Ministers, in addition to the Minister of Transport and Minister of science, if that was considered to be appropriate.

Saying that, though, look, we continue to support the bill, because it is about road safety and it is about making sure that people who are impaired are not endangering our roads, as they currently do. I would like to highlight the point that it’s good we’re having this legislation coming into place as soon as possible, because what we’re seeing in New Zealand right now is an absolutely unprecedented level of methamphetamine use. We do know, through anecdotal reports, that those driving for long hours can use methamphetamine in order to keep awake if they’re required to, and this is incredibly dangerous for other drivers on our roads. Given the fact that in a period of just 12 months, we have seen a 96 percent increase, in the waste-water testing that Police released just last Friday—so that’s in a 12-month period—we are seeing record levels of methamphetamine coming over the border, finding its way into organised criminal networks, and then being distributed across streets and communities in New Zealand. If people are taking methamphetamine 96 percent more than they were a year ago, the risk of those people driving on our roads impaired has increased as well. So it’s timely and appropriate that we have the ability for police to stop and check and make sure that someone does not have those substances within their system, if they are in fact in charge of a vehicle on our roads.

It’s good to see that this legislation is progressing. It builds upon our support for the fact that police can already conduct those compulsory impairment tests on drivers if they have in fact good cause to suspect that they could be impaired or the driver could have consumed drugs. The introduction of roadside screening tests is a sensible, practical move that will enable roadside testing to detect those drugs and help remove impaired drivers from behind the wheel. It’s good to see also that there’s a five-year review period, because we know that one of the holdups, really, to getting this under way quicker is the fact that we want good, reliable technology that gives results that can stand up and be verified in the lab. We want to make sure that the technology that this legislation is relying upon is in fact in place, and we know that technology can move rapidly. So this is an area where, in five years, we may well see new technology developed that is far more refined and accurate than the existing testing system.

The way I understand the existing testing system to work is that once a positive test has been confirmed, once that goes to the lab, what it will detect is families of drugs. In terms of amphetamine, an amphetamine would show methamphetamine; it would also pick up, potentially, ADHD medication.

Also, there are other types of medication that are classified as an amphetamine that would be classified and picked up in that area. Similarly, when we have opioids as a family of drugs, tramadol is a synthetic opioid and would be picked up potentially similarly as to heroin, one being potentially legally prescribed; one being an illicit substance purchased on the black market. So I think what will be very interesting to see as these cases are picked up by this new legislation—they will proceed into our courts, and we will see instances where they’re being challenged as to whether it is an illicit drug that has been consumed or whether it is in fact a prescribed drug, and whether there are clear instructions on whether that person was able to be operating a vehicle or not once taking that particular prescription drug.

So I think this is going to have a series of effects that will run down the line and impact on how doctors are potentially prescribing and taking a lot more care about thinking whether this would turn up in a roadside drug-test, and I think it will give people a lot more consideration as to how prescription drugs are being used.

It will also impact upon those people who take medicinal cannabis, for example, with cannabidiol (CBD) and THC full-spectrum oil being used and prescribed as medicinal cannabis. People should quite clearly with tetrahydrocannabinol not be using a vehicle, but there are instances where CBD is in a low level in the system—whether that will be picked up and found as having cannabis within the system.

So all of those instances will need to be refined, and, to be quite frank, I don’t know that we know exactly how this is going to work until we get cases of police pulling people over, testing them, turning in a positive test, going to the lab, and then finding out whether the courts have ruled that is in fact a driver that’s impaired. Those are the things that we’ll need to work through as we watch how this legislation rolls out across the country.

It also means that our police will be working hard to make sure that they pick people up and hold them accountable and making sure that they’re adequately resourced to be able to carry out this work, and make sure that there’s adequate funding, also, for the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) tests and the lab tests to occur in a timely manner to make sure all of those things happen. So I think it’s only right that you’ve got a five-year review period to take a good look at how this law is operating, hoping that it’s operating in the way we intended it to.

There are many instances where we’ve heard—I know former MP Dr Nick Smith was a strong advocate. He had a constituent I’m aware of in his area who was a tragic instance that was brought up when we were in the Justice Committee of where someone’s life was lost. There are accounts where people avoid being picked up for driving under the influence of alcohol by instead consuming illicit drugs. So having a system that accurately records impairment for both alcohol and illicit substances will make our roads safer and will avoid instances where people needlessly lose their lives because of a driver impaired on our roads. So, for that reason, we think this is going in the right direction.

It will be really important that the device that we’re talking about will be required to have a concentration threshold for a qualifying drug and that the threshold would need to be at a level that differentiates it as a recent drug use as opposed to historical or accidental exposure. That’s particular from the instances and the advice I received when I was Minister of Police, for things like medicinal cannabis, which stays in the system for two weeks or longer. So if someone’s had that two weeks ago and it’s showing up in a test, it’ll be important that the device has a level of concentration threshold for a qualifying drug. For those drugs in the amphetamine family, the advice was that those can pass through the system roughly for a 72-hour period and they’re completely out of an individual’s system. So different drugs stay in the system for a longer period of time, and the drug being present within the system does not always mean that the driver was impaired at the time. So making sure that the devices that are approved are able to detect whether there is a concentration threshold qualified in there that’s necessary will be important for fairness before the law.

I’d just like to, in closing, acknowledge the hard work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I know they went out to Kenepuru and they visited the ESR. It’s always good to see select committees going out and undertaking field work to get their heads around some of the more complex areas in order for legislation to be passed in a way that we know will work as well as it is. This is a fascinating area of the law, and it’s good that we’re supporting it on both sides of the House, and I truly hope that it saves lives. I commend it to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I almost thought I’d come in to an alternative reality when the Green member was speaking earlier.

The reality is that this bill is about getting people off the roads who are driving while impaired, whether that be with legal or illegal drugs, or alcohol. Indeed, it doesn’t matter to the victim whether the drugs are legal or illegal; they just don’t want to be caught up in an accident on the road. This is a sensible piece of legislation, and I commend it to the House.

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

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak this evening on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I have followed this particular piece of legislation quite closely. It was under the last Labour Government that we introduced the capacity for roadside drug-testing for the drug-testing regime, because we believe, of course, that it’s important to keep our roads as safe as possible.

It is somewhat inconsistent with other actions of this Government—and I heard from the Minister of Transport tonight that, obviously, he really encourages anything that enacts safer roads in this country. That’s probably inconsistent with the work that’s been done to change speed limits back in this country, particularly when it comes to those speed limits in and around our schools and the concerns that have been raised particularly by parents and whānau in those particular areas. So it is important to me that the Government is consistent in their road safety practices.

Under this piece of legislation, of course, we know that it’s important that when somebody is tested on roadside for impairment, they are held there at that particular time to ensure both an accurate response and outcome to that, so that our police are supported in the decisions that they make in that area to take the next round of actions, of course.

But we are disappointed, on this side of the House, tonight that the Government have not supported imposing a time limit on how long drivers can be detained on the roadside for. We did want to explore this, and, while I acknowledge the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Andy Foster, for the work that the committee has done on this, I am disappointed that due consideration wasn’t then followed up and the Government haven’t listened to that particular issue—but particularly to that issue being raised by the Attorney-General—that it sought to have a 20-minute time frame for drivers to be detained for the initial oral fluid screening testing.

We have discussed and debated the accuracy in this sense, and I think that’s really important. I do share concerns, particularly on how legislation just like this particularly impacts Māori, Pasifika, and young people in this country. We need to ensure that the right parameters and protections are put in place to ensure that they get a fair go when they are tested at roadside, because we know the outcome of that, and we don’t want that particular group unfairly targeted in any way when they already experience particular challenges at the roadside in this sense.

Labour is supporting this particular piece of legislation tonight. It builds on the work that we started but, of course, doesn’t quite have the parameters and the safeguards in place that we had hoped for. But we think it’s important, in the name of road safety, to push forward on this, so I do, along with my colleagues, commend this bill to the House.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As my colleague said, it was a privilege to sit on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee through most of the deliberations of this piece of legislation. I do want to highlight both to the House and to the general public that in 2023, there were 64 fatalities where the presence of drugs was detected in the driver, and a further 32 drivers were found to have both drugs and alcohol in their system whilst operating on the road. So this legislation is simply about ensuring that for New Zealanders and international visitors and anyone who drives on our roads, they can feel comfortable and safe knowing that drug drivers will not be operating vehicles and that the New Zealand Police have the enforcement and the tools they need to ensure our roads are safe for everyone and that we can reduce fatalities in this country. It is 2025. It has long been time for legislation like this to help keep our roads safe for the general public, and so I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Right, the time has come from me to leave the Chair. The sitting will resume at 9 a.m. Good night.

Debate interrupted.

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

TUESDAY, 25 MARCH 2025

(continued on Wednesday, 26 March 2025)

Bills

Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good morning, members. The House is resumed. When we suspended last night, we were debating the third reading of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, with two speeches remaining. The next call is a Labour call.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Every loss of life on our roads is a tragedy. Every single one is something that the Government and communities and drivers have responsibility to do everything in our power to stop. That includes safety measures on our roads, safe speeds, and the appropriate sort of testing that goes along with harmful products like drugs and alcohol to make sure that people aren’t unnecessarily affected in their driving by those things and kill themselves and kill others on the roads.

It’s something that I think about as a local MP when, in Manurewa, we have some of the highest incidents of road deaths in the country. In just a small area around my house, we are the area of highest road pedestrian deaths in the country. The impact on communities is huge. Every loss of life means a parent or a friend, a grandparent, someone who is taken out of those communities and cannot do the things that they need to, and their families who rely on them will never have them again. So this is part of that. This is part of something that the Government can do alongside communities to make our roads safer.

I speak about it in that way because all road rules, everything that we do on the roads, requires a huge level of community support. You know, just things like thinking about which side of the road we drive on is an arbitrary “line in the sand” judgment call for regulators to make that we need community buy-in for. We can’t be enforcing these things all the time. We need people to believe in the rules and to have faith that they will be enforced in a not-arbitrary way.

I’ve been thinking about how this bill—it has had a long life in this House. The Minister of Transport was right when he said that this is the third time Parliament has been back here to consider how these rules will impact on people and to design a system that can have both community support and is robust and is supported by not only the drivers themselves but also by the police, and, on the other hand, is something which gives enough flexibility to procure a system of testing on the roadside that not only meets international standards and international norms around these things but is also just something that New Zealand can get its hands on.

There have been problems for the select committee working it through, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Even though this is the third time, you’d think some of these issues were settled. But the science leads us to ask further questions—things like whether we can and ever will be measuring for impairment, when we know that the tests that are being used here are about measuring the substance in people’s systems and the existence of that substance in someone’s bloodstream, rather than the way it has affected their driving.

I was thinking about this because our democracy does rely on trust. It relies on people’s ability to see that their Government exists by consent. Around the world, the way that democracies are being challenged not only by the fringe on the right and the left but by people’s lack of engagement too—the fact that people aren’t voting and the fact that every year, in major democracies, people turn away from their opportunity to engage with their politicians and do not cast their vote tells me that there is something about Governments now where people don’t see themselves represented. They don’t see themselves listened to. And if we make rules where people don’t feel that they are heard and they don’t feel like their own personal experience is taken into account, then what do we expect?

I think the arbitrariness of laws is something we should always be sceptical about as politicians. Sometimes laws will be arbitrary. Whether you drive on the left-hand or the right-hand side of the road is an arbitrary call, but it’s a call because we need a side of the road to drive on and it needs to be safe, and everyone agrees that there does need to be a rule, even if that rule is neither here nor there about which rule it is. So to have any sort of rule, we have to be able to justify it, and that’s, I think, what the select committee has endeavoured deeply to do.

But, again, it does go to the wider context in which we are introducing this. Speed rules are also arbitrary because there has to be a number. The difference in safety between 50 and 51 or 51 and 52 is difficult to quantify, but there is a difference and someone needs to make a rule. So when we are making all of these rules around road safety, we have to constantly be testing: are these arbitrary? If it is an arbitrary rule, can people see themselves represented in this? Is their experience acknowledged by Government? That’s where we got into some real difficulties and some real testing conversations in the committee.

I think we’ve done that in real good faith and I think that we have landed somewhere in this bill that we can all live with. But there are some remaining challenges, and we want to see the review provisions in this bill used so that we can all be sure that this is a robust rule limit, that it will be enforced in the way that we expect it to, because discretion and fairness matter in this law, and those objective measures are needed to determine whether this is working in the way that we expect it to.

As I said, impairment would be the thing that you would want to test in this. You would want to have alignment with what was being tested at the roadside was how affected a driver was. We heard submission after submission that that was not in fact a perfect correlation, that the science wasn’t there yet. So we hope it will be.

We have designed a rule here which not only gives police quite a lot of flexibility in terms of the kind of procurement and the kind of devices they can use but also we’ve given regulatory flexibility in the secondary legislation to experts to determine, over time, what impairment looks like at a level for certain substances. You need to do that. There’s no way that as a select committee we could have possibly made every regulation for every substance or every family of substances, because the sorts of substances used on our road now will be different to those used in 10 years, will be different to those used in 20. I mean, in the crises of synthetic cannabinoids in New Zealand, when those were widely available on the market, it was changing month to month as the regulations couldn’t keep up. We appreciate that. But we need people to also know that that is why this Parliament hasn’t considered the level of impairment there, because we could not, because the science isn’t there.

We also need our officials to hear us. There have been a number of speeches in this House about what officials could tell the committee and what they couldn’t. There is no intention here that this is a carte blanche licence to use the levels of substance and people systems or the very wide provisions around time and the amount of time that someone can spend on the roadside in a way that would be an incremental erosion of the ordinary rights and freedoms that New Zealanders can expect, because we want them to have faith in this law. We want them to have faith in this system, in this regime, and they all need to buy into it, because it’s not a system which can rely on enforcement. It’s a system which relies on people knowing that drug-driving is not OK, that nobody should be operating a car if they’re under the influence of any sort of drugs, whether it is prescription drugs and they haven’t been taken in accordance with the instructions, and so that person shouldn’t be driving while they’re behind the wheel, or whether it’s illicit drugs and that person should be off the roads and shouldn’t be putting other people in danger.

It also needs to have a practical outcome. So we want to make sure that what we’re designing here is a system which—you know, New Zealanders will have seen in other jurisdictions, where the committee heard that in many jurisdictions in Australia, they’ve also been through a few different rounds of this sort of legislation where they’ve made changes as they go, because you need to get these settings right, because they do get challenged in the courts. So it’s important here that New Zealanders feel like this is something that could change over time.

But we want to design a system that is more similar to roadside alcohol breath testing, and that it’s just a part of being a driver on the road, that you might expect to be pulled over for a short amount of time and be submitting to the swab test. You might need to do two, and you might need to go through that process. We’re not envisioning here a system where you would spend a long amount of time on the roadside. Personally, I think that it would have been a real benefit to this law if we had set some guidelines and some parameters around how long we expect being on the side of the road. But, again, we could not get a good sense from officials about a reasonable amount of time to put in the Act. In other parts of the Act, you’ll find 15 minutes is a useful amount of time to be deterring someone on the side of the road, and I personally think that that would have been a reasonable amount of time to include in this, but that is not what’s included here.

Just to wrap up, I think this is a sensible law. I personally will be watching this progress in our communities and around New Zealand, because I want it to work. I want people to have faith in it. I want people to have faith that the parliamentarians who are making these laws are taking their experiences into account. I don’t want to see people arbitrarily detained, I don’t want to see people spending too long, and I don’t want this having an effect where we’re having people on prescription medications unfairly treated when they’re just trying to get home. This is a reasonable bill, and I commend it.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. For far too long, drugged drivers have put other road users at risk. Well, guess what! Those days are over, and anyone driving while impaired can expect to get caught and face the consequences. Finally, police will have the tools they need to help keep Kiwis safe from drugged drivers. My final thoughts on this bill are, if you’re thinking of driving drugged, don’t—just don’t. I commend this bill to the House.

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Otirā tēnā tātou. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ētahi whakaaro hei apiti ki ngā kōrero kua hori nei e ngā mema o te Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te kōrero mō te taha ki te rangatahi Māori me ngā pānga ka ngau kino ki runga ki a rātou, ā, ka tōia te wāhi ki te Māori i roto i ngā kawenga o Te Tāhu o te Ture, tōna katoa.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Greetings to all. I stand to deliver some sentiments to add to what has already been said by the members of this House. I stand to speak regarding Māori youth and the impacts that have caused them trauma, and that Māori should have a place in the functions of the Ministry of Justice, completely.]

I rise to present Te Pāti Māori’s views on the bill. Let me just be clear that we do not support driving under any impairment—drugs, alcohol, or any other thing; we’re 100 percent pro safer roads. But what we cannot not address in this House is the Government’s continuation of dismissing the negative impacts on Māori, and in this bill I’m going to speak to the negative impacts on rangatahi Māori.

This is a very, very key piece of the justice pipeline when it comes to Māori in prison, because being in prison—that 54 percent of Māori men in prison starts somewhere; for most young Māori youth, male, rangatahi Māori, it starts with an interaction with the police over driving, or an interaction with police over low-level drug offending. This is how it starts.

Hon Member: Don’t do it.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, “Don’t do it.”, you say. It’s a symptom of poverty. You wouldn’t know about that. You obviously haven’t researched what poverty means either, so don’t do that.

Carl Bates: He’s bringing you into disrepute, Madam Speaker.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: So this is where it starts for rangatahi Māori, OK?

Hon Member: Bet you did it—did you get pulled over?

TĀKUTA FERRIS: This is where it starts for rangatahi Māori, and this is how the system and the laws that are being created ensures that they are delivered—

Carl Bates: You’re the only one that’s been—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we please not have a barrage in front of the person who’s speaking. It’s OK to interject—

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Kia ora. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: —but I don’t want people shouting in front of the speaker.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Let me just get back to the point. I’m talking about young Māori, aged 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. They don’t fairly come into contact with the justice system. It’s not fair. That’s perfectly understood. If you don’t understand that, oh, man, we’re in trouble.

But this is what we’re dealing with and this is what I’m speaking to with regards to this bill. I see our justice Minister is here. Justice, right across its three areas, has three key performance indicators, or goals: one of the big ones is to reduce the overrepresentation of Māori in the justice system. Almost every piece of legislation that’s come through the House does the opposite. This is one of them, and it will exacerbate the presence of rangatahi Māori in the justice system. How can that be the justice Minister’s way forward? How can that be the way forward for a justice system that wants to reduce the overrepresentation of Māori in the system? It can’t be, but it is. So why? Well, I’ll leave the public to work that one out.

Hon Casey Costello: To save their lives.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: You’re not saving anyone’s lives—the road toll hasn’t come down. OK, so, rangatahi Māori—that’s what we’re talking about. Forty-one percent of minor drug offences: Māori, OK—and similarly for minor traffic offences.

Andy Foster: It’s the lowest in a very long time. Look at the stats. The lowest per capita since the 1920s—a hundred years.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: I see the ex-mayor of Wellington is talking over there. He might want to think about this—he didn’t do such a great job in Wellington when he was the mayor. So rangatahi Māori entered the system there—many rangatahi Māori. The reason I know this is because many iwi all around the country have tried proactive programmes to counter this phenomenon. So what they do is get early licensing programmes into schools so that their kids have got licences. Then they teach them how to interact with the police when they get pulled up, because police profile rangatahi Māori; that’s why they pulled up more than any other rangatahi group.

Hon Casey Costello: Garbage!

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, “Garbage!”, she says.

Rawiri Waititi: Read the reports!

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Yeah, no, she doesn’t like reports. That’s what happens. And these are the proactive steps that te iwi Māori have done to try to circumvent this little circle of delivering our kids into the justice system. Once they get in it, the number of offences quickly racks up for them, OK? It quickly racks up. That’s the beginning of a long delivery line for rangatahi Māori, particularly men, into prison. The Government is happy for that—they’re happy to ignore it. I raise it time and time again and they ignore it time and time again. So I’m putting it here for you, bluntly and point-blank.

All the experts says that the tech doesn’t work, you shouldn’t do it—da, da, da, da. They’ve ignored all of that. And, you know, when it comes down to leaving all of these things to police discretion, well, we currently have a very serious case in te iwi Māori of a young rangatahi Māori who experienced the blunt force of police discretion and brutality and racism and everything that comes with that. Young Kaea Heta, from Hastings, had his jaw broken by police, just recently. OK, that’s the excessive exercise of force, and as you commit to putting more rangatahi Māori into that system, more rangatahi Māori are going to come into contact with that discretion and the excessive force that the police report itself noted. We just can’t commend it, we can’t agree with it, and we can’t possibly let that go through this House. So we do not commend the bill to the House, at all.

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

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.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill.

Bills

Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 4 March.

Part 1 Amendments to Sentencing Act 2002 (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is in committee on the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. When we were last debating the bill, on Tuesday, 4 March, we were debating Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 16 and the Schedule. The question, again, is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I wondered if across the committee, there was going to be a substantive call, but I somehow doubt it.

We were slowly going through the bill and I think, if I remember rightly, we had got to new clause 8. I want to start talking about clause 9, which is about reductions to sentencing. I had previously talked about the views of victims, but what I want to talk about now is the so-called “youth discount”. The bill, as before the committee, proposes—essentially, you only get one crack at a youth discount; that you can’t get a youth discount twice. Now, I can understand—a little bit like the remorse discount that you can also only get once under this bill—the kind of eye roll, if you like, of a judge who has someone who perhaps they’ve seen before coming before them and kind of running out the same old story. But there is actually a reason for the youth discount based in science, and that is about cognitive development. The fact that young people do not have the same decision-making capabilities as people whose brain has properly matured. And I’m concerned that there’ll be a conflation of age with mental development.

So, I guess, my question for the Minister of Justice, and I’ve actually got a tabled amendment on this, in respect of clause 9B is: is he satisfied that a judge can look at a person who is young and say that person has cognitive impairment, perhaps fetal alcohol syndrome—which is a good example where there’s significant cognitive impairment—or even just developmental delay; so they might be 21 years old, but, in fact, for whatever reason, their cognitive development is that of a 16-year-old? Now, is that cognitive delay able to be taken into account, or is that kind of tied up in this youth discount? And if the answer is, “Oh, that’s all part of the youth discount.”, then my amendment comes into play, which would put a new subsection 3 in clause 9B. And that would essentially say—the words I’ve proposed, are: “provided that this does not preclude the court from taking into account the psychological and cognitive development of the offender in the sentencing.”

Because the fact of the matter is that, you know, young people’s cognitive development has been conclusively shown to impair good decision making. I guess the irony of the “no” to two youth discounts is that you don’t stop being young. You don’t magically become more grown up once you’re sentenced and given a youth discount; you’re still suffering from the fact that your brain does not work as good as a mature brain. So my question to the Minister is: how are we going to ensure that judges are still given the ability to take into account the kind of psychological development, the cognitive development, the actual brain growth and physical growth as well as the kind of mental maturity? How are we going to be able to take those things into account when it looks like the youth discount in fact kind of sweeps that away?

I guess, the other thing about this, in terms of the discount and the youth discount, is the need for—because this is about deterrence—the offender to know that they have been given a once-only discount. Now, there is a general rule that you have sentencing notes, but, again, you’ve got a person who might not be particularly literate or particularly well equipped. What steps will be put in place so that when they are actually sentenced, they take away something which says to them, “Here you go, this is a youth discount. You only get it once.”

Of course, in many cases the courts will kind of make a mishmash decision. This requires a slicing off of youth and saying, “This is the discount for youth.” Of course, the other risk is that judges won’t give youth discounts on a first offence for the very reason that it’s a once-only thing. So I’d be interested in that, Minister.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, we have returned to this particular bill. Just so I can kind of keep my thought process and work through this bill systematically as well, the last time we left this bill I was talking about clause 6, which is section 9 amended, around aggravating factors. Also just to signal to you, as well as to the Chair, that I still haven’t received a response from the Minister of Justice regarding my previous question, which is around subclause (1)(cb), including section 66(1)(b), (c), or (d), or (2) of the Crimes Act 1961 around party liability.

I asked two questions at that stage—just also to jog the Minister’s memory. One of them was: how would this work, in reference to the Ahsin v Queen case of 2014, whereby the fact that in Aotearoa currently under the Crimes Act 1961 and particularly section 66, we do not have a complete withdraw possibility when it comes to party liability, which is very clear in that Supreme Court case.

The second part of that would be that when we were looking at party liability as well, considering that we have removed the presumption whereby a person who is married—in most cases, a woman who is married to a husband—commits a crime, that they automatically get the defence of convulsion, to that effect. With that presumption being removed, there is nothing in this bill or under the Crimes Act 1961, section 66, that would allow a defence for someone who has been in long-term abusive relationships and how that would be punished both under section 66 as well as under this new aggravating factor. So just want to get clarity from the Minister on whether that has been taken into consideration when this has been decided.

The next part I want to mention that comes with the aggravating factors is one of the two aggravating factors that has been introduced as a part of this bill. Now, this is clause 6(2)(fc). Understandably, that makes a lot of sense—we’re putting public transport service workers in line with other service workers such as police and emergency and firefighters, etc. I would like to ask the Minister some questions around clause 6(2)(fd). That is to do with when one of the following happens: when the victim is working on their own or when the victim is working in a business that was physically joined to. Now, one of the things that we did explore and did actually came through as part of submissions by others was around the fact that that is already an existing aggravating factor under section 9 of the Sentencing Act. That is, from memory, 9(g), where is says “that the victim was particularly vulnerable because of his or her age or health or because of any other factor known to the offender:”, which could extend to knowing the victim was working alone or working in a business.

Now, how would the Minister reconcile with the fact that for something like that, if both aggravating factors are being considered, that would be considered a double jeopardy or a case where a person would be trialled or be punished twice for potentially the same crime? Will the judge have a level of flexibility in that case to determine whether they will apply the aggravating factor in clause 6(2)(fd) or the aggravating factor in section 9G?

So those two questions: one around party liability under section 66 and the other one around the new aggravating factor in clause 6(2)(fd).

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you, members, for the questions. In terms of the youth discount, the member referred to fetal alcohol syndrome and so forth, and those matters can be dealt with separately from youth. The youth discount applies to offenders aged 18 and over, and so our point of view is that they should have the potential for a discount for that youth once, not multiple times. We tend to look at it from the point of view of the victims of crime. It doesn’t really sort of matter, if you’re violently assaulted by somebody, what age they are—you are violently assaulted. So we wanted to send a clear message that we’re limiting the amount of discounts that can be applied when it comes to sentencing.

In terms of party liability, my advice is that party liability is determined at the conviction stage, not in sentencing.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to take a call from Dr Tracey McLellan, but at this point I’m just going to say I’ve still got the notes from when I was in the Chair last time, and we don’t want to be going over things that’ve already been mentioned, so I want new material only at this point in time. Thank you.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair, but due to the Minister of Justice’s answer right there—I had a different question but given the Minister’s response right there—it has prompted me to ask a further question about this subject—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That’s fine.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: —so I’d like a little bit of indulgence and I’ll try not to be too long.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, that’s fine.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: I think the concept of youth discounts as a mitigating factor when sentencing—the age of a person—is actually really important. It’s certainly one of the topics that we’ve, on this side of the Chamber, undoubtedly, received the most feedback on when people try and get their head around what it is this Government’s trying to achieve. Even from a philosophical perspective, when you think about what is the purpose of the law and what is the purpose of sentencing, you’ve got two very opposing—and sometimes in stark contrast—aims. That is, to respect the needs of the victim; as the Minister has just said, if you’re assaulted by someone, regardless of their age, you still feel the need to have that vindication through a legal process. But the other purpose of the law and justice and sentencing is to prevent stuff from happening in the future, to prevent it from feeding into a cycle by taking all the opportunities that you have available to you to try and essentially knock that on the head.

As my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said, the concept of youth and maturation and development is actually really, really important. I understand that it doesn’t necessarily matter to the person who has a right to feel that they’ve received justice via a sentence or a harsh sentence on the person that perpetrated that crime against them, but it is something that as a society we should be rightly invested in because for no other reason than if we don’t get this right, then we do create a cycle of just more and more offending, which by definition creates more and more victims of the same crimes that we’re trying to lessen the impact on people.

So the question I had specifically for the Minister was something that was raised when we think about maybe or maybe not judges choosing to use the youth factor as a mitigating factor in sentencing. They may not choose to do it in the first instance, given that they know it’s only a one-off—an arbitrarily decided one-off according to this bill, regardless of the science and the sensibilities around that. So has the Minister or has his team looked at what those unintended consequences could be in those circumstances? Because nipping something in the bud at a young person’s first appearance and therefore opportunity to provide some sort of corrective direction via a sentence—if that’s not taken on board and the judge says, “Well, actually, I’ll keep that up the sleeve because there’s a chance that this person may be back before this court in the next year or two and we want to be able to use that factor.”, what sort of work has been done on looking on that?

Also, if we are to consider this strictly—and it’s a long bow—as a signal and as a deterrent, even though we know that most people that commit crimes don’t fully cognitively go into it, weighing up all the consequences of getting caught etc., etc., it’s about addressing the drivers of crime and making a fair and just system so that people don’t feel it’s overly punitive and therefore rebel against the very society that we’re hoping them to be part of. But if we consider this as being a signal and a deterrent I just feel like there’s been very scant information to date about weighing up with metrics and analyses what those impacts could be. I’m sure that the Minister would have gone into more detail and would be privy, probably, to more of that information.

I just think it’s really important, given that this is the stage that this bill is at the Chamber today; that we have an opportunity just to hear a little bit more about this really, really important issue, before we move on. And I understand that we will move on but, as I said, lots of people have provided feedback about this. This is the one thing in this bill that really seems to exercise people because for most humans and for most people therefore but go anybody; we were all young, we all know that silly things can happen, we all know that youth and the maturation of the brain, and the neurocognitive development of people is a real thing, and we just want to know that this Government has taken that into account, rather than potentially making things worse in the years to come because they haven’t sufficiently taken it into account.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’ll take a call from the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, but I feel that we have had a fair proportion—not this morning but over time, on this—and I’m ticking off the questions as they’ve been answered. So I’ll give Dr Webb a chance to ask some more relevant questions.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): OK, well—and I’m aware that my colleague Ginny Andersen hasn’t had a call today or indeed a great number of calls on this previous—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Just on that point, it makes it difficult when we traverse a committee of the whole House stage over two sitting blocks where we have traversed a lot of conversations, and people who then come into the committee now are sort of in a phase where we’ve got to be careful not to relitigate.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I actually appreciate that.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Great. And so can I ask the Clerk to start Dr Webb’s questions again so that I give you the maximum amount of questions that you can have in this call. Thank you.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: OK, thank you for that.

One of the things I’m interested in is the question of prosecutorial conduct, because there can be situations where prosecutors either, in the worst cases, are intentionally late or obstruct the provision of evidence; or, much more likely, unintentionally do that. One of the problems with cap reductions is it reduces the ability to respond to that kind of misconduct.

A tabled amendment I haven’t talked about yet is in respect of new section 9G and it’s really, again, about late pleas. Where there is a late plea—for example, to give you the most concrete kind of example: the police don’t provide a critical document which is incriminating and, perhaps entirely without fault, a witness comes forward at the last minute and says, “Look, I’ve got this document and it is conclusive.” So the plea is essentially a “steps of the court” plea. Now, that is not the defendant’s fault. The defendant and their legal counsel assessed the matter on the basis of the disclosure that was given to them. Now, I accept that the victim has not had the benefit of an early plea—kind of the first opportunity—but I guess the point is this: the first real opportunity, the first informed opportunity, and the first opportunity where the police had presented all of the evidence to be put in court is on the doorstep of the court.

My proposed tabled amendment would add to section 9G a subsection (5) that would read, provided that where any late plea “can be attributed in whole, or part to failures or misconduct”—and I think failures is important—“of the prosecutor or the prosecuting authority, then the judge may impose such maximum reduction as he or she considers appropriate in all of the circumstances not exceeding 25 percent.” I mean, I don’t like that 25 percent, but that’s the maximum cap this legislation imposes. I’m particularly interested in how we factor in these other cases where the lateness of the plea is due to other circumstances. Of course, I’ve previously spoken to extremely complex legal cases—a fraud case where whether something is a fraud or not can be very, very hard to understand. So I’m interested in that.

I guess this relates also to the whole question of manifest injustice, because I think the Minister of Justice, when I’ve raised a different issue, has kind of bashed it away with, “Oh, yes, but manifest injustice sorts that out.” But manifest injustice is actually—you know, manifest injustice is injustice which is really bad. You can have injustice which apparently is not manifest, and my point is with a late plea due to prosecutorial misconduct, that is unjust.

Now, to say that “If it’s a bit unjust, we’ll get away with it” is really bad legislative process. So how are we going to make sure that the sentence imposed on an offender who’s given documents at the last minute is not unjust? And will you adopt that tabled amendment which would make sure that prosecutorial misconduct can be taken into account to get a just outcome?

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Thank you, Madam Chair—yes, that was me. Awesome to take just a short call on this, and I don’t want to repeat what anybody else has—taking your point in regard to that. But, Minister Goldsmith, if you can just—the mitigating factors in Part 1 of this particular bill. I’m fathomed, because this is exactly what the cultural reports did for Māori in the system, and we know that Māori are overrepresented in the justice system. We know that we make up 50 percent of the male prison population, 67 percent of the female prison population. We’re five times more likely to be sentenced than Pākehā for the same crime. So the mitigating circumstances for Māori families must be taken into consideration, and I just want to take into consideration as to why the cultural reports were declined by this particular Government, in this particular Parliament—absolutely fathoms me, because it did the same thing, but what it did allow was for lawyers and for judges to make their decisions when it comes to sentencing, based on those cultural reports.

I see this as similar but not the same, right—but not the same. What this tells me is that mitigating circumstances for non-Māori will be a lot easier because there’s no focus on those particular things. We know that Māori youth also have higher—and are more disproportionately targeted in that particular phase.

I just want to pick up on what Dr Duncan talked about not so long ago: the mitigating factors as to why our youth are in that particular predicament in the first place. I look at the complex, interrelated challenges that many of our rangatahi face. Across the Youth Court population, there are higher rates of neurodisabilities, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, traumatic brain injury, dyslexia, autism spectrum disorder, exposure to family violence, dislocation from schooling, and the history of trauma, and what are these mitigating factors—consider any of those things when sentencing is applied to young Māori, who will then make up the 50 percent of the male prison population or the 67 percent of the female prison population.

So does this bill, in Part 1, ease the pain of Māori making up that particular amount in terms of the population incarcerated by the justice system? Those are the questions I have. Does this bill ease the pain for Māori in those percentages, and does it consider what the cultural reports were there to ensure, which I think you’re trying to do here but it actually doesn’t go that far to ensure that those cultural reports—because that’s the cultural part of it, right? Yes, there are mitigating factors in terms of some of the disabilities that maybe some of these kids and some of their parents and some of their adults have, but what it doesn’t do is actually look at the cultural background, the intergenerational trauma and all those types of things that a cultural report would’ve done. Could you answer those, please, Minister?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): In response to the previous speaker, Rawiri Waititi, it is my hope that this bill will ease the pain, particularly for Māori victims of crime. Yes, Māori are overrepresented in the prison population. They are also overrepresented amongst the victims of crime and have a real interest in seeing that justice is done and that part of the justice response is real consequences for crime. Of course, the sentencing framework is only one part of the justice response, and, yes, we’ve got a real focus on rehabilitation and a real focus on dealing with those drivers of crime that the member referred to, like not being in school. So we’ve got a real focus on truancy to help deal with some of those drivers of crime at the same time. So absolutely that is the desire.

In terms of the cultural reports, what this Government did was stop the cottage industry that developed around the writing of those reports but the Sentencing Act still, obviously, provides the opportunity for the background of the offender to be taken into account. What this bill does is put a limit on the total discounts that can be applied.

Finally, in relation to Mr Duncan Webb’s references around prosecutorial misconduct, that is excluded from the 40 percent cap as it’s not a personal factor.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): 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 (Barbara Kuriger): Now we have quite a number of votes to be taken on Part 1, so I’m just going to give the Clerk the opportunity, as she’s just arrived, to get her paperwork in place.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendments to Amendment Paper 244 set out on Amendment Paper 250 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to 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 to the amendments not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendments to Amendment Paper 244 set out on Amendment Paper 253 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to 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 to the amendments not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 244 be agreed to.

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

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.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Helen White’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting two new subparagraphs into new section 8(f) 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5A 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendments to clauses 5A and 7 set out on Amendment Paper 249 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to insert new clause 5B and, in clause 7, to delete new sections 9C, 9L, and 9P 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to delete clause 6(1) set out on Amendment Paper 252 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 6, deleting new paragraph (cb) in section 9(1), 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendments to clause 6, inserting paragraph (cd) into new section 9(1) and deleting the crossheading above clause 6(1), 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 (Barbara Kuriger): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 6, deleting new paragraph (fd) in section 9(1), is ruled out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to delete clause 6(2B) 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Tracey McLellan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (2A) into new section 9B, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 9E, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, deleting new sections 9EA and 9NA, is ruled out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (3) into new section 9EA, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to clause 7, deleting new sections 9G, 9H, and 9I, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (1A) into new section 9G, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (1B) into new section 9G, 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (1C) into new section 9G 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.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to clause 8 set out on Amendment Paper 245 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that

the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 8 replacing subsection (4) in new section 18 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that

: The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to clause 10 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 (Barbara Kuriger)

: The question is that Helen White’s tabled amendments to clause 10, new section 80GA, 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 (Barbara Kuriger)

that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 10 inserting paragraph (d) into new section 80GA(3) 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is

hat the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 10 deleting subsection (4) in new section 80GA 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is t

that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 11 replacing paragraph (d) in new section 80ZLA 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is

that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 11 inserting paragraph (e) into new section 80ZLA 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to insert new clause 11A set out on Amendment Paper 251 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that

the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 13 inserting subsection (2B) into section 106 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 13 inserting subsection (2B) into section 106 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 (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that

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

Ayes 74

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

Te Pāti Māori 6.

Noes 49

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendment to Family Court Rules 2002

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clauses 17 and 18, “Amendment to Family Court Rules 2002”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some questions about this, and it may seem relatively technical, with clause 18 making what looks like a minor amendment to delegated legislation, namely the Family Court rules. It ties in with section 123B of the Sentencing Act, and that provision in the Sentencing Act 2002 essentially says that if an offender is convicted of a family violence offence and there is not currently in force a protection order, then the court may order a protection order. That makes perfect sense, but this actually does something quite significant in conjunction with clause 14 of the bill. What it does is it extends that power to people who are not convicted of an offence, so the court can put in place a protection order, under this rule change, where the person is either convicted of an offence or has been discharged without conviction for an offence.

Now, don’t get me wrong—there’s a real place for protection orders in the absence of conviction but where violence is proven, but where there’s a discharge without conviction, that discharge may occur for any number of reasons. I’m wondering, Minister, whether this is an acknowledgment that because of these ridiculous sentencing rules that you’re putting in place, judges are going to have to default to discharges without conviction because they’ve got a choice between a sentence that is entirely unfair and providing a discharge without conviction. And that’s a really problematic dilemma for them to be in, because if we’ve got a victim of family violence, we shouldn’t be giving powers to the court to make what are, in a sense, punitive orders where there is a discharge without conviction.

So I have real concerns that you have caused, essentially, a distortion in the law here by saying, “You might get a discharge without conviction but we’re still going to impose an order on you even though you have not been found guilty of that offence”, and the underlying policy reason is that you know that discharges without conviction are going to rise, and there will be situations where under the current law people wouldn’t get a discharge without conviction but in considering a discharge without conviction, the job of the judge, under the Act, is to actually determine whether a conviction would be disproportionately severe. And because you’ve just turned up the temperature on all of these sentences, it’s much more likely that it will be disproportionately severe.

So you’ve got yourself into a pickle because the discharge without conviction will still be there but we know, in fact, that the offence occurred. It’s only the sentence that the judge will be compelled on conviction to impose, which makes it entirely disproportionate to enter that conviction. So we’ve got a real dilemma, and in fact this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen. People are going to be less safe in this kind of situation because of these discharges without conviction. And you’ve now got a situation where you’ve got orders which should follow conviction now following from discharges without conviction.

Now, I’m aware that a discharge without conviction usually requires the offender to accept responsibility for the offending but it is the opposite of a finding of guilt. It’s a finding that says the court is not interested in intervening here. For whatever wider policy and justice reasons, it is going to discharge this matter. It is going to send it away. It’s saying it’s, “not going to make a finding adverse to you. Nor are we going to find you not guilty. We’re simply going to discharge you and bring this matter to an end because in terms of wider policy issues and the justice of this particular case, that’s the right thing to do.”

So you’ve got yourself into a right bind here because that’s going to happen a lot and I’m wondering if that’s really why you’ve done this protection orders.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Well, thank you for the wide speculation by the previous member, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, on the potential elements of this. This is quite a very tightly detailed piece of the legislation. In terms of protection order, it is important that if a judge considers the conduct warrants a protection order, that they can grant one. That’s what this clause refers to. That prevents victims having to make a separate application for a protection order and saves court time, which is better for the victims of crime.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to follow up on what the Minister of Justice has just said. I do want to check in terms of the policy intent behind clause 18 of Part 2, because, understandably, this has victims of family crime as the focus here. But I do want to specify that section 106 of the Sentencing Act specifically says that when you’re looking at discharge without conviction, it amounts to an acquittal, which then begs the question: if we are giving protection orders to people but without any sort of subsequent guidance, what advice has the Minister received in terms of whether this is something that is actually beneficial to victims of family crime? Because one of the things that we do see when it comes to victims of family crime is the fact that, often, if it is not dealt with carefully in terms of conversations with, or education of, the offender, we do actually see that things could possibly get worse.

I get what the Minister is saying—that he doesn’t mean that the victim needs to make a separate application for protection order. But I wondered if what we’re doing here is very much the last resort, bottom-of-the-cliff kind of approach, whereas what we’re not seeing here is what is actually beneficial for the victims and what are the tools that allow an offender, in those circumstances, to be aware and to be able to change their actions or change their perspective because of the fact that there is a guidance, a kind of an education, following on.

So my question is sort of around the policy intent of this. Again, going through the department report, this is not an area that was discussed in detail, but like the previous speaker, the Hon Duncan Webb, said, it is reasonably significant, because when you are acquitted of a crime, you are supposed to be able to have no potential punishment or repercussions as a result. And there are other factors that will intervene from a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act perspective as well, which also wasn’t something that was explored in the Attorney-General’s report.

So I just want to get some clarity around: if this was supposed to provide support and be beneficial to the victim, what is the evidential basis for that?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. So the way I understand this is that for a section 106 discharge without conviction, that means that in instances where there was no consequential sentencing or conviction on the record, you would still be able to have a protection order in place if the court thought so. And I would assume—and the Minister of Justice might want to clarify this because it leads into my question—that the judge would then be determining, on the facts before them, when that would apply in terms of a section 106 discharge. So if the Minister could just give us an indication, because the whole kind of purpose of this bill appears to be to limit or curtail judicial discretion, so I’m just interested to understand why in this particular area he’s OK with judicial discretion.

Because the proposed amendments in the Act and the combination of the implementation of three strikes, which has already been put in place, represents a really significant shift in the willingness of limiting judicial discretion and, effectively, restricting judges and having a prescriptive sentencing framework that makes sentencing less efficient. So I’m interested to note why there’s this carve out here for section 106, “Discharge without conviction”, when the entire kind of ambit, the purpose, of the bill is to strip away the discretion of judges.

I’d like to point out—I think it’s important, and even the regulatory impact statement notes this—the fundamental problem with this approach is it limits the judge’s ability to consider the circumstances particular to the case and to deliver an individualised sentence. Conversely, it really could be argued that a far more prescriptive approach to sentencing might have some benefits—and I’m sure he’ll argue it—but how does he map out section 106 discharges differently to the rest of the bill, which puts significant limitations on judicial discretion? He’s been picked up by the New Zealand Bill of Rights vet in saying that the existing framework has got real issues for when the judges are having the ability to look at what is before them to make an appropriate sentencing and a determination based on the facts before them.

So in a nutshell, my question is: what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander; why is the Minister saying that it’s fine to take power away from judges in one part of the bill, but in this part of the bill you’re saying they’re able to say, “Oh, you still get a protection order in place even if you’ve had a 106 discharge.”? We heard—at the Justice Committee, stakeholders quite clearly advised that limitations on judicial discretion have unintended consequences, and these risks do include legal challenges on procedural grounds for breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights. A prescriptive approach can drive significant court delays—and we know the Family Court which this would apply to in this provision, under clause 18 of Part 2, has already got significant delays in the system. So they have complex and big problems long term, and those delays—we know—plague our justice system. Officials have made it clear that they consider it important that judicial discretion is maintained right across the various amendments in the bill, so it is unclear why this this part in Part 2, clause 18, rule 431B is different.

Under this bill, the changes proposed, if implemented, have a really big impact on the ability of judges to weigh up the information before them, take into consideration the victim, the family, what’s happening in these situations, and to be able to use the breadth of their knowledge and understanding of the law to make sure that there’s an outcome that keeps communities safe, that reduces the chances of reoffending, and also gives fairness before the law. So I’m really interested to note why the Minister feels so strongly about curtailing judicial discretion, yet here the Part 2 of the bill there is a specific—it appears to be a carve-out for a section 106 discharge without conviction still being able to have a protection order in place. In this instance, that would be a discretion of the judge to determine when that would apply. So where is it OK for a judge to have some independent consideration and when is it not?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): I’ll just respond briefly. This legislation doesn’t change the threshold for the granting of protection orders, and so we’re not dealing with that. All it does is it stops the need for a separate hearing on matters. So that prevents victims having to have a separate application, which saves court time, which I think the member just said she was concerned about—and that is the purpose of this whole bill.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): 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 2 be agreed to.

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.

Part 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Tracey McLellan’s tabled amendment to the Schedule 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 (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to the Schedule 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 (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Helen White’s tabled amendment to the Schedule inserting new clause 24A 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 Schedule 1 be agreed to.

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.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wanted to talk, first, about the title. Of course, the idea of the title is that it captures and gives good indication of the content of the bill. There’s one word in there that really shouldn’t be in there, and that’s “Reform”, because what a reform does is it changes things for the better, and, Minister, you have changed things for the worse. I’m not sure what the opposite of “Reform” is. Perhaps “Retrograde” or some such word would be appropriate, but this, certainly, is not a reform bill. We have not reformed sentencing law. What we have done here is we have, essentially, made it substantially worse by reducing—the centrepiece of this bill, across all of its provisions, is to reduce the discretion of the court to impose a sentence which is fair to both the victims and to offenders and answers to the community’s demands in terms of its reprobation, its signalling of the unacceptability of the conduct in question. That’s why I’ve suggested that we should, as in my amendment, just call it the “Increased Sentences Amendment Bill”, because that’s all it is.

Rima Nakhle: Reformity for victims. Reformity for people in South Auckland.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: It’s just “What should we do about crime and justice? Increase sentences.” We can hear people harping away, saying that’s a good thing, but the fact of the matter is that all of the work done, so-called work done, in law and order is having no effect. Violent offending is up, and the gangs are doing a thriving trade in meth. And this kind of thing is having no effect. It’s taking us backward. It’s a retrograde, not a reform, bill, and we should call it what it is: the “Increased Sentences for No Particular Purpose Whatsoever Bill”.

As we come to the concluding stages of this bill, it surprises me that you’ve got a bill that you’ve had the audacity to call a reform bill when all of the advice that you’ve got from your officials is “Don’t do it”. The Chief Science Advisor has said it doesn’t work; it doesn’t reduce crime and, in fact, has the opposite effect, because if you’re going to impose penalties which are excessive—and by your own pen, you’ve agreed that, because you’ve only said that there’s an out if it’s manifestly excessive; you’re quite happy with excessive penalties. If I recall rightly, in this Chamber, you actually said words to the effect of, when asked at question time, “That’s the point.”

And so here we are. We’ve got a “Minister of Injustice”, a Minister who is, in fact, intentionally imposing sentences which he knows are excessive. So call it what it is; it’s a rubbish bill. Call it a “Sentencing (Increased Sentences) Amendment Bill”, but don’t call it a reform bill, because it’s not reforming anything. It’s taking New Zealand backwards. The short-term and long-term effect will be more people in our prisons, which is a Petri dish for crime and criminal behaviour and gang membership. Maybe you should call it the “Sentencing (Helping Gangs Recruit New Members) Bill”, because that’s effectively what you’re doing. We will pay the price for this for many years to come. It’s ridiculous to call it the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill because it’s not; it’s doing the opposite. It’s taking us back decades.

When we look back, decades into the future, at the harm that this will be doing through tying the hands of judges so that they can’t do the best for New Zealand in the long term, using the skills and expertise that they have, it’s a sad day for New Zealand law.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to start by going to clause 2, “Commencement”, which says, “This Act comes into force 3 months after Royal assent.” I want to check first with the Minister of Justice whether the Minister would consider my amendment that would change “3 months” to “6 months”, which is in line with other bills that we introduce of a similar nature—for example, the review of the three-strikes legislation. The rationale for that is mainly the fact that in Schedule 1—very similar to when we discussed the three-strikes legislation—in subclause (1), what we’re seeing here is a retrospective penalty, and, in this case, it is a retrospective penalty for young people, because, in fact, what you are telling them is that if they have a previous criminal conviction, it means that that would stand and the youth mitigating factor would not apply.

That is a retrospective penalty, and there has been no part of the discussion that we’ve had in this committee stage that has given us any reassurance that either the court or the Minister has had any advice on how they’re going to be able to reach out within the three-month period to those young people who will be told “By the way, if you offend again, you are not going to be entitled to the youth mitigating factor.” That is not being made very clear, so I think that if we are looking at moving it from “3 months” to “6 months”, then it might actually, possibly, give the system just a little bit of extra time for them to contact those people, or even find out who they are, as opposed to saying, when they offend again, “By the way, sorry, you’re no longer eligible.” I think that is a very cruel way of dealing with and a very cruel way of looking at the young people who do offend in our criminal justice system.

But going on to the title of this bill, I wholeheartedly agree with the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb in his analysis that this is not a reform. There are many other words that start with the prefix “re” that we should be using. I think that “retrograde” is a good one. “Retrospective” is another good one. “Repugnant”, possibly—because this is what this bill does. This bill, against all the advice from the officials, is not going to actually help reduce our crime.

It is fearmongering and virtue signalling—and, by the way, I would like the Minister to consider that particular amendment to the title. It is a virtue-signalling and fearmongering tactic, and it does not work. We have seen that it does not work. Globally speaking, from an OECD perspective, we, in Aotearoa, have one of the highest incarceration rates in the OECD countries. We have seen punishment and further punishment in the US criminal justice system, but that has not brought down their crime rate.

This particular bill, in terms of the title, is fundamentally against the intention and purpose of this bill. Just on a serious note, I would agree that maybe the Minister should consider something that actually speaks more to the bill itself, which is on one of my amendments, which is the “Sentencing (Discount Path and Other Matters) Amendment Bill”, because, essentially, this is not about a reform. What we’re saying is we are putting in a cap of 40 percent as part of the mitigating factor of discount when we’re looking at sentencing. That was the crux of this bill, and, again, that also goes against all of the advice that we received as part of the select committee process, that goes against the advice that we have heard here in the committee of the whole House, and that goes against the advice of the submitters that we have seen, whether they were lawyers, whether they were from the Law Society, or whether they were from Community Law. So I think—[Interruption]

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member across is walking around and yelling, and it’s well out of the Standing Orders to leave your seat and heckle.

Rima Nakhle: That’s right—sorry, my apologies.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah, if the member could be seated, that would be appreciated. Please continue, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Thank you, Mr Chair. So, for me, I would like to see if the Minister would consider making an amendment to the commencement date from “3 months” to “6 months” to give more time to actually let young people know that there is going to be a retrospective penalty coming their way. I would ask if the Minister would also consider, on a more serious note, I guess, my amendment to the title that is more true to what the bill is about—if that is something that the Minister would consider.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Just briefly in response to the member Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question about if I considered changing the commencement from three months to six months: yes, I have considered it, and I’m not going to do it.

In response to the changes of the names, I think they’re all just cheap, political shots and I won’t be responding.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’d just like to speak in support of the amendment that is being discussed presently, put forward by Lawrence Xu-Nan in terms of extending that commencement date from three to six months, and specifically in relation to the additional training of the judiciary for such a substantive change to the way that our sentencing will occur. I note that the Minister of Justice has just responded by stating he did give consideration to extending the commencement date of this particular piece of legislation but he did not furnish it with any further information as to what he weighed up and how he arrived at his decision not to extend that period. For such a substantive change in terms of how judges will now be operating, once this legislation comes into action, there would need to be significant changes in the way that judges are trained in terms of enabling them sufficient time to be able to provide the warnings, to be able to notify those in front of them.

I would like to understand from the Minister exactly how he’s arrived at not extending this to a significant period, given the extensive change this will make to how judges now operate and how it curtails judicial discretion. There will no doubt be instances coming if this is just steamrollered through and put forward in a three-month period. I think it is incumbent upon the Minister to explain what due process has been undertaken through the Ministry of Justice and also through working closely with the judiciary, to understand if they are fully on board with the changes that have been pushed through with this legislation.

From my understanding and experience, both from working within the Ministry of Justice and also being a Minister, changes like this require a significant change programme in order to have the reassurance that legislation will be able to be rolled out and enforced in a way that makes sure that that it’s working properly, as intended by this House when passing legislation.

We know that in the regulatory impact statement there have been significant concerns raised by officials right through this process, including the select committee process, that it actually impedes judicial discretion and stops judges doing the very job that they are put in there to do. So I think there needs to be some considerable consideration about whether this can be effectively implemented in just a three-month period. There seems to be a recurring theme with this Government that we have officials fronting up at the Justice Committee saying that longer is required to effectively implement legislation and make sure it has the intended consequences.

So there are some quite big concerns at the rate of things being done, simply as a tick-box exercise to demonstrate that this Government has done what it said it would without actually really looking at the detail of how it will be implemented in practice. So I think it is incumbent upon the Minister to give this committee a level of reassurance that there has been a work programme developed, that there has been a level of engagement with the judiciary, and that there is an ongoing understanding of how this legislation will in fact operate in courtrooms once it becomes law.

Stakeholders quite clearly advised the Justice Committee that the limitations on judicial discretion would potentially have unintended consequences. I think it is important that the Minister at least demonstrates to this committee that he is aware of what the potential unintended consequences are of this bill and how he has taken those into consideration when engaging with the judiciary, and whether or not he is fully confident that a three-month implementation period is sufficient to make sure that this bill will actually do what he hopes it will.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): 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 (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Tracey McLellan’s tabled amendment to clause 1 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 (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1, replacing “Sentencing (Reform) Act” with “Sentencing (Discount Cap and Other Matters) Amendment Act”, 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.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 58, Noes 68.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1, replacing “Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Act” with “Sentencing (Fearmongering and Virtue Signalling) Amendment Act”, is out of order as not being an objective description of the bill.

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

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.

Clause 1 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “3” with “6”, 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 clause 2 be agreed to.

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.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is a significant piece of legislation that delivers on the coalition Government’s manifesto commitment to restore law and order and to ensure that there are real consequences for crime. It also delivers on a specific promise in the Government’s third-quarter action plan to introduce legislation that ensures real consequences for criminals.

Under the previous administration’s misguided approach to crime, which focused on reducing the prison population by 30 percent regardless of what was going on in our communities, we saw an alarming increase in violent crime, ram raids, and aggravated robberies. Why? Well, in part this was because criminals knew that they would get away with a slap on the wrist and light sentences. We know that the undue leniency has resulted in a loss of public confidence in elements of sentencing and in our justice system as a whole. And we’ve developed, sadly, in this country, a culture of excuses for crime—that ends this week.

The reforms have three key objectives: making sure the punishment fits the crime, restoring the principle of personal responsibility, and better recognising the victims of crime. First and foremost, our reforms today, which will pass, will limit sentence discounts that judges can apply to 40 percent. Kiwis are sick and tired of seeing brazen criminals who have been convicted of serious offences—offences sometimes resulting in the death of fellow New Zealanders, people who are sons or daughters or loved ones of New Zealanders, or injuries that blight their lives for ever. People who have been convicted of these crimes are receiving massively discounted sentences for a whole variety of reasons, sometimes to the extent of not actually being imprisoned. In recent years, we’ve seen serious crime increasingly coming before the courts, but the response has been counterintuitive—a reduction in the use of imprisonment and shorter prison sentences overall—much to the dismay of victims.

Parliament, through this bill, is sending a different message: we’re putting a limit on the overall discounts. There’s been a lot of debate around this: “Oh, is this somehow unconstitutional or unfairly or inappropriately limiting judicial discretion?” Of course, Parliament sets the sentencing framework, and the framework in New Zealand is currently that a maximum sentence is put down in legislation, and there is judicial discretion under that. We could do things in a different way. We could have minimum sentences; we could have mandatory sentences. We haven’t moved to either of those things in relation to this, but we have, through Parliament, sent a clear message that we’re not content with very substantial discounts for a host of reasons, and we want to put a limit on it.

It is disappointing that the Labour Party is opposing this. We heard on a number of occasions after the election—there was a reflection, I remember, from the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hipkins, saying that perhaps they had been too slow to respond to retail crime and community concerns about these issues. Perhaps they reflected upon that, but they seem to have forgotten that message. They seem to have forgotten and they’ve gone back to their old ways, which is to never support changes that will actually bring real consequences for crime.

Of course, I’m not surprised that the Greens don’t support this and they refer to this as “fearmongering”. If you talk to the victims of crime in our community, if you go down to a main street of Papatoetoe and talk to the retailers who are suffering and living in fear and surrounded by cages in their stores because of the extent of violent crime—if you say that they’re fearmongering, I think you will find you get a very hostile response. What we’re focused on is making some real progress.

Secondly, we’re putting an end to the repeated discounts for youth and remorse. We believe a sentence should primarily respond to a person’s decision to commit a crime, not solely focus on their circumstances and background. It’s particularly frustrating for victims when offenders receive a sentence discount for expressing remorse—not once but in every subsequent instance of reoffending. So we absolutely want to make some allowance when a young person—and when we’re talking about a young person, we’re talking about people typically between the age of 18 and 25; we’re not talking about 12-year-olds: that’s dealt with separately. Yes, you can get a discount for being young and remorseful, but not on multiple occasions—that makes a mockery of the justice system. These reforms will restore the principle of personal responsibility. And we particularly want to condemn certain types of offending, such as where the offender live streams or posts their actions online, or where an adult offender commits, or was party to, an offence committed by a child or a young person. On those occasions, we’re thinking of when you have an adult driving a car with a bunch of teenagers doing a ram raid—well, that adult needs to take greater responsibility because they have led younger people into a crime.

Importantly, this bill will recognise the needs of victims, particularly those who have suffered from years of increased retail crime; encourage the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed while on bail, in custody, or on parole; amend the principles of the Sentencing Act to have a stronger focus on the victims’ needs and interests; and introduce a suite of new aggravating factors for offenders who are targeting victims working alone—those whose homes or businesses are interconnected—and public transport workers as well. But I particularly think of people working in dairies, for example, where they’re living upstairs and they’ve been subjected to ram raids or violent offending downstairs. That has a horrendous impact on the family due to the fear that is associated with it. I’m frankly amazed and shocked that we’re not getting support across the House for this legislation. Retail crime increased by 85 percent between 2019 and 2023, including a 91 percent increase in victimisations relating to theft. Small-business owners have been left feeling powerless and at the mercy of those who robbed their livelihoods. It’s only right that offending against people who live in fear of theft and assault, often with their families nearby upstairs, result in a tougher sentence.

The sliding scale for guilty pleas will be intimated with a maximum sentence discount of 25 percent if a guilty plea is made at the earliest opportunity. But we’re not going to give 25 percent if it’s on the morning of the trial; only 5 percent is available at the last minute. Earlier guilty pleas will spare more victims from having to prepare for and give evidence at trial, and they will help improve timeliness, so we’re determined to do this.

We also see the opportunity to progress a couple of recommendations from the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care—specifically, amending the existing aggravating factor that requires the court to consider that particular vulnerability of a victim, by adding in State or faith-based care as an example of vulnerability which may be known to an offender when the offence was committed; secondly, the requirement for the court to consider additional aggravating factors in cases involving violence against, or neglect of, a child under the age of 14, so that they can also apply to cases involving a young person who is under the age of 18. They were recommendations of the royal commission, and we’re happy to progress them in this legislation.

I extend my thanks to the Justice Committee, the Sentencing and Rehabilitation team at justice, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their work to help this passage of the bill through the House.

In conclusion, we’ve set two clear targets: ensuring that there are 20,000 fewer victims of violent crime by 2029, and also reducing serious repeat youth offenders by 15 percent. This is a significant milestone in this Government’s mission to restore law and order. It signals to the victims of crime that they deserve justice and, to the wider public, that the Government is committed to ensuring that they feel safe in their homes and in their places of work. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I mean, criminal justice isn’t simple, and it’s not simplistic, and that’s what this bill is. I’ve found it a little hard to listen to the Minister of Justice talking about how his Government is allegedly making progress on a target to reduce victims of serious crime or violent crime by 20,000 when, in fact, they’ve gone up by 6,000 and the best he can do is find a tweet with some misleading figures to trumpet his Government’s success.

This bill is a knee-jerk reaction. Look, in other areas we are supporting the Government’s work, particularly around the experience of victims in court, and we agree that there’s work to be done and we need to do better in looking after victims. But sentencing, in particular, is a very difficult task. The community does want to see punishment, but the State and the court has a critical role in standing between victim and offender, between the community and the offender, and balancing a whole lot of competing interests. That is why we have judges—judges who can stand back, listen carefully, and balance those competing considerations.

The Minister, straight out of the National Party election playbook, talks about real consequences for crime. But when we look at sentencing, we’ve got to ask: what are the objectives? And they’re, in fact, set out in the Act. And they’re in no particular order, but right up there is to hold the offender accountable, as well as to provide for the interests of the victim of the offence. But equally in there is to assist in rehabilitation and reintegration to protect the community from the offender, if necessary. That’s all in section 7 of the Sentencing Act. If we take that together, criminal justice has a difficult and complex project of not only dealing with this offender but creating a community in the future which is safer than the one we have today.

This doesn’t do that. Most fundamentally, this doesn’t do that because it removes from the judge the ability to weigh up what the best response to offending is. Sometimes the offending is serious and the offender is irredeemable or the crime so vicious and violent that the community needs it to be marked out by a long term of imprisonment. I get that. In other circumstances, that is not the case. The offender and the community—the offender will be better off, the victim’s needs will be better addressed, and the community will be safer if a different sentence is imposed or a shorter period of imprisonment or better reintegration or rehabilitation or home detention or alcohol and drug treatment. There’s a whole world of possible responses out there, but this Government is saying, “No. Just put them in prison for longer.” That is the extent of their thinking around justice policy.

The Justice Committee, as it listened to submitters and looked at evidence, had a stream of thoughtful submitters, coming in and saying, “This is taking the wrong path.” But the Government was not interested in it. And consistent with what it’s done in other areas, it’s just saying, “We’ve said we’re going to do it. We don’t care about the evidence, so we will press on regardless.”

One of the real problems with this is that it will distort judges’ behaviour. The judges, through many years, have a set of guiding principles for sentencing. One of those is assessing a starting point. Looking at the circumstances of offending and saying, “Well, given those circumstances of offending, the starting point for consideration of the sentence is here.” So it might be a serious assault with a 10-year maximum sentence. They’ll look at the overall circumstances and say, “Well, for this kind of offending, I would start at seven years and then apply discounts.” And it’s worked—that process has worked—and aggravating factors as well.

What we now have is a rule that says, “You can get a maximum discount of 40 percent from the starting point.” So if a judge wants to give a lower sentence, what are they going to do? They’re simply going to lower the starting point. There’s no rule against lowering the starting point. They’re going to look at it. They’re going to backwards reason: “That offending deserves imprisonment of three years. To get that within the 40 percent discount rule, I need to lower the starting point accordingly.” So all of a sudden—and this is what fiddling with these kinds of matters does, particularly in reducing discretion—they’ll just get a workaround. That’s one problem.

The other thing that I’m actually more concerned about is discharges without conviction. Now, there’s no particular rule about when or what kind of crime you can get a discharge without conviction for. The question is whether the conviction would be a disproportionate punishment, given the circumstances of the offending and the nature of the offender, and so on and so forth.

Now, if you’re going to make sentencing by definition excessive, by definition unjust, then recourse to discharges without conviction will increase. That’s problematic, because there are circumstances right now where you wouldn’t get a discharge without conviction but tomorrow you will. So you’re having an opposite effect. This is the perversity that happens when you go in with a slogan and make it policy. Slogans make bad policy.

It may well be that there’s work to be done in sentencing. For a long time there has been an argument that sentencing should be removed from the political arena but that judges should be given guidance—that they need a unifying principle. On the other side of the House, they would say that there’s been this tendency to give softer and softer sentences. Well, is that true or false or is it just an impression we have through the media? Well, a sentencing council which looks at sentences—and I know the Minister’s had meetings overseas about the sentencing council. It’s a good idea because we need to depoliticise this, because we’re not making the community safer by just simply having a blanket approach to sentencing. If we are going to say we need better guidance to the judges, then a sentencing council is one way to do it and a very useful way where you have the ability to look over all of the decisions being made, see where there are wrinkles, see where there are inconsistencies, and provide guidance and advice that the judges are expected to pick up. So that’s a further thing that is well worth consideration.

The other thing in here is that there are just some outright injustices. So, for example, the remorse discount—that if you come and you convince the court that you’re genuinely remorseful, the court can take that into account and reduce the sentence imposed. You want to see that it’s real. You don’t want crocodile tears, I get it—absolutely appropriate. But you can’t get it twice. But there’s a carve out. You can get a discount twice if you provide compensation. So the court can take into account compensation to victims—a payment for the harm that’s been caused. So people who can afford to make compensation can, effectively, get remorse discounts every time they pay. But people who can’t afford to make compensation payments can’t get those discounts. That’s just one of the kind of twists and turns of this bill in trying to pander and not taking a careful, considered, evidence-based approach. By not taking the time to develop policy, rather than just implementing slogans, we’ve got a bad piece of legislation.

We all want a safer community. We all want victims to be accorded their rights and treated with respect. We want fewer victims overall. And we do want to set aside serious offending and show the community disgust and distaste for it. But this bill doesn’t do that. It just increases longer sentences.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa to oppose this bill strongly. Here we are talking yet again about a bill that does not genuinely serve our communities. This bill, for what it’s worth, is complex, and there will be repercussions from this bill for years and generations to come. Future generations will look at this bill as a repugnant bill that will harm and will not break the vicious cycle that we are seeing in Aotearoa in our criminal justice system.

Let’s start with some of the things we discussed during the committee stage. Fundamentally, we know that one of the fundamental principles of Aotearoa’s constitutional arrangements is the principle of comity, whereby the legislature and the executive are separate and independent from the judiciary and that the court system is allowed to operate independently and fully in its own right. We have heard from submitters that this bill particularly about the limitations—the 40 percent cap on discounts to sentencing—that go against that fundamental principle of our constitutional arrangements.

We have questioned the Minister of Justice during the committee of the whole House stage over and over again, but all we received from the Minister are sound bites and hot takes and not actually evidence-based material. We know that the Minister and the Government are not using evidence when it comes to deciding a bill like this.

We questioned the Minister around our concerns when it comes to party liability. The Minister never once mentioned how the introduction of section 66 of the Crimes Act 1961 on party liability would further harm particularly women in abusive relationships, because if they are an accomplice to a crime, there is no way for them to withdraw from that in our current legal framework, yet they are being punished both under the Crimes Act and now under the Sentencing Act. That is not about victims.

We have seen that by not allowing young people the opportunity—because apparently when you commit a crime, and if you commit a crime again, suddenly you’re not young any more. That fundamentally goes against our agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international legal instruments, not to mention the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when we are looking at a bill like this. So, fundamentally, we are going against what we signed up for internationally when we introduce this.

Why? Because of the fact that the Minister and the Government are hearing from people to say that this is what’s been happening; there are victims. Victims are important, but this bill does not address victims. The one section of this bill that does address victims is actually a rewording of an existing section of the Sentencing Act that already exists. There’s nothing in this bill for victims other than the slogan of “tough on crime”, which we know does not work. If we look at any other country that has a tough on crime approach but doesn’t address the social concerns and the social issues that people are experiencing, we know that it does not work.

But let’s talk about victims. I already mentioned that under the new aggravating factor that includes section 66 of the Crimes Act, we are not going to be seeing women, in particular, in abusive relationships being supported by this legislation. We are not seeing how this legislation is going to break the cycle of violence, break the cycle of poverty that we’re seeing in our communities.

The one thing the Minister mentioned was in terms of the fact that, yes, we have taken on the recommendation of the report on State abuse and also faith-based abuse, but then the Minister failed to mention that the one recommendation that will support those victims of the report by allowing a mitigating factor for those victims of State and faith-based abuse has not been taken up by the Government. Why? Apparently it is too hard to manage, yet we have seen new aggravating factors being introduced as a part of this bill.

So what does this bill serve? What we are seeing here is something that will harm our young people, that is anti - Te Tiriti. We reaffirm that this Government’s only housing policy for Māori is by increasing prison beds. That is what we will see as a result of this bill. We will see more young people who will be harmed as a result. We will see that lawyers and judges will find different ways, like the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned, of being able to balance what they see in front of them.

Let’s be perfectly honest: those of us in this House are not judges, and very few of us are lawyers that have that experience in youth justice, in criminal justice, in Māori justice, in Pasifika justice, in migrant justice. Very few of us can say, hand on heart, that that is our background, that is our experience. So why, then, would we introduce a bill that does not listen to advice from officials, that does not listen to advice from the experts, from our communities? We have heard submissions from the New Zealand Law Society. We have heard submissions from Community Law saying that this is not going to address the levers of crime.

For those of you who have been familiar with some of the earlier work of Plato, in 375 BC when he authored The Republic, he talks about the rise of the demagogue. It talks about how when political leaders take a populist approach to law and legislation and running of city-State and of the country, they then fail to see the common good. That is in the 4th century BC, and we are seeing a repeat of that right now with this Government. We’re seeing people not taking an evidence-based approach to the criminal justice system but a populist approach.

What is justice? What is law? We have heard too many times in this House that if people commit a crime, commit an offence, there should be punishment and there should be repercussions. But who determines that law? We do. So we decide who criminals are in Aotearoa. We decide in this very House who commits crime in Aotearoa. That is not about justice. It reminds us of the obligation and responsibility that we have in this House, that we have to the people of Aotearoa.

If we really want to talk about crime and justice, where is the legislation I’m seeing around white-collar crime? Where is the legislation I’m seeing around tax evasion? If you really want to take a tough on crime approach, where are those who avoid paying tax in Aotearoa? We are not seeing that. Instead, what we are seeing is punishing the beneficiaries. We are punishing those people who are already finding it difficult to put food on the table. That is not justice. That is not just. That is not how we make law. That should not be how we make law in this very House.

To conclude, the Green Party of Aotearoa absolutely will not support this bill because we do not see this bill as being one that will break the cycle of harm and break the cycle of violence in Aotearoa. We see this as a bottom-of-the-cliff approach to crime and justice. What we want to see is everybody having a warm and safe home to live in. What we want to see is having a fair tax system so everyone is able to thrive. This bill does nothing for that.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased to rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the third reading of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. ACT is supporting this bill, and we’re very pleased to do so.

During the election campaign, ACT went up and down the country campaigning, like many members in this House, and we heard from New Zealanders about their concerns around law and order. We know that in the last five years, gangs have recruited a huge number of people into their midst—up by more than 3,000 people. We’ve seen an escalation in violent crime, ram raids, dairy owners being attacked—really unacceptable things in our society. It’s really good to see that the Government has taken a measured approach with a number of different law and order reforms—this being one of them—and I want to thank our partners in National and New Zealand First for picking up some of ACT’s ideas, along with us supporting some of theirs around more police numbers and, obviously, around gang patch bans.

So, you know, ACT has been very pleased to be able to get three strikes back in place. Obviously, we’ve got the serious youth offenders category coming. But in this bill, we’re actually also seeing a couple of things that ACT is very pleased to be able to campaign on and now deliver. And that really is around the aggravating factors for those in particular roles, whether that’s in public transport or sole-charge workers—you know, people living on their premises who are particularly vulnerable to violent crime.

And then what’s also been talked about is limiting the reduction around sentencing and the 40 percent discount. And, again, you know, it’s appropriate. This House actually does provide guidance to judges. That’s why we set sentences in the Crimes Act, and so this is not unorthodox; it’s just a Parliament taking an interest in our justice system and actually what people have told us, and what kinds of sentences the community expects to see for violent offenders.

So it is good to see these changes. We did campaign on them. It doesn’t address all of the issues in our criminal justice system; we’ve never pretended that this bill does. But it is a part of a suite of measures that this Government is taking. So I’m looking forward to having this law in place—actually seeing it flow through to consequences for offences; actually making our community safer, which is what ACT is here for; and making sure victims are actually put first and that there are consequences for serious crimes in our community. So ACT commends this bill to the House.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. I was a member of the Justice Committee that heard from a number of submitters, and, I must say, we’ve heard one view from the other side of the House, but there was also a view that this bill is going in the right direction. It restores real consequences for crime. There are three key areas that the Minister of Justice has pointed out: making sure the punishment fits the crime, restoring the principles of personal responsibility, and recognising victims.

We have had for too long, the Opposition, the Labour Party, for instance, being soft on crime. They, under their watch, wanted to reduce the prison population and they actually achieved reducing the prison population by 30 percent, but by reducing the prison population, criminal activity and serious violent crime increased by 33 percent and that was the consequence of their doing. They want to develop a culture of excuses for people that commit crime, and that is wrong and it’s why under their watch criminals kept doing what they were doing—because they could get away with it.

This Government is setting in place consequences for what they are doing. And New Zealand First supports this bill. It’s the Government’s aim to reduce violent crime by 20,000 by 2029. We favour more accountability by the courts and tougher punishment for those who opt for hurting others. And through the speeches so far, isn’t it so often the case that we never hear from the Opposition about the victims, those who are being hurt? The people we should be caring about are the victims, and this is what this piece of legislation does—it puts the victims at the forefront. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Tākuta Ferris—this is a split call.

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tonga): Ka pai. Hei aha ngā kōrero o tērā taha. [It’s OK. Never mind what the other side is saying.] E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā whakaaro a Te Pāti Māori [I stand to deliver the sentiments of the Māori Party] and I am going to do it in English. I want to start by addressing and dispelling the myth that because Māori are overrepresented as victims of crime, it is OK for the Government to ignore the fact that its own justice system has systematically, structurally, and attitudinally allowed the brutalisation of the Māori people for 171 years, since its inception.

Māori have been the victims of the justice system since it first appeared and began passing laws that systemically strip Māori of their legal rights in our own country, like the suppression of rebellion laws of the 1860s and 70s, like there being no requirement for trial before imprisonment of Māori for two years—laws from the same period. “Let’s not look back.”, they say. Add to that the disposition of land laws—far too extensive to list in a five-minute speech—that stripped Māori of their economic, social, and cultural bases, condemning Māori to the ever-intensifying intergenerational poverty and everything that comes with it.

The Government have another catchcry for justice: take personal responsibility, as we’ve just heard Mr Arbuckle spout. This is their retort to our presenting of historical and current evidence. “Take personal responsibility.”, they say, whilst ignoring the fact that they take no responsibility for the actions of successive Governments in this country that are the root cause of the current poverty and justice settings we are dealing with in this country today. And they do this while ignoring the now exhaustive evidence and datasets, most of which are published by their own agencies. It defies any sensible logic, and this bill is an extension of it.

What it does explain, though, is the Government’s approach to the formulation of justice policy and lawmaking in our country. And that is to study voting trends of the public and then use that as the basis for the formulation of justice policy and lawmaking in our country, while simultaneously ignoring all of the historic and current evidence and data, including their own agencies’ recommendations and advice. I don’t know why they bother to have agencies. There is little hope for te iwi Māori when it comes to justice in Aotearoa. Te Pāti Māori presents information and analysis to improve, to implore the Government to take into account all historic and current evidence when formulating justice policy and law. We are ignored, as is all of the evidence, I might add. Instead, they study voting trends to develop catchcries.

What they should do is study the drivers of poverty and then turn to formulation of justice policy and law. This would ultimately lead them to fulfilling their own overarching departmental slogan for the Department of Justice with the aspiration of lowering the overall representation of Māori in the justice system. Unfortunately, as they are organised now and led, they will never realise this and Māori will bear the brunt of it and will remain perpetually and intergenerationally trapped in the justice system.

Disproportionate exertion of force is experienced by Māori throughout the entire justice system, not just at the sentencing end but right throughout it: the beginning, first point of contact, through the process, sentencing, in prison—the lot. It’s not being disputed; it’s well understood. So this disproportionate exercise of force on Māori is felt at every instance, be it at the initial point of contact, like the experience of the young 15-year-old Heretaunga boy, in the early hours of Sunday, 16 March—yeah, only just a couple of weeks ago, not long ago, not even 10 days—who, in the process of being detained, had his jaw broken and then was denied any medical support for three hours. This is the nature of excessive force for Māori families—injustice: denied any support for three hours until the next shift came along and said, “Hika, you look bad; better get you to hospital.” He had to be flown to Wellington for an emergency surgery. His jaw was broken.

I want the reality of that to sink in for you a bit. This is what we are talking about when we talk about Māori being disproportionately everything in justice; albeit when you’re in prison, when you’re going through the court system, no support for Māori—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi. We do not commend the bill.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Well, this is the sad state of this House, that you’ve got a significant bill coming though and you’ve got the Government parties who have led this legislation stand up and give two-minute pathetic speeches. That side of the House is so out of touch with the reality of New Zealand; they get up and they give their stump speeches, give their key lines, and then they sit back down because they don’t have anything valuable to contribute to this discussion. That is a disservice to victims: that the summary of your thoughts and ideas on justice is to spit out some lines that some communications adviser wrote for you. Pathetic.

This sentencing reform bill is going to result in more people being funnelled into our prisons and it does not make our communities any safer. I don’t know what la-la land you might be living in on that side of the House, but if you’d actually set foot in a prison there’s no rehabilitation going on in there. I’ve been to 10 prisons in the last year; there’s no rehabilitation going on at all in there. What do you think people are doing in there? Making better connections; that’s why it’s called “the Ministry of Connections”, not “Corrections”, because that’s not happening in there.

Rehabilitation is virtually non-existent. You’re sending people in there for a longer time to make more friends to be better criminals. Well done, you’ve achieved something today.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Please don’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

TAMATHA PAUL: OK. We know for a fact that only 7 to 15 percent of rehabilitation programmes in prisons are actually successful, and prisons don’t even have the time to consider what kind of a service they’re offering to people in those prisons because they are so busy trying to accommodate a growing prison population. I don’t know why the other members are looking at me in disgust; that is the consequence of your actions, the Government’s actions. Yes, they are.

Prison capacity is the summary of your justice approach and response. It’s not to address the drivers of crime, it’s not to address poverty or trauma, or mental health issues or drug addiction, which are the reasons why people end up in prison. Your response is to make our prisons larger. You want to make Christchurch prison larger, Auckland prison larger, and continue to build prisons. That is not going to solve anything. I spoke to a corrections officer and he said, “As the muster grows, the quality goes.” That’s what they’re preparing for, and at the moment they are dealing with double-bunk cells, they are at capacity, and this bill will make those prisons even fuller. There are too many people in our prisons.

This bill is particularly disgusting, though, because it attacks our young people, the people who are supposed to be our future. You’re saying that their age should not be taken into account by judges when they’re sentenced. There is a reason that those provisions are in place and it’s because people in their lives, when their brains are developing at a certain age, make decisions differently. They do not weigh up the consequences. They are more susceptible to being peer pressured into doing things that they don’t want to do. But it’s easy for that side of the House to sit there and hand wring and talk about personal responsibility because they’ve had more options in their lives than all of the young people that are in prison. How do I know? Because I talked to them. I went to the youth unit at Mount Eden Prison and asked them why they were in there, and it was because they had no options, because they are disabled, because they are poor, because they come from places not like the ones that this side of the House come from.

Have some compassion and some empathy for the people that you talk about and that you lock up, the human potential that this Government wastes—absolutely wastes it. This bill oversteps judicial discretion. There’s a reason why judges stop sentencing people—because they know that prisons don’t work—and then here comes this ideological Government who has no care in the world for evidence, who continues to do the same thing over and over again, and it does not work. Eight hundred million dollars over five years is going into Corrections. Meanwhile, our hospitals are degraded, our schools are collapsing, our public services are in absolute disarray. You spend $151,000 on locking one person up; $80,000 per person in the Corrections system. You spend $1,000 per person in the health budget; you spend $4,000 per person in the education budget. It’s pathetic, and I know it’s not where taxpayers want their money going.

You guys, this side of the House, needs to buck their ideas up when it comes to justice, because all it is failure after failure. It is ruining lives, it is wasting human potential, and it is not the answer.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, before I take the next call, during the committee stage of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill, the result of the vote on Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1, replacing “Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Act” with “Sentencing (Discount Cap and other Matters) Amendment Act”, was incorrectly announced as Ayes 58 and Noes 68. The correct result is Ayes 55 and Noes 68. The record will be corrected accordingly.

Bills

Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the ceremony where we recognised the great work of members of the Corrections team across my electorate for the work they do. Particularly, one of my areas is in reform and rehabilitation, and I just want to acknowledge that work as part of the contribution I’m making to this debate this afternoon. Because if they were listening to that contribution that’s just been made, they would think that their contribution to rehabilitation is not appreciated, and I want all of those corrections officers to know that it is, by this Government. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): That was a very short speech. I thought we would have got a bit more from that member, but that’s fine.

This is an interesting debate we have because when we’re talking about being tough on crime, as we’ve heard, and the importance of this bill as a signature piece for the Government to demonstrate their commitment to being tough on crime, it comes in the context of where we’ve seen a 96 percent increase in the use of methamphetamine. So it’s important that if we’re curtailing the independence of the judiciary to impose sentences and saying that that’s tough on crime—but at the same time we have seen a deadly drug that absolutely devastates communities; that drives retail crime up, increases that; that increases violent crime; and it also adds to increased family violence. Business is booming for the gangs right now; they’re doing the best they’ve ever done before because they are selling record levels of methamphetamine in New Zealand.

I find it somewhat two-faced to profess that this Government and this bill are tough on crime when life has never been better for the gangs. The price point of methamphetamine is the lowest it has been in New Zealand’s history, and the purity of methamphetamine is the highest. We have a market that is absolutely flooded with cheap, high-quality methamphetamine, and those profiting from it—those doing well from it—are the gangs. So if this Government is so tough on crime, why is business booming for gangs right now in New Zealand? I’d love to hear from some of the members opposite to their answer to that question.

Because where in this bill lies the answer to curtailing the intricate web of organised criminal activity that peddles misery in our communities and causes increased poverty, increased violence, and increased retail crime within our communities? Because if this Government is, in fact, being tough on crime with this bill, you can ask any police officer, in any given city or area, who their top two or three retail crime offenders are, and you can ask them what is driving that retail crime. Those large-scale operations where you see a trolley full of meat being stolen from Woolworths or Pak’nSave? Those are meth users who are stealing to order, in order to feed their addiction.

Methamphetamine is a significant driver of retail crime in our community. So where is this Government’s answer to being tough on crime when we see gangs doing better than ever before in New Zealand? In fact, during a cost of living crisis—when every other food group has gone through the roof: rates, insurance, everywhere where we see communities, rents are all increasing—the one big price drop we’ve seen in New Zealand under this Government is the cost of a price point of methamphetamine. I think that demonstrates that bills like this one are window dressing. They tick the box of being able to say that they’re tough on crime, but the reality is demonstrated in the 96 percent increase in the use of methamphetamine—

Rima Nakhle: Thanks to Labour. Six years.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —reported last week, done in one year. So in one year—to that member opposite who’s interjecting—from 2023 to 2024—

Rima Nakhle: Six years.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —in one year—

Rima Nakhle: $2.75 million to your friend, Harry. Great guy! Mongrel Mob!

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —we have had a 96 percent increase in methamphetamine under their Government’s watch.

Rima Nakhle: Just give him $2.75 million—Harry.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: The other bill we’re seeing coming through this House today in terms of not being tough on crime—which undermines the whole purpose of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill—would be weakening our gun laws. On top of making methamphetamine cheaper than ever—

Rima Nakhle: Thanks to Labour. Friends of gangs. Six years.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —and giving gangs more income than ever before, we’re weakening gun laws and paving—

Dr Tracey McLellan: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I’m just sitting here listening to a very excellent speech, but also reflecting on Speakers’ rulings. In 64/3, it clearly states that a “running commentary of interjections is out of order;”. The members on the Government side of the House have plenty of opportunity to take calls. And we—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I understand the point of order. Thank you. Look, I tend to allow quite a free give and take within the House. There have been several interjections from both sides during this debate. It wasn’t rowdy, it wasn’t disruptive, but it was sustained. But I’ll ask the member to continue.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The point I was making was that if this bill is tough on crime, why has methamphetamine use gone up by 96 percent, meaning that business is booming for the gangs?

Secondly, if this bill and this Government propose to be tough on crime, why are they weakening gun laws by passing, under urgency later on today, a bill that will lay the foundations for taking the Firearms Safety Authority away from police, away from their best advice, away from protecting front-line safety; and actually enabling a far less regulated system for firearms ranges and guns and gun safety in New Zealand?

I guess it’s the importance of highlighting that this bill in itself—with its tick-box measure of attempting to show that it’s tough on crime—if we lift the lid, if we lift the hood on this car, then underneath it we see the real picture and we see criminals having, more readily, access to firearms; the easier diversion of firearms into the criminal underworld; and the free-flowing ability of selling and profiting from illicit drugs. Those things are the cycle of crime. If we are serious as a country to get on top of crime, we have to break that cycle. We want to look at where this continues to cause harm in our communities. We want to stop that from causing destruction and hurt in the next generation of New Zealanders.

But this Government has no interest in that. They want to simply demonstrate, over a short term, that they are tough, without actually looking at any clear evidence or actually taking some interest into looking at what works in New Zealand. This bill is a sad bill that will make them attempt to look like they’re doing tough things. But, in fact, it has no impact upon the real damage and harm that continues to be caused in communities. We’re still seeing record levels of retail crime. We’re still seeing those small-business owners being hurt in their businesses, and under the influence of drugs and other influences that come through their businesses, and who are being threatened with weapons in their place of work. Those areas are still a concern, and it is those areas that we need to look at in how we break the cycle of crime.

In terms of what this bill does and why we oppose it, the 40 percent cap on sentence discounts severely restricts judges’ ability to consider the full range of mitigating factors in complex cases. Judges, with their expertise and experience, we think, are the best positioned to weigh all relevant factors and determine appropriate sentences. But this Government thinks they know better—they think they know better and they will impose a regime to impede the discretion of the judiciary. This one-size-fits-all approach may lead to unjust outcomes in cases with unique circumstances. And we heard that very clearly at the Justice Committee.

Restricting discounts for younger offenders may place their rehabilitation in jeopardy. And that’s an interesting point: that if we were serious about breaking the cycle of crime, it is those early on, nipping that behaviour in the bud and making sure there are consequences for those actions and making sure that there is a programme in place that actually makes rehabilitation an attainable goal for young people. But it is under this bill that those young people will be disproportionately impacted, and particularly those from disadvantaged communities.

Interestingly, to that point, is the fact that it is those communities that are also disproportionately impacted by the vast increase of methamphetamine now available in New Zealand communities. That report, released last Friday—late on a Friday; interesting how the Government puts things out late on a Friday when they don’t want to talk about things. But it is interesting from that report that it is parts of the North Island, rural New Zealand that are most significantly impacted. It is those communities that are already suffering under the cost of living crisis that are further impacted upon by the increased availability of methamphetamine use in New Zealand.

The cumulative sentences for offences committed on bail and custody under this legislation and under its changes lead to much longer prison sentences. That’s where they get to tick their box, but it does not solve the problem; it does not break the cycle of crime. There is absolutely no interest in being able to demonstrate what the long-term goal or plan is. I think that is the reason why this Government has no plan on reducing methamphetamine.

To give credit to former National Governments, at least John Key could see that this was damaging our communities. At least he pulled together a group of experts to say, “Let’s get on top of this problem. We can see it’s hurting our people. We can see it’s destroying lives.” But this Government is not interested in a long-term plan. They don’t care about that. They just want to show that they’re tough and they’re going to give criminals tougher sentences. And they think that’s going to fix the problem, but, sadly, it’s not.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): This bill will strengthen the consequences of offending and ensure offenders take personal responsibility for the harm they cause. And what did Ginny Andersen in the Labour Party just say? “This is a sad bill.” Do you know what’s sad? For the victims in New Zealand who see the people who commit those crimes being tagged and released under that Labour administration and not serving the time for the crimes they’ve committed. And what are we doing? We’re bringing back real consequences. You commit the crime, and you will be held accountable for your actions. Not you, Madam Speaker, but the victims—[Interruption] Ha, ha! Those in community, the offenders who do the crimes, they will be held accountable for their actions. This side of the House care for victims; that side of the House, they do not care for victims. They simply do not care. We are restoring law and order back here in New Zealand; it’s a great day.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to take up this debating point, which seems to be that the people in the Opposition don’t care about victims. That is actually something that I would reflect on if I was a member of the Government. Is that a good starting point in any discussion, given that we are all here because we represent our communities and we have seen the harm that crime does in our communities? And so rather than be on a high horse, which actually obscures the view, let’s talk about the reality of people’s lives and the reality of the impact on victims of this particular piece of legislation, because it doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

This might make people feel good for two and a half seconds, but, actually, more people will die as a result of this piece of legislation. More people will be harmed as a result of this legislation, and it won’t fix the problem—and that’s what we’re here to do; we’re here to fix the problem, and it’s a serious problem in our society.

So let’s have a look at this piece of legislation through the eyes of a victim. Let’s talk about what would happen. What I think we also have to acknowledge is that these pieces of legislation don’t work just on their own. They’re part of a net and the net has actually got giant holes in it, in this case, because we have legislation in this House which simply misreads the problem and the solution.

We’ve heard people around this House today talk about things like the inadequacy of our imprisonment system, where we’re just simply not rehabilitating people, where we’re putting people into cells in double-bunking situations. And now we will be adding more youth to those cells and they will make connections in gangs. I can see a colleague across the House shaking his head and I wonder what reason he has for shaking his head, because that is the reality—we are putting more people into a place where they will be double-bunked.

I’m never a fan of double-bunking, where they will be in cells and in communication with people who are much more violent criminals. That will happen and they will learn and grow in those skills, and that’s the opposite from what we want for victims in this country, because those people will come out of prison and they’re much more likely to offend in violent ways, and that will hurt real New Zealanders.

Now, I wanted to talk about another piece of the net here that I think is going in place at the same time, and it’s got the same problem—it’s based on popularism—and that is the issue of citizens arrests. In a place like Sandringham, we’ve had deaths of people when coming out and actually trying to stop somebody who has shoplifted. We’ve had deaths of people, deaths of workers, as a result of that. In fact, what this Government keeps on doing is it keeps on talking about self-responsibility, and it just looks like abandonment. It abandons people through every system. People will be left to try and deal with that situation of an erratic person taking stuff from their shop. They’ll be left on their own to deal with it. And we’ve put it back on the worker and the little shop owner. That’s a shameful thing to do.

But then we promise them that in this bill, we’re going to imprison the person who offends by stabbing that shopkeeper. That’s what we’re promising them. And what are we actually doing? We’re taking a whole lot of people and imprisoning them and schooling them in crime in a way that is just not going to work. It is not going to help them in the slightest, because their loved ones are already going to be harmed from it. And now these people will be released into a situation which is even more harmful.

Now, I am not saying that we have got the system perfect or that we shouldn’t have good methods of dealing with people who are in what are crime waves. I’m not saying that. I think there is a lack of proportion here, and that does not mean that I’m belittling the crimes that are going on. But I’ve raised this before in another speech—I’ve talked about the issue of white-collar crime. I’ve talked about all those people who are causing harm, whom this doesn’t affect at all, and they actually affect our society. There is absolutely no proportionality here.

Finally, what worries me is that we have conceded there is problem here, because we’ve talked about problems where there is a manifest injustice and rectifying that. That means that we know that there’s going to be a lot of injustice in this law.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Finally, we are at the third reading of the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill, and this is absolutely a reformative bill when it comes to victims, because on this side of the House, we actually put victims first—not the Mongrel Mobs of society that received $2.75 million under the last Government; no, we put victims first.

And what’s really sad, actually, is to hear members opposite say that “This is a sad day.” Yes, actually, it’s a sad day for criminals because now they know that there’s actually going to be tougher consequences for their crime. It’s actually a very good day for victims, for victims in South Auckland that even this morning and yesterday were contacting me about when are tougher consequences for crime going to materialise for them? This is a good day for them.

What disgusts me is hearing across the House, “More young people will be harmed.” On 25 July 2024, the New Zealand Herald published an article where the title was: “Timaru teen sex offender Blake Miller avoids jail after 75 percent sentence discount after offences against child”. The child was 11 years old.

This bill that we’re passing today—thank you, God—would have made him go to jail, but he’s on home detention, which is disgusting. Shame on you across the House for saying that this is going to harm young people. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an interesting bill, isn’t it, because at the at the heart of almost all of the contributions that we’ve heard, not just today but through this process, has been a couple of key themes, and it’s as if sometimes we talk at cross-purposes. If this was a high school debate where there was some sort of moot and then an opposition, it might seem OK. But this is actually Parliament where people make laws and it’s incumbent upon the Government to try and do a better job and to step up and, and not kind of stoop to that level.

The Government members, the people opposite us in this House, have said several times today that this is about putting victims first, and that’s just vacuous. That’s just an utterly rubbish, vacuous comment that doesn’t make any actual sense. It’s as if you say it out loud and that makes it true. Rima Nakhle can sit there and shake her head but just because she stands up and says this is about making victims’ lives better doesn’t actually make it true. There is nothing in this bill that does that. So it’s lazy, vacuous thinking to think that you have the audacity to come here, wave a piece of paper around in the form of this bill, and say, “Job done, tick that one off, we’ve made things better for victims.”, because that does not work and it has not happened within the confines of this bill.

The Government is proposing this sentencing amendment bill as part of what they keep insisting on as a broad law and order reform package, and we have yet to see anything that’s broad about it. We are yet to see anything that actually tackles law and order. It is virtue signalling, it is lazy, and it is simply saying things. It is push-poll politics. It is push-poll defining of policy and it is lazy and you should know better. It’s no surprise that Labour strongly opposes this bill, and we do so for several reasons—mainly because it doesn’t do what the Government says it’s going to do, so we can chuck that one out, and it actually has some unintended consequences that are dangerous.

So we think that the fundamental objective of this bill is to undermine judicial discretion, which obviously is a bad thing. Arguing that judges don’t know what they’re doing, arguing that individual considerations shouldn’t be taken into account is a slippery slope to creating a system that just creates a revolving door that creates more crime, that creates more victims, and then creates more victims.

Tom Rutherford: The victim was 11 years old.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: You can stand up and take a call if you feel so passionate about it, Mr Rutherford. So, several key points to consider here, and one is, as I said, judicial discretion—severely limited. The bill caps total sentence discounts for mitigating factors at 40 percent, regardless of how many personal and situational factors may apply. It also formalises what it describes as a sliding scale of 25 percent for early guilty pleas, and on the surface you may think that there is some merit in that and you can see how that would be. The earlier someone fesses up and does a guilty plea during the process, the more their remorse is likely to be perceived as genuine, the less court expense, the less impact on the judicial system is in place, which, again, could show that their remorse is genuine.

But we didn’t find through the committee of the whole House or at any stage during this process, or the regulatory impact statement or anything else, that there was any robust analysis behind that or anything else that is in this bill. If it was worthwhile doing, we would all be able to sit here and get behind it. If it was actually robust and evidence-driven, we would all be able to go and support this bill because, fundamentally, everybody’s got the same intentions in place, and that is to make New Zealand a better place to live and to make fewer victims.

If this worked, we would support it. You’ve had ample opportunity to prove that it works; you’ve had ample opportunity to show some reasons as to why you shouldn’t have unanimous support around the House—not you, Madam Speaker, obviously; Madam Speaker would have tried—but you haven’t done that. And we’ve been open to that argument. On this side of the House, we would have absolutely been open to a sensible argument if a sensible argument existed. Giving an example, a person who confesses and cooperates extensively with police, shows genuine remorse, and has no prior convictions, may still be unable to receive a sentence reduction that would otherwise fairly reflect their circumstances. This one-size-fits-all is not going to do anything to improve the justice system.

There is one opportunity, often, in a young person’s life to come before the courts to face the circumstances of their offending and to actually turn a corner and to be provided with some societal help to do things differently and to live better and to create a whole new path for themselves. If we chuck away all of those tools that we have at our service, via the judicial process, then we are wasting the opportunity to do just that.

In terms of harms, the rehabilitation of youth and marginalised groups, the bill also prevents the discount for youth and for remorse. If we think about the youth discount in particular, we’ve heard several people talk, through this process and particularly at the committee of the whole House stage, about the fact that you don’t stop being young just because you did a bad thing and now you’ve done a second bad thing a short time afterwards, You’re still young. The fact that young people maturate, that they’re finding their way in the world, that their brain development isn’t going to happen until, you know, their early 20s and sometimes longer, that there can be a whole host of societal, cultural, and lifestyle factors, including poverty and including stigma and all of those other things. It doesn’t stop you being young and it doesn’t stop—and it shouldn’t stop—the discretion of a fully formed judge, of a fully formed judicial process, to be able to take things into account.

You may say, “Well, that’s tough luck.”, and want to take a much more punitive approach, but that young person is going to come back round. That young person is going to react in an equally proportionate way to how they’ve been treated, and that will actually impact how they decide to live the rest of their life. We have limited opportunities to make profound impacts on people, and I think we should leave it in the hands of judges who do this day in, day out and who know much more about it than the people sitting opposite me right now.

We’ve also heard contributions today about the increased prison population and the costs of that and that, as a society, we have a choice about—depending on how you look at it—where we spend our money. The fact is that putting people in prison is incredibly expensive; incredibly expensive. At the moment, we are almost at capacity. The Government is going flat out trying to negotiate with unions to be able to open up more prison beds. It’s flat out trying to invest huge swaths of taxpayer money in building new prisons—mega prisons, in one case, in Waikeria—and that just seems like a very convenient way of locking people up.

They try and balance that with this promise, this golden egg, of being able to provide more rehabilitation, but there’s no more rehabilitation happening. The rehabilitation for remand prisoners is yet to start and yet we’ve heard on the other side of the House several references to that over the last few weeks as being something good that the Government has done. It hasn’t even started. We don’t know how it’s going to work, and it’s, again, ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Unnecessary age aggravating factors: as I said, Labour says that many more of these scenarios are already covered in existing law, and we just don’t value the contribution that this bill makes. We’ve called this a political stunt and we believe that that’s exactly what it is. It’s dressed up as reform. It’s not reform as, again, through the committee of the whole House stage, we heard several much more viable suggestions for an appropriate title that would have been a bit more true to form.

We’ve heard about the fact that methamphetamine use is up; it has absolutely skyrocketed—another example of this Government taking the opportunity to say things but not actually doing them. That has a consequence and that consequence is playing out on the streets of this country as we speak. Business is booming for the gangs. Their tough on crime rhetoric hasn’t worked for anything they’ve done to date, and it certainly is not demonstrated in this bill either. So we do not commend this bill to the House.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Very many statements have been made in this debate, but they’re simply out of scope of this debate. The Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill is very specific in its purpose to amend the Sentencing Act of 2002. We in this National Party and this Government strongly support the strengthening of accountability for crimes. It is about consequences, it is about personal responsibility, and being held to account for the damage that crime inflicts on victims. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

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.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Customer and Product Data Bill.

Bills

Customer and Product Data Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Preliminary provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, the committee is considering the Customer and Product Data Bill. We come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 13—“Preliminary provisions”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. Notwithstanding that we are going to do this part by part during the committee of the whole House stage, I might make some introductory and overview comments. I’m very pleased to be here today for the committee stage of this Customer and Product Data Bill. Sometimes it has been referred to as an open-banking bill. It is an important bill not only for me as the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs but also for the Government and for consumers and technology companies that are going to be the ones who benefit most from this legislation once it is passed through this House.

Technology has changed dramatically in recent years, and it will continue to change. So this bill seeks to create a framework that will ensure that current arrangements are up to date and that future arrangements can be accommodated.

At this early stage, I want to, again—as my predecessor had already done but I want to, as the new Minister—thank the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee and everyone who made submissions on the bill for their work in getting it to this stage.

Just by way of background, the bill introduces a very long overdue consumer data right regime to New Zealand, to make customer and product data accessible for the benefit of New Zealanders. At present, businesses that hold customer and product data are not incentivised at all to invest in better data sharing or the infrastructure that goes with it, and/or any agreements to the sharing of that data. They hold that data incredibly tightly, and that’s been the historical position.

So this means that, actually, it’s very difficult for technology companies to negotiate contracts with those businesses that hold data, and that, in and of itself, limits innovation in our economy. There is also an area where inefficiencies and security issues with some current methods for sharing customer and product data mean that this is made difficult, and it’s unappealing and it’s risky for companies. Third parties under this legislation—the so-called fintechs—will need to be accredited to register customer data on behalf of a customer, and that will ensure that they have appropriate systems in place and that they’re able to handle data appropriately. The bill includes a range of penalties to deter, penalise, and discourage non-compliance, and it’ll be the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that are the regulatory agency responsible for enforcing breaches, alongside, naturally, the Privacy Commissioner, who will continue to be responsible for breaches of the Privacy Act.

The select committee unanimously reported this bill back to the House, and recommended some amendments to the bill which I support as Minister. Some of the key amendments cover the areas relating to the adequacy of privacy protections, protections from liability, approving persons to develop standards, and accreditation criteria. Other amendments are smaller but important, and improve the bill also. I think the select committee’s made some excellent improvements and some suggestions to the bill, particularly with the removal of requirements around the use, modification, and disclosure of customer data where it has carefully balanced the views of prospective data holders such as banks, prospective accredited requestors such as financial technology companies, and customers.

At the appropriate time, I’d like to speak to the Amendment Paper that I’ve introduced, and I don’t think that’s probably appropriate at this stage, other than to say that the bill, if it’s to work as it’s intended, will, by way of that Amendment Paper, make minor and technical changes to the bill—for example, correcting the definition of a joint customer to refer to two or more customers rather than one. My changes are consistent with the existing policy reflected in the bill.

So, on that note, I’m pleased to put the bill over to the committee of the whole House for wider discussion and participation.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Labour members are very excited to excited to be up to a stage to be able to give this bill a thorough going over in the committee of the whole House stage. It is important that we get that opportunity because this bill has had a long history—a long history of many fathers. Congratulations to the Hon Scott Simpson for not only taking up his role as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs but also being the next steward of this bill, which, as he says, is incredibly important to enabling not only open banking but also the good use of consumer data within our entire digital economy. This is a cornerstone of New Zealand’s digital economy, and we have an opportunity here to be world leaders, to have the best settings for the use of consumer data, for fintechs, for innovators in this space, and it’s an exciting opportunity for anyone to be able to lead.

But it has that long list of fathers, and I would be remiss not to mention them. This bill was first under development under the Hon Dr David Clark and then the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. I also have the honour of being its only mother as having introduced it as a member’s bill in the 54th Parliament, and there have been some changes since then.

Some of our questions will be designed to draw out the differences between those bills, because a lot of this work has been done and it is cross partisan. It enjoys cross-partisan support now, but there are some differences in this bill compared to the work that was undertaken by the Hon Dr David Clark and some of those things are around penalties and around how we deal with the system when things go wrong. That was quite hard to test out in the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. You don’t get people who show up at the committee and tell you about how the penalties will work, because the regime is not in action and these penalty systems vary greatly around the world and so no one really has had any benefit of seeing how these things play out under our settings. The only place where there has been significant litigation around these rights is in the EU, but they have a very different penalty system than ours, and I will traverse some of that when we get to the right moment.

I also want to thank the officials who have tirelessly worked on this for many years. This is something that sectors, like banking, have pointed to as a real roadblock for their development in their introduction of open banking, so we’re very glad to have it to this place. None of us would be right in saying that it was easy. There have been many iterations of work that has been done on this. Thank you to everyone who has put in the work to make this a workable regime and a world-leading regime.

On Part 1, Labour members have a number of questions, but the first question I want to put to the Minister is around clause 3. Clause 3(1)(a) has a change in the scope of this bill. At various points of working through it and, indeed, through the select committee changes to this bill, there has been a huge amount of focus and attention on whether this should be about customers and, therefore, transactions, or whether it should be about people and the way that people can expect their digital data to be stored and used securely. In a digital economy, this is really important to get right because all of us will have varying degrees of interactions online that are not transactions but are with businesses. And New Zealanders can expect that the Government will play a role in this, whether it is just in the transactions and in the monitoring of the way that those transactions are conducted, or whether it will be in those broader digital interactions that are had for products that they might not perceive as products. The definition here has changed from “individuals” and “organisations”. That’s gone. It’s been replaced with “customers”.

The reframing of this bill as a customer product right from what Labour was developing as a consumer data right is a pretty large change in terms of what the scope of it is and what people can expect the Government to be creating here as a sort of framework going forward. But what does that mean? It means that, in applying it only to customers, it excludes this broader principle of personal data rights. That, I think, is probably a good change, but I want to test out with the Minister—when global best practice for this has been developed in jurisdictions like the EU, where the consumer data rights went hand in hand with development of the law on personal data rights and when the courts, at various levels of the EU system, considered what the personal rights legislative framework should be alongside it, in not stepping into that space and not guaranteeing that individuals have some form of legal recognition in this, are we creating a system where there’s just litigation to go—that we’re making the courts, actually, determine those rights? [Bell rung] Mr Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Arena Williams.

ARENA WILLIAMS: That’s an expensive process. It’s a long process. So I want to be sure with the Minister that when we’re taking out the explicit purpose there of establishing a framework for individuals, we’re not going to see ourselves back here needing to flesh out those rights.

There’s another point under this, at clause (2)(b), where the bill, actually, still has the original framing around “improving access to data about products in those sectors”, and that “about products” has this implicit other side that it’s products for people. Because, if you are using the consumer data, either in an aggregate way—where you might be analysing people’s data to, say, make risk assessments and to then provide better data to other consumers about the range of products that are on offer for them, which is still, you know, explicitly set out in the purpose here—then you are sort of implicitly creating these rights for other people who are not necessarily customers now. They might be prospective customers. They might be people who are engaged in the system in another way.

And I’ll remind the Minister, just before I sit down—I don’t want to extend this call—we’re very excited about the application of this beyond just banking. This was never intended to just be about open banking—and this will be very, very impactful, right now, with the issues of competition in the banking sector—but we cannot forget that this applies to telecommunications, this applies to healthcare, and this applies to energy. There is real opportunity for New Zealand to step out into those sectors, which, frankly, around the world, have not enjoyed the ability to take up consumer data rights, because they have not had the empowering provisions that we do now. So let’s not forget about them. Those are sectors where the customer relationships, the transactional relationships, that banking has are certainly not the same, and they are broader.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Honourable Minister—but, just beforehand, I advise members this is now committee of the whole House. I might be banging my head against the brick wall, but we try to encourage question and answer sessions. I allowed the member to go over into a second session, but it would be easier if we can establish that relationship here, and I will endeavour, while I’m in the Chair, to ensure that members get ample opportunity to keep that discussion going. So, rather than a series of speeches, we can have some discussion, but let’s try it, shall we?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair, I appreciate your direction. Look, I want to engage positively and spontaneously with members as they ask questions, so I’m looking forward to that conversation.

The member Arena Williams makes a good point about the long gestation period of this piece of legislation. It’s often said that success has a thousand fathers—and sometimes mothers—failure but one, so I’m delighted to hear that the Opposition is still supportive of it, because I think it’s clear that this is going to be a good piece of legislation.

The bill provides a framework. One of the aspects about New Zealand being relatively late to the game in terms of this type of legislation is that we can learn from aspects in other jurisdictions that haven’t worked quite as well, and we can, hopefully, not replicate or repeat those errors, because we do want it to work appropriately here. So this piece of legislation provides a framework. The actual specific detail for individual sectors—the first will be banking, then we’re going to go to electricity, and then there are a range of other sectors that we can consider along the way, but those specifics will come in secondary legislation provided by regulations. Now, those will vary depending on the sector. That flexibility is important. The scope that the member referred to has changed, but I think for good reason, and for those reasons alone, in that it’s designed to be sufficiently robust in terms of its overarching framework to then enable the regulations for each sector to be appropriate and targeted and responsive to that particular sector.

I want to just make a point about clause 3(2)(b) about products, because a central aspect to the bill is about allowing customers, whether they are individuals or businesses, to benefit from the sharing of data. So the wording has been changed, but the purpose of the bill is to establish a framework to realise the value of that data for the benefit of customers, whether they be individuals and/or businesses. So I hope that that goes some way to reassure the member on that question.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for that helpful answer. It leads me to my next question, which is: what is the impact on non-customers of the change to clause 3(1)(a), and then no subsequent change to clause 3(2)(a)?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Following on from the great introduction by my colleague Arena Williams—and I hear the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ point about establishing a regulatory framework in order to allow businesses that this might be opened up to into the future, which is what, as my colleague’s explained, we’re excited about, beyond the banking sector.

I wonder, then, if that’s the case, with respect to in clause 3(2)(c), where it says there, “requiring certain safeguards, controls, standards, and functionality in connection with those data services.” if it is (1) the intention of the Minister to continually come back and update that regulatory framework through omnibus bills, through further legislation, or whether it’s just simple regulatory change that can be done at another level; or (2) as my colleague’s already mentioned, when we look towards what the penalties will be eventually, whether or not that will continue to need to be updated, reiterated, and of course debated in the House, given the scope of what the Minister’s answer was with respect to opening up to other parts, other sectors, other businesses.

One of the big things that Kiwis know, and, I dare say, people right across the world, is that their data is key—data is everything—and, in particular, their own data. When we look towards how we can secure that data but, more importantly, how we can secure the public’s confidence in the security and the use of that data, I want to make sure that they have that confidence that we have a regulatory framework that is agile enough. So my question directly to the Minister is with respect to subclause (2)(c) in clause 3 there.

Other parts that are always interesting—and when you look through the interpretation clause in this particular bill, as you do at every bill, interpretations are exactly that. You read through them, and some of them are quite straightforward, but my question to the Minister is why we’ve removed “derived data” from there. While it might be quite a technical or straightforward thing, I think, to build the confidence that New Zealanders expect when we use data like this or when people access, use, and share data like this, it would be useful if “derived data” and the explanation of why that’s taken out is explained to the committee. Because, as I flip forward and see where it’s been taken out, and that is clause 33(3), it says, “In this Act, derived data means” this. And I just wonder why it’s been taken out. I think it’s fair, as I say, to talk about the confidence that New Zealanders expect in this exciting and new and timely bill to make sure that we get these things right so that confidence is, of course, in our communities with respect to this now.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to continue to focus on the purpose clause in Part 1. I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee that considered this, and it’s a very interesting area, but I do worry that the public won’t necessarily have caught up quite yet with the purpose of the bill.

If we have a look at clause 3(1)(b), which talks about the way that the purpose is to promote competition and innovation for the long-term benefit of the customer, I just wondered if you could explain for the benefit of the public what that long-term benefit that they’re missing out on at the moment is and why it would be that something like this would free up innovation and competition. How has it been used uncompetitively to stop competition in the market? I appreciate that we have talked a lot about that in terms of something like banking, and perhaps the public are more familiar—and that’s a good place to start: I’d love to talk about an example like that where people have come across those impediments in an area.

But I also would love to be more specific about some of those areas that you see as the next targets. My friend Arena Williams has talked about the issue over telecoms in healthcare. In an area like that, what would the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs see as being the low-hanging fruit that would come next, and in what areas—in something like healthcare, for example? I don’t think that’s something that the New Zealand public would necessarily look at and see as one that would be impacted by this, so I’d be really grateful for an explanation of where you see the potential growth being.

I’d also just like to pick up on my friend’s question about clause 3(2)(c) and the issues there around the safeguards in place here. That was touched upon a little bit, but what sort of safeguards are there in this legislation, and why is it necessary to have them? What’s the balancing act that’s been brought to bear in this legislation? Thank you, Minister.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair; some good contributions there from the last three contributors. I’ll work backwards, if I might.

The broader picture that Helen White has just sort of painted for us is really at the nub of what this legislation is all about. It’s the potential opportunities for unexplored, as yet sometimes unimagined, benefits to New Zealand consumers. Because we haven’t had a regime where data is open and available, there are many opportunities that can be explored that most New Zealanders will not even yet have contemplated. And I think that’s the really exciting part about this legislation—the vista that lies before us all.

Just think about, for instance, some of the ability to use personal banking data in a way that means that live real-time on your phone, on your device, information about your personal budgeting information that currently isn’t available other than made by maybe Propellerhead people presenting and creating their own spreadsheet and what have you—some people do that, I know, but most of us don’t. So the ability to actually have access to that I think is phenomenal. But it’s not just in banking; it’s in a whole range of other areas, as the member has indicated, and is limited literally by our own imagination and limited also by the wit, skill, and ability of the enterprises that want to take advantage of it for our benefit.

Now, there are issues, of course, around security. There are issues, of course, around reliability. And there will always be a range of considerations that any consumer has to take into account in terms of what they see as, essentially, features and benefits of what’s on offer to them. So, look, we could go on for a very long period of time, and I’m sure the Chair will lose patience, because he is a man of vast imagination. But I do want to just say that at present—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): If little patience, is what you’re saying.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: If little patience. But, at present, businesses that hold customer and product data, they’re just simply not incentivised to release that data. Some of us of a certain age think of banks, for instance, that hold information incredibly tightly. Now, that information, that data, is actually my data as a customer of that bank. It’s actually not the bank’s data; it’s my data. And how I choose to use that data in association with another entity is actually something that I think opens up a huge opportunity for us all. So I’m excited by that.

That’s the type of thing that we’re missing out on at the moment. I had an opportunity a week or so ago to go and address a group of fintech operators. They literally speak a different language to most of us, because they operate a version in their technology world that someone of my age and generation finds, frankly, quite hard to comprehend, but a teenager just gets it in a nanosecond.

Arena Williams: Stop them lobbying me!

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Ha, ha! So there you go on that one.

The Hon Peeni Henare asked whether the legislation will need to be updated as technology and change occurs or whether it will be by the regulation. One of the things that I think we’ve learnt from international experience is actually that it’s the broad framework of the legislation that we want to be stable and secure. It needs to be robust enough to ensure that security and certainty can be provided to consumers and customers, and that data actually does have some protection. But, by the same token, it needs to be flexible, nimble enough, and nuanced enough to enable the regulations to be adjusted should they need to be with the changing of technology. And heaven knows that technology is changing at a pace that means almost certainly that over a period of time those regulations will need to be tweaked. But I think that having that mechanism of framework in the legislation, sector-specific regulation that can—as necessary and required—be adjusted, is very good.

In terms of Arena Williams’ comment, I think I covered that, I thought, pretty well in my first response to her question.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Yeah, I’m following on the conversations on clause 3, on the purpose, but I wanted to connect them to the terms listed in clause 5, “Interpretation”. First of all, can I just say that I really support, and our party supports, the change in subclause (1)(a) of clause 3 to focus on customers rather than individuals. But I think, to me, there’s a couple of words in, particularly, clause 3 that I do want to dig into deeper. First of all, because we do have in clause 5 a list of terms that are kind of considered for interpretation, and in clause 3(1)(a) we have the language “certain data”, I wonder whether the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs thought that that needed to be more granular or sort of not so open-ended, seeing as we do have other language in clause 5 that is up for interpretation.

The second question is on clause 3(1)(b), and I know that other members have touched a bit on the language of competition. I also wondered, in terms of outcomes, and I wanted to raise a question and a bit of a challenge around why it is that particularly that part of the bill doesn’t so much speak about outcomes for consumers, because the language is still about promoting things like competition and innovation, but the bill actually does not guarantee nor promote specific outcomes for customers. That, to me, I guess, makes the assumption that increased competition and innovation will organically lead to better outcomes, but I think, to me, without identifying some of the outcomes that are being promoted in this bill, I can’t see how a customer actually would be reassured that, for example—you know, banking’s been used as an example, and I totally acknowledge the Minister’s words and others that this bill will touch on a range of sectors.

What are the specific outcomes the Minister is seeking as a result of greater competition and innovation, and, if he thinks that there are some specific outcomes that should be part of the purpose of this bill, were these explored in terms of incorporating them in clause 3 and, subsequently, I guess, then being further defined in the interpretations in clause 5. I notice in clause 5, for example, we actually don’t define competition or innovation. I know that perhaps that may feel like those are common-sense words, but, equally, somebody could argue that a lot of the terms in clause 5, like data, may not need to be defined because those are also common terms that we use in an everyday life. I guess, for the clarity of the public and moving forward with this bill, I wonder whether he thought that, actually, the interpretation of innovation—particularly innovation—should actually be better defined, particularly around the outcomes that that may have for consumers.

To recap, I’m particularly focused on clause 3(1)(a) on definition of “certain data” and then clause 3(1)(b) around whether outcomes should have been incorporated. Thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. The reason I asked the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs about whether non-customers are covered in the purpose clause of the bill is because, when we get to clause 4(4)—where it’s a really nice plain-language setting out of how the bill fits together—it points straight to the secondary legislation, which will be designed on the back of this bill. If non-customers are not part of the bill and they’re not part of the empowering provisions, then the secondary legislation cannot deal with non-customer data. If you are not a customer of the energy company and the energy company is seeking to offer a range of products to you or about people like you, it cannot be regulated by the secondary legislation that comes out of this bill. That is not the intention that Labour had when Labour designed this legislation to be very broad and empowering. What I want from the Minister is to take us through the change at clause 3 that strikes out “individuals” and strikes out “organisations” and what that will mean for the secondary legislation.

I’m going to come back to that in other parts, particularly penalties, because the penalty regime does seem to envision broader groups of people having access to some form of the information. And the Minister is completely right when he says, “It’s not the bank’s data; it’s my data. I should have the ability to say how that data is used.” He is completely right. That is exactly the regime that we have. And, in New Zealand, we have a really great opportunity to do more than the other countries we compare ourselves to in this space—the EU, the UK, Australia—because we have such broad legislation in some other parts of this. But if it doesn’t let us make secondary legislation about the second layer of this data—if a bank holds pieces of information about you that it uses to make risk assessments based on someone like you, we’re not dealing with that in this legislation as derived data. I think that’s a really good thing. But, then, how will we deal with it? Because the way that this bill was designed in a previous life would have seen that as being dealt with under organisations and individuals, people in the ecosystem who are not customers.

With the risk of running out of time, let me take you to my questions on the interpretation clause: “deception”, here, is a change. It’s been defined using the Crimes Act definition, which is a very, very high standard. We’re talking about false representation via documents or conduct. We’re talking about the intent to deceive, and we’re talking about knowingly not providing material that was key to decisions. This is a really high standard. It is also failing to disclose key information when there was a duty to do so. But while that failure-to-disclose bit in the Crimes Act makes sense in a lot of criminal contexts when there is a duty to disclose, under this legislation there are not necessarily points at which you would disclose. There are no duties along the way. So I want to ask the Minister why that change was necessary and why “deception” has moved up to this “knowingly or recklessly” standard.

I also want to ask him about derived data. Look, we’re going to come back to this. Labour completely supports that. “Go for it!” is the message that people in the industry should be hearing from us. We want really effective use of this, and the strength of this will be industry leadership on this. But the removal of that means that, in other places in the legislation where it’s not dealing with the kind of information that comes from the consumer data, we need other protections in place. And I want the Minister to tell us about that.

I also just want to make the point that when we’re talking about analysis, risk assessments, personalised recommendations, those would have been covered by an idea like derived data. It’s good that it’s not in the legislation. But how does he envision then, say, the penalties applying to people who are using those? And we want them to keep doing that. This is, obviously, a regime that is designed for people to create an extra layer from the data that they derive from consumers, and consumers in most industries will really want that and want to empower that. I also want to ask him how the derived data provision came into the consultation when many in in the industry see that as something which was introduced late in the piece when they were dealing with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for many years. I just want him to explain that to us.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. Again, some good questions. I just want to go back on a couple of matters. There was a question about the definition of “customer” and also “designated customer data”. I want to draw the committee’s attention to my Amendment Paper that is sitting on the Table. The intention in the Amendment Paper is to replace clause 8(1) to redefine a customer so that “Customer means a person that has acquired, acquires, or is seeking to acquire goods or services from a data holder.” I think that’s a tighter, more improved definition. Then in terms of “designated customer data”, the intention in the Amendment Paper is to identify this by replacing clause 8(3) on page 12 with the following: “Designated product data, in relation to a data holder and a provision of this Act, means product data that is specified, or belongs to a class specified, in the data holder’s designation regulations for the purposes of that provision.” So what we are attempting to do here is provide a sufficiently broad definition that, hopefully, will cover most, if not all, cases. Now, that’s a little bit tricky in terms of trying to get that right, but I think that the Amendment Paper redefinition is helpful.

I want to just comment quickly on the question of Ricardo Menéndez March relating to certain data. The intention there is that “certain data”, in inverted commas, covers customer data and product data. So it’s a two-way street. So it’s the product data and the customer data collectively.

There was a question earlier on about safeguards. I neglected to provide the committee with an assurance that one of the key features in terms of safeguards is the accreditation process that exists for the fintech entities. Now, there is an accreditation regime in the legislation. I think that’s a wise and good thing. So only accredited persons making requests will be accredited. Consent must be expressed and informed. So it’s not going to be an entity just sort of telling you what’s going to happen. The individual consumers and customers will have to express informed consent. And then there’s going to have to be some clarification of the application in terms of the Privacy Act. So that’s all part of this legislation and I think that the provisions of the Privacy Act are sufficiently robust to provide the certainty and security that citizens will be looking for.

There have been a couple of questions in relation to derived data. That is an area that occupied concern during the select committee process. There was quite a lot of debate about derived data and the potential that derived data would potentially impede the uptake and add complexity and costs to this new regime. Australia has a derived data process and the experience there we took into account in terms of drafting this legislation. In terms of the Australian experience—and I referred to this earlier on—one of our benefits of coming a little bit late to this legislation process is that it hasn’t worked particularly well in Australia. It’s been a negative experience. So the result at the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, after, I think, careful deliberation and conversation, was that the committee voted unanimously to remove it. So I think that covers that.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I can see Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan is poised, ready for questions. We are getting close, so we’ll take the lunch break now. The House is suspended and will resume after question time.

Sitting suspended from 12.56 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Speaker’s Statements

Questions to Members—Question No. 1

SPEAKER: The House is resumed. Because the chairperson of the Justice Committee is not present in the Chamber, Question No. 1 to members will be set down for next sitting day.

Speaker’s Rulings

Use of Word “Lie” in House

SPEAKER: Yesterday, I gave an undertaking to the Hon Kieran McAnulty to come back to him and the House about the use of the word “lie” in the House. My initial response was that no allegation of lying was directed at any particular member. While that was accurate, I wish to reiterate existing Speakers’ rulings that it is not in order to accuse members, specifically or in general, or to imply the motive of lying. It is an offence to the House as a whole—Speaker’s ruling 48/3.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): The IMF has recently been in New Zealand to conduct its annual review of our economy. Earlier this month it released its preliminary findings, and the IMF notes that inflation has been brought back to target after spending 13 consecutive quarters above the top of the target range. As a result of lower inflation, easier monetary policy will help growth pick up over the next two years. The IMF is forecasting growth in the New Zealand economy of 1.4 percent in 2025, rising to 2.7 percent next year.

Ryan Hamilton: What does the IMF say about fiscal policy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The IMF says that the Government’s fiscal strategy “appropriately affirms its commitment to the necessary medium-term consolidation to support fiscal sustainability and rebuild fiscal buffers, emphasising prudent debt levels and strict spending controls.” It says the fiscal strategy should include tax reforms, including to the corporate tax regime. The IMF also highlights the growing cost of superannuation and says that changes to KiwiSaver could help achieve greater private retirement savings.

Ryan Hamilton: What does the IMF say about other policy areas?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The IMF makes a special mention of housing, which is a priority area for the Government. It says that bold reforms are needed to free up land supply, incentivise efficient land use, and ensure adequate financing of local infrastructure. And it specifically references the Government’s Going for Housing Growth programme. The IMF also highlights ongoing policy work to amend and eventually replace the Resource Management Act.

Ryan Hamilton: What does the IMF say about productivity growth?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The IMF says that productivity growth requires a comprehensive approach. It mentions refreshing competition settings, reducing the restrictiveness of the foreign direct investment regime to attract capital, accelerating capital markets development, encouraging innovation, and establishing a stable, long-term pipeline of projects coupled with the prudent use of public-private partnerships (PPPs). The Government has work under way in all these areas. And I would note that the IMF is clear on its approach to PPPs—unlike some people I could mention.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he stand by his statement, “We are very proud of what we’ve done on emergency housing, and it’s been a really good outcome.”; if so, are more or fewer people homeless now compared to when he became Prime Minister?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What I can say is that from the data we’ve seen, we’ve actually seen that households that have been in emergency housing have dropped from, I think, 3,141 when we came to power down to 591. Most excitingly, we’ve taken 2,000 children out of living in motels and put them in proper homes. I think the member would, in the spirit of bipartisanship, want to say that that was a good thing.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Is he very proud of the fact that the Christchurch City Mission has reported an increase of almost 60 people living on the street in just one single month, including an eight-week-old baby living in a tent?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we have more work to do on homelessness, but what I am proud about is a Government that, starting on 1 April, put a very active management policy in place to take a number of households out of motels—that was a shameful legacy from previous Minister Woods and the Labour Government, and I’m very proud of the progress that we’ve made. In a short period of time, we’ve got results and put 2,000 kids into proper houses.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he see any relationship between the fact that there are 690 fewer households in Auckland in emergency accommodation now than when he became Prime Minister, whilst the number of people sleeping rough in cars, on the streets, or in parks in the city has increased to 653?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I would just say to that member that his Government’s legacy on housing was abysmal: a 50 percent increase in homeownership, $170 per week increase in rental property, a fourfold increase in the social housing wait-list to over 25,000 households, and thousands of people living in motels when they shouldn’t have been there. This Government is dealing with housing. We have taken 2,000 kids out of motel rooms, and you should care about that, and you should be proud about that.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Whilst I do indeed care about all of the issues that the Prime Minister has just catalogued in his list of complaints, it didn’t actually address the question, which was whether he sees a relationship between the fact that they booted 690 people out of emergency accommodation in Auckland, whilst there are now 653 people living rough on the streets.

SPEAKER: Well, let me just make it very clear: while there is the sort of barrage going on that there was during the answer to that question, it’s hard for me to make a determination like that. But I will—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Further point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, no, well, I haven’t finished, so you can’t take a point of order—give a man a chance to breathe! I will ask the Prime Minister if he would like to address the question as it was asked.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: As I said, I am very proud that we have actually moved families out of motel accommodation and emergency housing, and 80 percent of those families have gone straight into proper housing. That is really important. For the other 20 percent, we are actually available to help with any housing assistance that is needed. But I am proud, because that was a shameful, shameful result from a Labour Government.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he see any relationship between the fact that there are 351 fewer households in Wellington in emergency accommodation now, compared to when he became Prime Minister, while the number of people rough sleeping in cars, on the streets, or in parks in the city has increased to 464?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We have continued work to do on homelessness, but the answer of carrying on with the policies of the past and not putting 2,000 kids into proper homes—instead, raising them in motels—is unacceptable to our Government. So to move from 3,100 households in motel accommodation under the member’s last Government to where we sit today, with 591 households in motels and 2,000 kids moved out of them to proper houses and homes, with community housing providers and Kāinga Ora houses because of our active management of the individual cases, I’m incredibly proud about. Is there more work to do? Absolutely, but I am proud of what we achieved in a short period of time versus six years of a Government that purported to care about housing.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Prime Minister describe how difficult it was for the new Government to deal with the crisis in infrastructure, education, health, and—dare I say it—housing, when what we were confronted with was 133,000 net immigration brought in by the previous Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, my point very clearly is that Labour’s biggest public policy failure was in housing, whether you’re buying a house, renting a house, on a social house wait-list, or in emergency housing—they failed on all four counts. Our Government cares about people; we want them in proper homes, and that’s why we’ve done the work to methodically go through household by household, get into the data, and actively manage cross-agency and get these families and kids into proper houses.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Which of the following is he most proud of: a family of six living in a Portacom, a 75-year-old grandfather sleeping on a slide, full-time workers and students living in their cars, or the hundreds of additional people living rough on the streets because his Government decided that that was preferable to them living in emergency accommodation?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I completely disrespect the characterisation of that question. I am not taking any lectures from that member or the Labour Party about housing. You had six years to fix it. You had three years with an absolute majority and you did a poor, poor job. That’s the reality of it. The Labour Party used to care about housing and people getting into housing, but you didn’t care about it in your six years and you didn’t deliver results. I know it’s bad and you’ve probably got regrets about it, but you did a poor job.

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

SPEAKER: A point of order, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins. Could I just say for the member, the barrage going on is not at all helping in both the order and form of the House and leaves me with a great difficulty in assessing whether a question is answered or addressed.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order. Every single one of my questions has been about the actions of this Government and the consequences of them. Every one of the answers has been about the Prime Minister’s alleged views on the previous Government. I’d point out that every single one of the families moved out of emergency accommodation into State housing was only possible because we built record numbers of new State houses. But he’s not actually addressing the track record of his own Government. The reason that you’ll get a heightened response from members on this side of the House is that the Prime Minister seems far more interested in talking about the last Government than his own Government, which has resulted in hundreds of additional people living rough on the streets.

SPEAKER: Well, that’s a very interesting point of order, with a number of facts put before the House in that. Can I say that the Prime Minister’s statements today are not alleged, because he’s making them and we’re all hearing them. The second thing is that it is appropriate—and I’ve said this before, because former Speakers have asserted this—for a Government to refer to situations that they inherit when they come into Government. It’s not appropriate to attack. I haven’t heard attack. I think, with regards to the claim that the Prime Minister is not accounting for his Government, I’ve heard him cite numerous things that his Government is doing. Point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: A supplementary question.

SPEAKER: A supplementary—the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How were the four needy groups outlined by Mr Hipkins in his last question assisted by trying to find housing, accommodation, emergency housing, hospitals, schools, and infrastructure for the 133,000 net that the previous Government brought in that we inherited? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, hang on—hang on. We haven’t even had the start of an answer and we’ve got people under way. Show a little bit of basic courtesy.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I agree with the member. We inherited an infrastructure crisis—we’re working our way through it. But my frustration is this is not an issue to politicise—this is not an issue to politicise. We are getting families out of motels into proper houses—that is the reality of it. Eighty percent of those families in households are now in proper homes and houses. You can politicise it, but you shouldn’t be doing that.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did his Government remove the requirement for the Ministry of Social Development to consider whether declining an emergency housing application would risk someone’s life, welfare, or cause serious hardship?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I am proud of the work that our teams have done in a cross-agency way to make sure that we are clear that the people that have access to emergency housing can get it. I am also proud of the fact that, actually, if anyone needs any help, there are housing support and subsidies available to support them, and our Government remains open to support those that have left emergency housing but haven’t reached out to ask for our help—

Hon Phil Twyford: That’s not true.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —and we continue to do that. But I am not going to take lectures from that member about housing when it was an abject failure of the last Government.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister, in his previous supplementary answer, accused me of politicising the situation when every one of his answers has been political. But my question was why his Government had “remove[d] the requirement for the Ministry of Social Development to consider whether declining an emergency housing application would risk someone’s life or welfare, or cause serious hardship.”—that’s a direct quote from the reporting of the decisions that the Government has taken. I’ve asked him why they made that decision, and instead he’s just given us a catalogue of things that his Government’s done that have nothing to do with the question.

SPEAKER: Well, there are a lot of things that are said in this House that are only vaguely relevant to what’s going on, but the point I note is that the Prime Minister did say—because I was listening for it, thinking that you probably would raise that issue—that the process remains open to people who seek help to receive that help. Now, that seems to me as certainly addressing the question.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It doesn’t give any answer. I mean, you could say, “Oh, there’s a process.” The question was why the process no longer requires them to consider whether declining an emergency housing application will risk someone’s life, welfare, or cause serious hardship. These are pretty serious issues, and I think it’s not unreasonable to ask the Prime Minister to respond to why the Government did that.

SPEAKER: It is a serious issue, and the member will also know that that is a process point for the department that actually runs it. If you’re telling me that there is a Government missive somewhere, then perhaps quote that missive or table it, but in the meantime, the question’s been addressed.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Government, the Ministers are answerable to the House for the actions of the entirety of the Government, including Government departments, regardless of where the direction came from. The Ministers are answerable to it.

SPEAKER: Yes, I know. Let’s be very clear: what I’d just ask you to do is to establish that the action’s been taken. I can’t judge that. I can only judge: has the question, as it’s asked, been addressed? And it has.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, the Prime Minister, of course, is free to say that the Government hasn’t taken that action.

SPEAKER: Of course he is.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Of course, then, he would be misleading the House, but he hasn’t done that either. He hasn’t answered the question or denied that what I said is true.

SPEAKER: No, sit down, don’t take it any further—don’t take it any further. Because while it is quite possible to suggest in a question that an action has been taken and then require the Minister being questioned to account for whatever is said in the question, that is not in all cases reasonable. My judgment simply has to be: has the question reasonably been answered? And that’s what I’ve judged. I’ve invited the member to at any point table the action that he’s referring to in a question so that it becomes absolutely specific.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: New point of order, Mr Speaker. So are you indicating that every single question that we ask in a supplementary question must be authenticated by you? If so, could you give us a process to do that before question time? It’s going to make question time somewhat farcical if every time we ask a question, you require an authentication of what we’re asking. No previous Speaker has done that. All members, including what you have just reiterated at the beginning, your ruling right at the start of question time—all members are taken at their word. So unless you’re saying that I’m wrong in my question, or the Prime Minister is saying I’m wrong in my question, the Prime Minister should answer for it. Ministers are answerable for the actions of all of their Government.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker, can I—I could help you out here.

SPEAKER: Just—well, I would really hope that it is helpful.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Of course it’ll be helpful; that’s my intention. The reality is that we’ve had these sorts of debates over decades with far more acute minds having an open debate, but if the contest here is because somebody gets upset because of their lack of mental acuity, that is surely not a point of order.

SPEAKER: No, leave that—leave that.

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

SPEAKER: Just—hang on. I’m now going to—you can bring it up in a minute. What I want to say is that I wasn’t making any particular new ruling in that regard. I was simply pointing out to the member that if he expects a particular type of answer to a particular question, then it would help if there was something to refer to. I can’t know what is right and what’s wrong. I can simply judge: has the question, in the broad context, been answered? That’s been a ruling in the House for a very long time. I remember having that recited to me numerous times by the Hon Margaret Wilson. Would someone want to speak to a point of order?

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Yes, point of order, Mr Speaker. You indicated yesterday your frustration at the Government members making personal attacks on people asking questions, and you said you were going to take a zero-tolerance approach to that. We’ve now had the Deputy Prime Minister abusing the point of order process to do exactly that. Did your words yesterday mean anything?

SPEAKER: That is an interesting way in which you put that, I must say. So for those who are watching, you’ll be quite surprised by my bumbling around on this. But the reality is that it’s seldom there is a challenge like that. But what I will say, quite clearly, is that if there is another attack on the other side as a result of an answered question, the person making that attack will be leaving the House for a period of time.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to draw to your attention, and maybe it’s the fact that I’m a bit closer to the action today, but I heard the Hon Phil Twyford direct a very unparliamentary remark towards the Prime Minister in the last question.

SPEAKER: Right, OK. Does the member want to respond to that in any way? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it, so I can’t act on it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I can certainly share that remark with you, if you—

SPEAKER: Well, why would you want to repeat an unparliamentary remark in Parliament?

Hon Mark Mitchell: Because, as in normal Labour fashion, he’s not taking responsibility for his own statements.

SPEAKER: I’ll tell you what, I’m absolutely sick of this. It’s schoolyard stupidity and it’s got to stop. So we’ll now go to question number—oh!

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order. In your most recent ruling, you said that the next member that used a point of order or a question answer to make a personal attack on members opposite would be leaving the Chamber. Mark Mitchell just did exactly that.

SPEAKER: No, I’m sorry, you can’t rewrite the Hansard script. I said that answers to questions that contain those barbs would result in that. It’s legitimate for members to take points of order. Some of them are completely hopeless and utterly stupid, but members do it anyway. I’ve got a high level of tolerance for that level of contribution to the House, because, often, it just allows a little bit of pressure and, I suppose, steam to be let off. Are there any further questions from the member?

Hon Louise Upston: Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I appreciate the clarification that you have made for this side of the House in answering questions. I am concerned, though, Mr Speaker, about what has been tolerated from the other side, that has been more direct in challenging your role than I’ve seen in quite some time. I would request that that is also taken into account, in terms of the response on this side of the House.

SPEAKER: Well, thank you. I’m not sure how the two are connected. I don’t feel like a shrunken violet at the present time. So we’ll carry on. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, question No. 3. [Interruption] Questions are heard in silence. That means there are no conversations going on around the House while a question’s being asked.

Question No. 3—RMA Reform

3. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) to the Minister responsible for RMA Reform: What is his reaction, if any, to the Kaiwhakahaere for Ngāti Ruanui’s statement regarding proposed changes to the RMA that “This move breaches both our settlement and the Government’s obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister responsible for RMA Reform: I can confirm that the Government is committed to upholding Treaty settlements, particularly through this reform. We will be working with iwi Māori as we work through how the new resource management legislation can uphold these important settlements. The Cabinet has explicitly agreed that upholding Treaty settlements and related agreements is a principle of the reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA).

Rawiri Waititi: Can he explain how meeting with Te Pou Taiao regularly gave him the mandate or the permission on behalf of te iwi Māori to remove Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the RMA?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: On behalf of the Minister, I disagree with the characterisation in the member’s question. The Government is interested in a descriptive clause to uphold Treaty settlements rather than a generic one, and we intend to keep working with iwi Māori and Te Pou Tahua to deliberate on the details of how that is achieved.

Rawiri Waititi: Why does he see Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a barrier to progress in Aotearoa?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: On behalf of the Minister, I don’t.

Hon Shane Jones: Can the Minister confirm that the existence of a Treaty settlement between Ngāti Ruanui and the Crown does not hobble, does not prevent this Parliament—a reflection of democratically elected representatives—passing legislation?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: On behalf of the Minister, yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Would it not be normal in this House, if you were a former employee and a member of, for example Ngāti Ruanui, you would state that potential conflict of interest before you asked the question?

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, there’s no need to take a point of order. No, that’s not the case. A person’s interests are published annually and are well understood by the House.

Rawiri Waititi: Did he forget to tell the Minister for Māori Crown Relations about his plan to remove the Treaty clause from the RMA, or was the Minister for Māori Crown Relations not listening?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: On behalf of the Minister, I can confirm that Minister Potaka, who has acknowledged that he was part of the Cabinet decision to progress this policy—the questions put to him yesterday caused confusion because they implied that there would be no clause in the RMA replacement relating to the Treaty. That is not the case. In fact, what is the case, which was not represented to Minister Potaka in the initial questions, was that as per the coalition agreement with New Zealand First, the Government is currently reviewing all generic Treaty clauses in legislation, so it would be inconsistent with that to add a new one. Instead, the Cabinet’s preference is for a descriptive clause that specifically upholds Treaty settlements.

Rawiri Waititi: Why did he ignore the expert advisory group’s recommendations that the new RMA legislation should contain a Treaty of Waitangi clause?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: On behalf of the Minister, as I’ve said, as per the coalition agreement with New Zealand First, the Government is currently reviewing all the generic Treaty clauses in legislation, so it would be inconsistent with that to add a new one, and we believe there are better ways to uphold our Treaty obligations. And we further note that the problem with generic Treaty principles clauses is they are open-ended and amorphous and they create uncertainty and legal risk for everybody, Māori and non-Māori. There is an opportunity, through the development of a more descriptive Treaty clause, to really spell out everyone’s specific roles in the system, and I would encourage iwi Māori to work with us as we progress that.

Question No. 4—Justice

4. CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) to the Minister of Justice: How is the Government progressing with its plans to restore stronger consequences for crime?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): The Government is making great progress. Today the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill was passed. This piece of legislation will put more serious offenders in prison for longer, to prevent them creating new victims. It does this by a range of sweeping changes to the Sentencing Act, including the capping of total sentencing discounts to 40 percent, stopping repeated discounts for remorse, and the addition of new aggravating factors to restore real consequences for crime.

Catherine Wedd: What is significant about the Government’s reform of the Sentencing Act?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, it’s a significant milestone in the Government’s mission to restore law and order, and fulfils a range of commitments made in the coalition agreements. We promised to stop excessive discounts at sentencing, and we’ve done just that. Undue leniency undermines public confidence in sentencing and our justice system as a whole, and it’s an important step to restore confidence so New Zealanders can feel safe in their communities.

Catherine Wedd: Does he agree with comments that prisons do not make our communities any safer?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No, I don’t agree with the Greens on that issue. Some people, particularly serious violent and sexual offenders, need to be kept out of circulation so that they can’t create new victims. I haven’t been surprised that the Greens have opposed this; I have been amazed that Labour have chosen to oppose this legislation.

Catherine Wedd: What positive commentary has he seen on the Government’s plans to restore stronger consequences for crime?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, this morning I heard a comment on the radio about the success of the Government’s legislation that gives police more tools to deal effectively with gangs. That quote—“It’s gone a lot better than everybody thought it would.”—is from Ginny Andersen, and I thank her for her kind words and I look forward to the member’s similar comments on the sentencing bills to come in the future.

SPEAKER: Yeah, that was as close to flaunting the earlier ruling as possible.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Does she agree that the Treasury is the Government’s lead economic and financial adviser; if so, does she have confidence in advice from the Treasury?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question, yes. I also take advice from a range of other agencies and advisers, including the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, on economic issues. In answer to the second part of the question: in general, I do have confidence in advice from the Treasury. However, that does not mean that they always get everything right, and, like, many previous Ministers of Finance, I do not always agree with Treasury’s advice. I do not believe my role as the Minister of Finance is to be a rubber stamp for the Treasury, and it is safe to say that I am not one.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ characterisation of statements made in the context of Treasury’s pre-election fiscal update as being a “litany of lies”, and, if so, what was factually incorrect in the pre-election fiscal update?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, I seldom have cause to disagree with Deputy Prime Minister Peters, and I have observed that the leader of the New Zealand First Party has a particular way with words.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree with the Rt Hon Winston Peters when he said the recent recession was the “deepest and longest economic downturn and recessionary retraction for over three decades.”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I agree that the recent period of economic history has done untold damage to households up and down this country, and the characterisation presented by Mr Peters is one that is familiar to far too many households—a period of sky-high inflation, a period of debt accumulation by both the Government and the private sector, a period of soaring interest rates, and a period of economic contraction and job loss. It’s been a very painful time, and I think it would be a callous soul who would disagree with that.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she agree that the Treasury did not forecast a recession in the pre-election fiscal update, and does she accept that the recession only occurred in 2024?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Treasury got its forecasts before the election plain wrong.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister of Finance: if the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update of September 2023 did not, for example, disclose the iReX blowout in terms of the ferries which happened nine days later—and there are countless fiscal cliffs like that—how on earth could it possibly be honest as a forecast of the future?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the pre-election fiscal update reflected both inaccurate forecasts and the poor fiscal habits of the previous Government, which included fiscal cliffs, short funding, and doing all sorts of things to make the books look better than they actually were.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: How was it that the Treasury did not forecast a recession prior to the election, but her Government delivered what the Deputy Prime Minister called the “deepest and longest economic downturn and recessionary retraction for over three decades”, and do you trust the Treasury advice now?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because, as I have just said, the Treasury got their forecasts wrong. As they themselves have acknowledged, they have had to steadily unwind the assumptions that they made during the term of the last Government, which were over-optimistic. What I take responsibility for is fixing the sheer economic carnage that was left to us by the last Government.

Question No. 6—Prime Minister

6. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that “Profit is a good thing.” in the context of public-private partnerships, and, if so, how much private profit is he comfortable with the people of this country forking out for, on top of the base cost of providing public services and infrastructure?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first part of the question: absolutely.

Chlöe Swarbrick: When the Prime Minister says, “Profit is a good thing.”, does he mean the $1 million in excess profits a day made by the supermarket duopoly, or the record billions in profits made by banks and the energy sector that a former National Government partially privatised, or something else?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I mean, I actually am stumped for words because the Green Party is a degrowth party and the thought, I think, in that question, of Chlöe Swarbrick ever being a finance Minister in a Labour-Greens future Government—

SPEAKER: No, no, that’s enough. Prime Minister—

Hon Member: Send him out!

SPEAKER: No, that’s not the case. Thank you for your advice. But what I will say is if you ask questions like that, you’ll get a political answer. And you may not think it’s a very political question, but it most certainly was. Now, please ask your next supplementary.

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much private profit is he comfortable asking New Zealanders to fork out for his public-private partnerships because he refuses to unlock domestic capital by fixing our tax system, which currently incentivises unproductive speculative investment in housing, recommended by known degrowth institutions like the IMF?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I’m determined to do is to make sure that we actually build infrastructure in this country. This is a country—over many decades now—that has suffered from low economic productivity. It is a country that has suffered from capital thinness. Just look at our relative performance in the OECD at attracting foreign direct investment to New Zealand—and we have a major problem. So we make no apologies for accessing private capital—whether it’s overseas or domestic pools of capital—to get things built for New Zealanders. Because if we can build more roads, more hospitals, more schools, more wind farms, more renewable energy, that is a good thing for this country and that’s what we need to do.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister, has his Cabinet decided to review all over the world where Das Kapital still works, and do they as a Cabinet intend to take on those economic theories?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: It would be safe to say that we are not proponents of Das Kapital or Thomas Piketty.

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much private profit is he comfortable asking New Zealanders to fork out for his public-private partnerships because he refuses to fairly tax the wealthiest New Zealanders in this country, who currently pay an effective tax rate half that of our nurses, our teachers, and our firefighters?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I am determined to get things built in this country. If you ask the question, “What do we need to do to improve economic productivity and to lift the standard of living for all New Zealanders?”, there are five things. We have to have a world-class education system; we have to embrace more science, technology, and innovation; we have to have more modern, reliable infrastructure; get rid of the red tape; and embrace trade and investment. Those are the five things that are proven consistently to lift economic productivity and the standard of living for all Kiwis. That’s what we’re doing.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why is the Government refusing to invest in publicly led, publicly funded, and publicly operated infrastructure, given that we all in this House know, given the reports that private companies, when they get involved to make a profit, it costs more for New Zealanders in the long run?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Look, there are so many assumptions in that question, but I just would reassure the member that this is a Government spending a huge amount of money on capital investment. We are pummelling more money into health. We are putting more money into education. We are opening up and spending more monies on core infrastructure. But it’s an “and”—“and” we want to access capital so that we can actually get things built faster and quicker rather than just relying on our own balance sheet at this time in a country that is already capital-thin.

Hon Shane Jones: Is the Prime Minister aware that his Government inherited a green fund—the green fund hoped to find fellow investors who hoped to make a profit from clean green energy—and since the disappearance of James Shaw, what has changed about that group over there?

SPEAKER: No, no, the last part of that question is definitely not answerable, but you may answer the first part of the question.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: It’s fair to say that we’ve got some serious concerns around the performance of the Green Investment Fund, and I’m sure we’ll have more to say about that shortly.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What’s his message to the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who own their own small businesses or are self-employed and get out every day to deliver good quality services to their customers and hope at the end of the day to make a profit in order to feed their family, today, in this House?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I want them to know that we appreciate them. They are people of ambition and aspiration. They take a risk, they use their own capital to go off and build a business, to employ thousands of people—that is a good thing. We want to reward that behaviour, we want to encourage it, we want to see a lot more of it—more entrepreneurship, more innovation, more investment. [Interruption]

Hon Willie Jackson: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Just a minute. I think the House needs a moment to settle.

Question No. 7—Mori Development

ā

7. Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) to the Minister for Māori Development: Is he across everything in his portfolio; if not, why not?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Development): Yes, I am, and I certainly hope that the member is across his remit as the Labour social development spokesperson, the Māori development spokesperson—

SPEAKER: Good—no need for that last statement.

Hon Willie Jackson: Why did the Minister say he was confused and didn’t know anything about the Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA), when Chris Bishop said he did not know why Tama Potaka was unaware of the removed Treaty clause when he had signed off the Cabinet paper?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Some journalists have mischaracterised the proposed resource management legislation as not having a Treaty clause, but Cabinet has committed to pursuing appropriate protection of the Treaty, including Treaty settlements, rights, and interests, through descriptive clauses, not just another generic Treaty principles clause. I look forward to engaging with my senior colleagues, and Māori and iwi leaders, on ensuring the recognition accordingly—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a minute. We’re about to go into an absolutely silent question time if that sort of racket keeps up. It’s completely unacceptable, and no one watching this or listening to it can for a minute imagine that their votes are being well represented at the present time.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Minister Tama Potaka, is it the case that you as Minister are across everything, and not just cross at everything?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Yes.

Hon Willie Jackson: Is the Minister confused about the Government’s position on the Treaty principles, given that he has approved the removal of the Treaty principles clause in the RMA reform?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: In answer to the first part of the question, no.

Hon Willie Jackson: Did the Minister read the Cabinet paper titled Replacing the Resource Management Act 1991, published in October 2024, that said, “A perceived erosion of the Māori rights and interests recognised and provided for in the RMA could create significant challenges for the Māori-Crown relationship.”; and, if so, what feedback did he provide, if any, to his Cabinet colleagues?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: In answer to the first part of the question: yes, and a number of other papers, including those that state that this Cabinet and this Government is committed to ensuring appropriate recognition of the Treaty, Treaty settlements, and other rights and interests in future resource management legislation.

Hon Willie Jackson: How can Māori have confidence in him when his own ministerial colleague Minister Chris Bishop has said, “I don’t know what’s in Tama’s head. But Cabinet has made a decision to not have a generic Treaty clause in the RMA.”, or is he so far down the food chain he’s simply given up—

Hon Nicola Willis: Oh, shame!

Hon Willie Jackson: —on trying to advocate—

Hon Nicola Willis: Come on! Shame!

Hon Willie Jackson: —for Māori interests?—shame on you.

SPEAKER: Good. Well, we’ll just let that question fly by, unless the member wants to reword it.

Hon Willie Jackson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. How can Māori have confidence in their Minister’s advocacy of Māori interests, when he embarrassed himself by not knowing what he had signed off on, or is he overwhelmed with the anti-Treaty agenda of this Government and has simply lost track?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Once again, I think that the member mischaracterises the position of this Government, as set out in the coalition commitments around Treaty settlements and a number of other matters.

Hon Shane Jones: Too much extravagant language.

Hon Willie Jackson: Ah, shoosh up, Jonesy!

SPEAKER: Yeah, well—[Interruption]

Hon Willie Jackson: It’s just not getting the publicity of your leader.

SPEAKER: You all right, now? You all done?

Hon Willie Jackson: No, I’m all done. I’d like another one, but I’ve run out.

SPEAKER: Good. We’ll just—

Hon Shane Jones: No more rhetoric, Willie.

SPEAKER: Hang on—Shane, it’s not the end of the year, for goodness’ sake. We’ll go to question No. 8, Sam Uffindell—in silence. Well, he can speak.

Question No. 8—Social Development and Employment

8. SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What recent announcements has she made about the Annual General Adjustment?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I am pleased to confirm that from 1 April this year, most Ministry of Social Development payment rates will increase through the annual general adjustment, or AGA. This is great news, as more than 900,000 superannuitants and almost 5,000 veterans are amongst the Kiwis set to receive a significant financial boost from next week. This increase will help provide relief from the cost of living, with an increase ranging from just over 2 percent to around 3 percent.

Sam Uffindell: What is the total number of New Zealanders that will receive an increase?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: About 1.5 million New Zealanders will get an increase: 409,300 main beneficiaries, 47,400 students will see an increase in their allowance, 70,000 non-beneficiaries getting supplementary assistance are expected to be better off, and, as I mentioned earlier, over 933,000 superannuitants and close to 5,000 veterans will get a boost to their superannuation and veterans pensions.

Sam Uffindell: What will be the impact of these changes for seniors?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: People getting superannuation will receive an extra boost this year, with their total increase being about 3 percent. This is so that superannuation remains at 66 percent of the average wage. Superannuitants have been doing it tough in recent years, and this change will have a material impact. A married couple who both receive New Zealand superannuation will be better off by approximately $25 per week, and a single person living alone and receiving New Zealand superannuation will be approximately $17 a week better off.

Sam Uffindell: What other initiatives have been implemented to support New Zealanders with the cost of living?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: In addition to the upcoming AGA payment increase, the Government has introduced other initiatives to support New Zealanders. For instance, the one that stands out for me is FamilyBoost, which has provided financial support to over 51,000 households by helping with the cost of early childhood education. As of last week, this initiative has injected nearly $32 million into the pockets of low and middle income families, further assisting people with their financial challenges. These initiatives demonstrate our Government’s ongoing commitment—

Hon Member: Ha!

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: —to supporting New Zealanders through challenging economic times—and it’s a real pity that the other side of the House doesn’t recognise the very real challenges that some New Zealanders are going through.

Question No. 9—Children

9. Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister for Children: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Yes, in the context in which they were made at the time. I especially stand by my recent statement regarding the review of privacy practices at Oranga Tamariki, which came about after a high number of serious privacy breaches in 2022 and 2023—that, while the issues covered in the report predated this Government, they could not be allowed to continue under our watch. I also stand by my statement that Oranga Tamariki has not had any serious notifiable breaches in the last 12 months.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: What is the reoffending rate for the military-style academy pilot participants?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: My position remains the same as it has been over previous questions in this area. To protect these young people from the pressure of public scrutiny and to maintain their privacy, I will not be providing play-by-play information on their circumstances. Oranga Tamariki will be providing public updates at appropriate intervals, and I will confirm that all nine young people are still participating in the pilot.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was, “Does the Minister stand by her statements and actions?” Now, unless the accusation was that the Minister herself has been reoffending, I don’t see how that supplementary linked to the primary.

SPEAKER: Well, I think the word “actions” gets you there, but I think the answer perfectly dealt with it.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How can she say that it isn’t in the public interest to provide the reoffending rate when eight out of the nine participants in the pilot have allegedly reoffended?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I’m not going to be confirming any numbers, and I am not even going to say whether that member is right or wrong. I will continue to say that there are reviews that will be released at appropriate intervals, and they will be made publicly available.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why hasn’t Oranga Tamariki released the reoffending rate given they work collaboratively with the police and they know the rate?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: This is a pilot that is currently still running and is under review, and as the review goes through, there will be statements to be made at appropriate intervals.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Has anyone in her office indicated in any way to Oranga Tamariki that information about the reoffending figures should not be released?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Oranga Tamariki is of the understanding that they follow my instructions that these young people’s privacy is the most important thing, and making sure that we’re taking care of the wellbeing and the safety of these young people comes first and foremost before anything else.

Question No. 10—Police

10. Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) to the Minister of Police: What recent reports has he seen on the effectiveness of the community beat teams?

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police): I’m pleased to report that our community beat teams are doing an outstanding job. Last year, for the first time since 2018, we saw a year-on-year decrease in violent crime. In Wellington CBD, when comparing 2024 to 2023, we’ve seen a 5.5 percent decrease in violent crime. In Christchurch CBD, we saw a 4.7 percent decrease, and in Auckland CBD we saw an 11.5 percent decrease in violent crime. I want to thank all our outstanding beat officers for their work.

Dr Carlos Cheung: How does the Minister see community beat teams strengthening trust and confidence in police, given the success?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The decreases we have seen in violent crime aren’t just numbers; each of those is a victim with a potentially life-changing trauma. Seeing our police officers on the beat provides reassurance, and the feedback that I’ve had from our beat officers is that they’re loving the increased positive contact with the public. It was nice to see this year that public confidence in our police is on the rise again.

Dr Carlos Cheung: What have CBD businessowners shared with the Minister in relation to community beat teams?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’ve been lucky enough to be out on patrol with our beat sections in both the Auckland and Wellington CBDs. A couple of examples: in Wellington CBD, a shop owner that had two entry and exit points to his shop that he had to close in recent years because of the rate of retail crime; in working with our beat section, for the first time he’s been able to open both those doors again to his business. Another businessowner in Wellington said an overnight change on the streets, with police walking past, was making their staff feel safe.

Dr Carlos Cheung: Does he think that a strong visible police presence is what communities are asking for?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Undoubtedly. In the letter of expectations that I sent out when I became police Minister, I noted that police need to be highly visible in communities and providing assurance. Police have responded extremely well to this, and both the public and police are enjoying increased presence, positive interaction, and reducing crime rates.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has the Minister received any submissions from MP Tamatha Paul saying that police patrols are just a waste of time?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’ve seen reports in the media and comments from members in this House that we do not need a police force, and heavy criticism of our police. I just want to say in the House that I’m extremely proud of our police service, I’m extremely proud of the people that serve in our police force, and I’m extremely proud of the work they’re doing to protect the communities they serve.

SPEAKER: While that question was answered, it was in the nature of an attack on a political party and not at all desirable. It was, none the less, asking a question that was directly related to the in-tray of the Minister.

Question No. 11—Police

11. Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by his statement regarding record levels of methamphetamine in waste-water testing, “Well, I don’t know whether that’s dealers dumping methamphetamine”; if not, why not?

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police): Yes. From personal experience as a front-line police officer, it was common practice for gang members to try and flush drugs through the waste-water system—sometimes in large quantities—if they were at risk of being caught. So, as I’ve stated, I wasn’t sure if this was a contributing factor. I’ve been told that the current testing would not detect large quantities of dumped meth-related product. We have inherited big challenges in relation to restoring public safety, including meth dealing. This is why we’ve been hitting the gangs so hard—because they are big drivers in the supply and control of meth. To underline this, the recent takedown of the Barbarian Mongrel Mob in Ōpōtiki has seen a reduction of meth detected in waste-water testing. I know we have a problem and I’m focused on dealing with it.

Hon Ginny Andersen: What has driven an “unprecedented 96 percent increase in methamphetamine consumption” when comparing 2023 to 2024?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, I think policies like giving the Mongrel Mob in Hastings—the biggest peddlers of meth—almost $3 million was not helpful. I think, without a doubt, that the 501s coming to this country has been a big aggravating factor. They’ve got big global networks, they’re well organised, and this is a big issue and problem for us to deal with. That’s why you see this Government coming out with gang policies and gang legislation that just about everyone in the Opposition would not support, or is opposed to. We know that we’ve got a methamphetamine problem—this is a global problem—and we’re very focused on dealing with that. This is not a new problem; this was a problem that we inherited in terms of the use of methamphetamine. The last aggravating factor, of course—as I’ve mentioned today—was the fact that we’ve been through tough economic times for the last two or three years. We’ve had inflation that’s been high for far too long and we’ve had interest rates that have been high for far too long. This creates immense pressure on households and, often, people seek ways of trying to escape that reality, and it’s through alcohol and it’s through drugs. We are working hard as a Government—

SPEAKER: OK.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —to make sure that we’ve reduced—

SPEAKER: Yeah.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —inflation, we’ve reduced—

SPEAKER: It’s in answer to a question—

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —interest rates, and we’re reducing that pressure that is on those households that is driving that sort of behaviour.

SPEAKER: That’s enough. Please don’t give an answer of that length again.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does he stand by his statement that “we’re getting drug dealers off the streets,” when drugs and waste-water testing results for 2024—the past year—show methamphetamine use has doubled?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yes, we are getting drug dealers off the streets, and I’ll point to two operations: one was the takedown of the Comancheros—the entire chapter of the Comancheros—in Christchurch, and the other was the outstanding police work in the Bay of Plenty, where they took down the Barbarians Mongrel Mob in Ōpōtiki, who were a wrecking ball in that community and had been taking over the town and causing all sorts of issues. As a result of that, we’ve seen a reduction in methamphetamine in the waste-water testing.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Did he just say that waste water has reduced?

SPEAKER: I beg your pardon?

Hon Ginny Andersen: I think the Minister just said that waste-water testing methamphetamine has reduced.

Hon Members: Yeah, in Ōpōtiki.

SPEAKER: Well, it’s not my job to do—tell me, what was—[Interruption] Sorry, what’s the point of order?

Hon Ginny Andersen: Oh, I’ll move on to the supplementary question.

SPEAKER: Well, don’t waste the House’s time with those sorts of trivial points of order.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Does he agree with Police advice that reducing methamphetamine use would reduce gang violence and family violence, and, if so, why is he not prioritising an action plan to break the cycle of crime?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, of course the reduction of methamphetamine would reduce violence right across the whole of society. It’s a wrecking ball for us as a country, and it has been since when it first entered the country several decades ago. This Government is heavily focused on dealing with the drivers and the dealers of this methamphetamine—the peddlers of the misery—and that is the gangs. So we’ve introduced a whole lot of new legislation that’s proving to be very effective for the police to use. It’d be nice to have some support from the Opposition, instead of their having to belatedly admit and concede that, actually, what we’re doing is starting to work.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Will he admit that business is booming for the gangs, with methamphetamine use on the rise, gang numbers up, and police officers leaving faster than he can recruit them?

Hon Member: More Ginny facts.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well—more Ginny facts—the reality of it is this. It is that we’re doing very well—

SPEAKER: No, no, no—start again. Sorry, start again.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, the reality is this: actually, the police are doing an outstanding job with recruiting, and, actually, we’re starting to see some police officers return from Australia who want to come back. We’ve now got an outstanding Commissioner of Police in place who is doing very good work, and I’m very proud of the work that our police officers are doing. As we came into Government, we inherited an environment that was very permissive for the gangs. They’d been operating with impunity. That has changed—that has changed. We’re putting enormous pressure on the gangs. We understand the problems and the misery that they peddle—

SPEAKER: Yep—good.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —and that’s why you’ll see the pressure continue to ramp up.

Question No. 12—Health

12. SCOTT WILLIS (Green) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement that “Our Government is focused on delivering timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders”; if so, has he contracted the build of the inpatient building for the Dunedin Hospital yet?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Health: Yes, I stand by that statement. This Government is committed to delivering timely, quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. In January, we confirmed that a new Dunedin Hospital in-patient building will be built on the former Cadbury’s site, with a total project budget of $1.88 billion. On opening, it will provide 371 beds, 22 theatres, and a significantly expanded emergency department to serve Otago and Southland. Health New Zealand is actively progressing the next stages of the project, including detailed design planning and contractual negotiations. As the entity responsible for delivery, Health New Zealand is responsible for ensuring all necessary steps are taken to advance construction in a timely and fiscally responsible manner.

Scott Willis: Is he concerned that Te Whatu Ora has found that insecurity about Dunedin Hospital’s progression and repetitive resets could lead to staff loss and workforce project fatigue; if not, why not?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: On behalf of the Minister, Health New Zealand is aware of the uncertainty that some staff are feeling while it confirms next steps. Health New Zealand will continue to provide support to staff and keep them updated where it can through regular communication channels.

Scott Willis: Does he accept that his failure to deliver a timely and much promised Dunedin Hospital could see an exodus of specialists out of Aotearoa New Zealand, which could jeopardise future infrastructure projects?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: On behalf of the Minister, this Government has given the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build a new Dunedin Hospital that will futureproof the provision of timely, quality healthcare for the Dunedin community and surrounding Otago and Southland regions. This will be a new, modern hospital, and the announcements are clearly delivered within the fiscal budgets that we have available.

Scott Willis: How exactly does he think that delivering Dunedin Hospital through a complex public-private partnership will deliver more timely and quality healthcare?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: The primary question in this was about the delivery of the project, and I can confirm that the delivery of the project is on track, and commercial negotiations are ongoing for the main contract and inpatient building for Dunedin. If there’s more specific questions the member would like about health services in Dunedin, he’s happy to put those questions to the Minister.

Scott Willis: Would Crown borrowing to fund Dunedin Hospital be faster, simpler, cost New Zealanders less, and be less risky than public-private partnership arrangements?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: On behalf of the Minister, no.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions. While members leave the House quietly, those who have duties elsewhere, I call the Hon Peeni Henare. If you’re leaving the House, don’t have conversations on the way. Move off swiftly.

Personal Explanations

Privileges Committee Report—Conduct of Hon Peeni Henare

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal statement to the House.

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

Hon PEENI HENARE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I acknowledge the report of the Privileges Committee and apologise unreservedly to the House for acting in a disorderly manner that disrupted a vote being taken and impeded the House in its functions.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Customer and Product Data Bill.

Bills

Customer and Product Data Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 1 Preliminary provisions (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the House is in committee on the Customer and Product Data Bill. When we suspended for the lunch break, the committee was considering Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 13—“Preliminary provisions”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. Before the House broke, we were having a very useful discussion with the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs about the replacement provisions for derived data, which are set out in his Amendment Paper 254.

I want to ask him if he could give the members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, who spent quite a long time agreeing in a cross-partisan way to the removal of derived data, some comfort that the new designated customer data provisions really are in the spirit of that cross-partisan agreement. There was agreement all around the table from the ACT Party to the Green Party that derived data, as it was framed in the bill, was not going to be workable, because we wanted the industry to hear from Government to go for it, to go for broke, to build out solutions, and to innovate.

So I want the Minister to step us through how the new provision will mean that industry still has all of the abilities and the empowering provisions in the legislation that they need to get things done and to not be hindered at all by the new provision. I’m thinking here particularly of the major accounting firms. The select committee had a really great submission from Xero about how derived data had just slowed things down in the Australian regime in a way that did not ultimately benefit consumers and certainly did not step out privacy rights.

A really useful part of the discussion was comparing how New Zealand’s privacy rights are really great. They’re a great framework for industry to work with. They’re a good principles basis for Government to also work with, and it means that we have an advantage here. We have an advantage of long-established law and well-understood principles about privacy that we can build from, rather than having to sort of build out two regimes as we go, and confuse the issue of transactional uses of data or the privacy protections that need to be in place for other sorts of uses.

So I’m keen on this idea, and Labour is still in principle supportive of this, but given that we are supportive of it but we’re also supportive of the whole select committee’s view that derived data had no place in this regime, can the Minister assure everyone that that commitment to cross-partisanship here is being honoured and that there won’t be an unnecessary slowing down of creating the useful products that derived data would have otherwise brought in?

I want to ask the Minister just to address the questions about how derived data came into the consultation. Many in the industry felt that it was late in the piece that it was introduced, especially when they’ve been engaging with the officials in good faith for a couple of years before the mention of that. It did really spook the horses; it felt like a new regime being built. So we want to know that this is not that by stealth.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a different line of questions for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs regarding clause 3 of Part 1 of the bill, which is under “Purpose”. I wanted to start with clause 3(1)(b) around “competition and innovation”. Now, going through the regulatory impact statement, we have seen a number of instances where the consultation was done with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which is understandable. However, what I couldn’t see—and this is a concern—is any consultation that was undertaken with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). Now, the reason I ask this question is, sure, there’s been a lot of information within the regulatory impact statement around what other countries are doing. We know, for example, the EU is particularly good when it comes to data protection, whereas the US is particularly bad at data protection. However, as we see through a number of our international trade deals—such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), the NZ-UK Free Trade Agreement, and the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement (NZ-EU FTA)—each of them will contain a digital economy chapter which, then, pertains to how data can be held accountable within those.

The reason I mention that, in the context of this bill and particularly under the purpose clause, is—and we can go into further details later—around the fact that, for example, under the TPPA, there are specifically clauses about the ability for Governments to be able to challenge or to be able to create that competition under that particular trade agreement. Now, understanding we’re looking at the broader context of trade, in those kinds of cases, we have seen instances where big tech from the US has been able to use free-trade agreements (FTAs)—or particularly digital economy and trade parts of an FTA—as a tool of creating a monopoly or creating uncompetitive behaviour in certain marketplaces.

One of the examples that’s currently happening right now, although it’s not within our Aotearoa context, is the fact that Musk is currently suing the Indian Government for non-competitive behaviour, or for discriminatory behaviour, under certain trade agreements. So my first question is around whether the Minister has any clarity or clarification on whether MFAT has been consulted, in the context of this particular bill, specifically under the digital economy chapters.

Now, following on in the same vein, the question that you mentioned, Minister—and I think it’s a really important question to ask—is: it is my data, therefore I should be able to be able to use it in a way that I want to. However, that data sovereignty also is questionable under international trade deals and agreements, particularly from the perspective that in certain trade deals—and, again, I go back to the TPPA and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which doesn’t exist, thankfully, under some of the newer ones like the NZ-EU FTA.

For example, in certain trade deals, we are not, under those trade deals, allowed to have that data being held onshore. In fact, there are certain trade agreements where we can’t even hold that data or have a copy of our own data onshore, because there’s no need for there to be an onshore presence. So, in this particular case, when the Minister is talking about onshore data and my data, what reassurances does the Minister have, from various consultations, that the data that we are holding under the requirement of this legislation, indeed, is allowed to be held onshore? Another example is the NZ-EU FTA, which, now, does allow us to hold a copy of that, but, again, there is no specific requirements for the original data centre to be held onshore.

The last question I have for the Minister is around clause 3(2)(c) in terms of “requiring certain safeguards, controls, standards, and functionality”, and I particularly want to hone in on the idea of third parties that are authorised, because, again, we have seen instances where, yes, although the data is being held by a particular company or a particular provider, but the data system itself—for example, let’s say Google or Meta, etc.—the data is not within the jurisdiction of those particular companies. So when we’re looking at creating safeguards, controls, and standards, does that mean that the liability is held within the companies themselves, or, originally, will some of those data collections or those kind of big tech elements ultimately be liable?

Again, in some of our trade agreements, there are certain clauses that mean that big tech companies are not liable for violation by a third party. So those are the three questions I have for the Minister: has there been consultation with MFAT in terms of consistency with our trade agreements? I know it’s quite a big concern in terms of the MBIE-MFAT interaction in this case. When we’re looking at my data, I can choose to use it in my way. What does data sovereignty in the context of this bill mean, and does that, again, come into conflict with some of the issues we see with our trade agreements? And, lastly, when we’re looking at third-party safeguards, controls, and standards, is this to do with the company that holds the data, and what happens if the companies themselves don’t hold the data but the data is being moved to a third-party provider—i.e., a big tech?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I want to just cover off on a couple of the questions that have been asked by members who have clearly been giving good and considered thought to this part of the bill.

I just want to go back to the derived data question that Arena Williams raised, because it is interesting. I want to make it very clear that my Amendment Paper actually doesn’t reintroduce derived data into the legislation. The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee made it very clear that for a variety of reasons it needed not to be included. But what the Amendment Paper does do is it clarifies the designated customer data as the specific types of data designated through the regulations. Now, what all that means is that the regulations contain the detail, not the legislation. The regulations have yet to be completely drafted, but they will be commenced and put into place before the legislation can be enlivened or switched on, if I can put it that way. We’re hoping to have that process for banking completed well before Christmas this year. So that’s the timetable plan on that. I’d also refer the member, if she wants to go into more detail on that—and I realise that sometimes the vocabulary and the language that is used around this sort of stuff is quite complicated and quite detailed, but the departmental report specifically relates to these issues and specifically paragraphs 73 to 77 of the departmental report refer.

There were also some questions about privacy rights. Well, of course, we have been careful to put into the legislation provisions that ensure that the Privacy Act is maintained and that, I think, provides the safeguards that the member will be looking for.

Lawrence Xu-Nan asked some questions around the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—had they been consulted. What I can confirm is that the officials working on this bill have consulted very widely indeed and that no issues of the sort that he has questioned have arisen. So I take that to mean that, from an officials’ point of view, no matters have been brought to their attention.

But in making that point—because I think he raises an interesting question about trade agreements and the international scene and so forth—data doesn’t have geographic barriers. Data is data. What the barriers are are technical barriers. They are system barriers rather than lines on a map around the planet. So those are matters that we will have careful consideration of in terms of the regulations, and those will differ depending on which sector is being considered. The whole purpose of this legislation is to create the framework and then have separate regulatory constructs for each of the individual sectors that will then come under the purview of the legislation.

And, of course, in terms of third parties—well, a key feature of this legislation is the accreditation process and that will be watched and monitored very carefully.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ answers to these questions, and I want to pick up exactly where he left off with respect to the third-party matters. As I look at Part 1, clause 5(2), it says in there, “In this Act, a person is involved in a contravention if the person—”, and then it goes on to explain it.

I also recall the comments made by my colleague Arena Williams around the definition of theft—or deceit, was it? I think it was deceit—in the Interpretation, and it’s quite clear because it’s in the Crimes Act and it makes it quite clear. So I wonder, just to be very specific on this one, if a person is involved in a contravention—and, so it says there, “(a) has aided, abetted, counselled”, and we’ve talked about third parties—I wonder, then, if deceit is considered deceit and it’s quite clear in the Crimes Act, whether or not anybody is involved in a contravention, as described here, why that doesn’t fall under what would be considered deceit or, if you’re a third party, as it says there, has aided, abetted, or counselled. Just some clarification on that because this is to the point that we’ve made—and a number of speakers have since we’ve started the committee of the whole House on this bill—around the confidence that the public have on matters of their data.

Before I resume my seat—because that’s the very specific question I have for the Minister—I just want to acknowledge the Minister’s comment about how his data is his personal data. I know that a group called Te Kāhui Raraunga have done a lot of work on data sovereignty, so I’m heartened by those kinds of comments from the Minister to make sure that there is data sovereignty and that that kind of information that is owned by us, by people, by real people. Accepting the Minister’s definition that there aren’t any hardline boundaries on these matters; as he’s also stated, shop fronts, if you will, have changed in ways, shape, form, and nature. Once, you used to have to go to a bank; now, you can do it all online. You used to have to go to a shop; now you’re accessing it through different portals online, etc. So it’s really important to understand, while there might not be those geographic boundaries, if you will, that we do operate in a world, in a time, and in a space that isn’t defined, necessarily, by boundaries. But none the less, these functions of what would be seen as normal purchase, normal involvement in the economy, normal spaces of sharing our data still happens.

I just wanted to make that point but look forward to hearing from the Minister about that particular matter on the involvement in contravention, in particular with his statement around third parties.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to go to clause 4 and ask about the overview. What I noticed was, first of all, it’s a very unusual way of laying out a clause, and it seems a very effective way, actually. My understanding is that that’s an attempt at a kind of plain language that’s been adopted from the earlier iterations of the bill and kept because it’s seen as a way of people understanding their obligations very clearly. But it did lead me to ask some questions through it, which I’d just like to go through. I also wanted to go, really, to subclause (6) of that, which says that “This section is only a guide to the general scheme and effect of this Act.” So it’s in a place where we often have interpretations, etc. It doesn’t actually have effect. So I’d like the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ comment on what place it has.

Then I’d like to just look at the clause itself in terms of what it’s doing. It’s talking about, in subclause (2), “Services relating to customer data are regulated as follows:”, and you’ve got “If … A person”, “Then …”, “However …”. There is a part of that when I get to “However”, where it says, “Certain protections apply, including duties to—confirm that the customer has authorised the request”. Now, this is that a person using this knows that they should be confirming that the customer has authorised the request. I wondered how long that would be that they had for that issue and then they need to check the identity of the persons who make the requests. Again, how would they do that? How would they check the identity? And how do they check that the customer has authorised the request? What’s driving “has to be made”? They also have to have a complaints process. My question there is: what would this look like, and where would they go to find those kinds of details which are sort of in line with this clause, very much practical ways of complying with the Act? Thank you, Minister.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Minister, for your response. Just so I have absolute clarity, can I check with the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been consulted on this particular bill, in relation to the digital chapters of our trade agreements? That would be great.

Just to follow up from that, to give an example, let’s say we look at clause 11(1)(b)—or even indeed clause 11(4)—which talks about, “an overseas agency (B), in relation to any conduct by B in the course of carrying on business in New Zealand”. The issue and some of the challenges that we do see in terms of the way that our trade agreements work and how our data works in this context, is the fact that some of these—particularly when we’re looking at some of the big tech—do not need to have an onshore presence, which means that some of them are not considered as carrying on business in New Zealand, because our domestic law has no jurisdiction over them. This is one of the things which would then lead to—if any issues and complaints, it will go to a supranational court, where people who are judges of that would traditionally be trade, as opposed to data or digital—experts.

Using clause 11(1)(b) as a very tangible example, when we are looking at something like this, and let’s say, for example, in the context of privacy, is the Minister saying that, for anything—because it’s our data, and we do have that data sovereignty—that the privacy of our data, that big tech, even as a third-party provider to some of the companies because they certain technology to store or to use or to process their data, are liable and held accountable under domestic legislation, as suggested in clause 11(1)(b)?

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Chair, thank you for an opportunity to ask the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs about the deception provision, which has changed in this bill. I’m nervous that we will not get an opportunity to deal with this definition before we move on to the penalties clauses. I acknowledge that the Minister has given an answer about that change, but the change that I am asking for here is that the criminal definition of deception include a failure to disclose information when there is a duty to disclose. So that’s like a failure by omission that is well established in the criminal law but only applies when there are positive duties.

So my question to him was: are the provisions in this legislation being read as duties on the people who have roles as data providers and data users under this, and therefore there is a deception by omission provision in this law? Because that wasn’t there before. That omissions element is new. The penalties weren’t designed when there was an omissions element, when you could be penalised for not providing something or being silent on the issue or being reckless as to whether you were silent.

The reason I’m pressing this point in that section is because it then goes to all of the ways we might do enforcement around it. No one in the select committee room wanted a penalties regime where small fintechs were being held to standards and penalties if they were reckless as to whether they were silent on it. Absolutely hold them to account if they have had a data breach where they did something to actively provide the data to the wrong person—absolutely. Their security systems are designed for that; that is a really important part of this regime. But where there is an omission, that’s another thing and I just want to make sure that the Minister is comfortable with that. If he’s comfortable with that, then can he give us that indication and then we can deal with it in the penalties provisions, about what has changed since then?

In the EU cases on this—the only jurisdictions that have had any significant litigation on this around the access to data where omissions are concerned—the courts have had a lot of costly litigation on this and they have a mechanism for doing that. It’s by lots of consumers joining up together, whether that’s through class action lawsuits provisions or organisations bringing cases on their behalf. We don’t have that, so if we were needing to develop that through court systems, that would need to be individuals, me and you who use our banking services and might be plugged in to an app or might be getting financial information about our own practices through one of the fintechs or needing to do that law development. So it’s just not really possible in New Zealand. So I just wanted to clarify how that deception rule might be tested if it is a bit fuzzy.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Look, I just sense that we’re getting a little bit repetitive. So I just want to make it very clear that there is a provision at clause 5(2) which defines a terminology, and that says “involved in a contravention”, and I draw members’ attention to that. So, “In this Act, a person is involved in a contravention if the person—(a) has aided, abetted, counselled, or procured the contravention; or (b) has induced, whether by threats or promises or otherwise, the contravention; or (c) has been in any way, directly or indirectly, knowingly concerned in, or party to, the contravention; or (d) has conspired with others to effect the contravention.” So that’s a very broad and wide catch-all. I think that that is adequate, but I understand that the member may wish to pursue that in another part of the bill when we get to it.

I want to just comment on the question that was raised relating to overseas persons. Clause 11(1)(b) provides that the bill applies to overseas persons “carrying on business in New Zealand”, and subclause (3) clarifies that the person need not have a place of business in New Zealand. So I think that covers that.

In a specific response to Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), I maybe didn’t make it as clear as I should have done in my previous response, but I’m able to confirm that, absolutely, MFAT was consulted, and no issues were raised about New Zealand’s trade agreements.

Then just in terms of the issue that was raised about overview, this is a bill that is technical in nature. We recognise that; we understand that. So that wording around “overview” attempts to help explain the framework. It’s sort of the written equivalent of a flow chart, if I can put it that way. Yes, it’s an interesting technique, but I think, ultimately, a very helpful one.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): I move, That debate on this question now close.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 254 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Regulated data services

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is a debate on clauses 14 to 35A, “Regulated data services”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): I call the Hon Scott Simpson—

Hon Peeni Henare: A bit of enthusiasm on that side of the Chamber!

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Yes, very enthusiastic colleagues. Just before we start the debate on this part, I thought it might be helpful to members of the committee if I just spend a minute or two setting out what Part 2 really does. Part 2 contains the core obligations on regulated parties. This is a core aspect of this legislation. That means that certain designated businesses that hold data—known as the “data holders”—must provide data and perform actions in response to requests from customers and accredited third parties. These core obligations for data holders to provide data and perform actions form the basis of the bill’s regime and is, in the main, the way the bill addresses the reluctance by businesses that hold customer data, information, and product data tightly at the moment—how that is going to be addressed. These obligations have been carefully designed to include the necessary elements for the protection of customers and the success of the entire regime.

A key obligation is in clause 27, where data holders will be required to operate electronic systems that automatically respond to these requests, and the bill recognises that we have moved beyond paper—thank goodness!—and need to make the most of the technological advances that are now available to us and in the future.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): This is an important part of the bill, because many of the debates internationally on these regimes have been about balancing the rights of consumers to privacy whilst also giving innovators the ability to use this data and create products which not only advance consumers’ rights but create new products in the market that we haven’t been able to have before. So this ability to refuse a request for data in circumstances is key to that.

In the General Data Protection Regulation, which is the EU way of approaching this problem, this was key to why they had to design out privacy provisions at the same time as creating the consumer data rights, because you can imagine a situation where consumers have a level of enthusiasm for disclosing data and using data that is not conducive with other privacy rights. So you want to be able to consider those at the same time.

I want to ask the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, particularly around clause 16(1)(ea)—this is now framed in a way that relates to clause 5(2) in the language of “contravention”. So if you’ve been involved in a contravention of any obligation under this Act in connection with the request, then this comes into play. Why I’m asking this is because should that be read—is it “deceptive conduct”? Are we calling it something else? Is it a contravention? Is the data holder who is envisioned in clause 16(1)(ea) somebody who we think would be liable for penalties, or is the data holder imagined in clause 16(1)(ea) just required to make the refusal, and there are no flow-on effects of that in the system? I ask this because it also leads on to questions about the remedies available for consumers or whether there should be any remedies available for consumers at all.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): I’d like to ask about clause 16, and particularly the provisions that are new—forms of harm. I can see that clause 16 is talking about a data holder refusing a request for data in certain circumstances, and it clearly started with a position that there has to be a serious threat to life, health, safety of the individual, or public health or public safety. But the inclusion of paragraph (ba)—so it’s clause 16(1)(ba) and (bb)—really broadens that. They’re really interesting additions, because they’re about the risk of serious financial harm to people.

I wondered whether the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs could elaborate on the inclusion of that, and the inclusion of the next paragraph, which is about the data holder reasonably believing that it’s likely that the request was made as a consequence of deception as well. I guess, in this particular time, it’s probably pretty hard to know whether something’s going to cause serious financial harm in the space of giving out data, and I wondered what the Minister’s thoughts were around what was reasonable in the circumstances there. I’d be grateful for an answer about this clause and any more elaboration beyond what I’ve raised which might be an issue in this clause in terms of the refusal to give such information up.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Seeking your guidance too, Mr Chair: are we able to, in the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ Amendment Paper, look towards his amendments at they pertain to Part 2?

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): We’re on Part 2.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Yeah, Part 2. So in this Amendment Paper, there are matters here that fall under the same clauses in Part 2. Just seeking your guidance.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah, no, that’s fine.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Oh, perfect. Excellent. Thank you, Mr Chair. I read through those proposed changes from the Minister. I know that some of them are relatively straightforward. They seem like a systematic way of making sure there’s consistency in the bill.

There are, however, just a few things I think the committee would appreciate if the Minister could just explain a little bit why these amendments have come in. In particular, as I look towards the amendments that he’s proposing here, we’ve got here in clause 21—I know this sounds a little pedantic, but there’s a reason why these amendments have come in here. I want to make sure that, in order for us to look towards supporting the amendments that the Minister is proposing here, I hope that, more broadly speaking, the Minister might take a call to just explain through some of the more technical ones; not the ones where it is repeated in order for us to get consistency, but in particular some of the more detailed ones as described in his Amendment Paper.

The other one matter I want to raise with the Minister is looking towards the changes that are being made to clause 16. In that particular clause, as we look across the changes for subclause (1)(ba) and (bb), I’m looking at them, and I figure this fits under the mantle or under the banner of fraud more generally speaking. We’ve already traversed in Part 1 the definition of terms. But in this particular instance where it says, “if the data holder reasonably believes that disclosure of the data would create a significant likelihood of serious financial harm to any person; or”, and then in (bb) it states “if the data holder reasonably believes that it is likely that the request was made (wholly or in part) as a consequence of deception;”, for me, this seems like, as my read of it—and, please, I ask the Minister to clarify if I’ve got this wrong—this is about a simple transaction where those who hold data, those who request that data, these are the grounds for which those who hold the data may continue to hold on to that data and not release it. That’s my reading of it.

I know it’s rather layman’s terms, but I wonder if the Minister wouldn’t mind taking a call just to make that very clear, as we’ve already touched on matters around deception and how it’s important to continue to maintain the integrity of the data that a person might give up and trust that somebody who’s holding that will continue to act in their best interests. If I think of recent cases of those who have been the sad victims of online fraud or online crimes and then have gone to banks and there’s been this whole merry-go-round, if you will, about what data can be released, who it can be released to, why didn’t certain parties do more to protect the victim in these instances, or at least withhold information where it looked like they may have been subject to fraudulent approaches by those who are requesting data or who have been able to access data. So I’ll leave those on the table for the Minister to consider.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. Again, several good questions from members of the committee. I want to just start this particular contribution by addressing the matter that Arena Williams raised relating to privacy. Of course, as I had explained when we were discussing the previous part, the Privacy Act applies. We have drafted this legislation in a way that gives the Privacy Act primacy in terms of protecting the privacy of customers, individuals, and I think that that regime is perfectly adequate for that.

But I want to just comment on the question of reasonableness, because throughout the legislation, there are several references to what’s reasonable behaviour, what’s reasonably expected, what’s reasonable access to information and data, and what’s reasonably not necessarily going to be available. I am relying, as many before me have done, on the very well-tested judicial interpretations of what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable. It’s not for me to prejudge what that might look like, but I think that we can rely on our judiciary to interpret, should it be necessary, what reasonable looks like, and I’m very happy to let them do that.

In reference to the issue relating to refusing requests under clause 16(1)(ea), that was a fair question and one worthy of just exploring a little further. Clause 16(1)(ea) allows a data holder to refuse requests if the accredited person is in breach of the Act. Now, that may not involve any deception by the accredited requester or harm to the customer. Again, there is a protection there, and that particular clause doesn’t affect a customer’s ability to obtain redress if in fact there has been real harm.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for that answer and that is helpful in thinking about how these contraventions work and how the other duties might sort of fit together with it. While I’m thinking about that, I want to ask him some other specific questions. I’ll take him to page 18; I’m on clause 21. The issue of how to deal with privacy when joint customers are involved has plagued the banks for many, many years; this is not a new issue. What do you do when you have a customer account of two people—perhaps it’s me and my husband—and then my husband rings up the bank and says, “My wife’s terrible, she’s down in Parliament giving a crazy speech. I want to lock her out of her bank account.”

Hon Scott Simpson: Surely not!

ARENA WILLIAMS: “Surely not!”, says the Hon Scott Simpson. It is a real issue that the banks have had to deal with for many, many years. This doesn’t necessarily step that out. It is a very, very difficult issue to deal with, one that there is actually also not very useful case law on because banks, when they get this wrong, are incentivised to settle this issue directly with consumers. So I would like the Minister to take us through how this is meant to work, especially in an open banking context and how we might give especially fintechs, small fintechs that are certainly not going to be in the habit of settling big matters on a one-on-one basis because they just do not have the teams to do that—how they are going to work through these difficult issues.

The other question I have for him is which provision in this part—or how are these several provisions in this part—is going to guarantee data portability? Data portability was something that was submitted on a lot in the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. It is the thing that would give consumers a lot of control when they are not necessarily shopping around all of their other options. But in, say, a banking context, being able to switch banks easily is one of the things that the Government points to as a really important banking reform and something that will drive competition in the market.

This is a different approach to almost every other jurisdiction that has done this. Most other pieces of legislation have a section that is called “data portability” and it deals with all of the ways you might expect data portability to be enshrined in law. I want the Minister to explain how these sort of more open-ended provisions guarantee that New Zealanders will be able to always point to their rights to move their data around. Because it’s one thing to be able to request it, it’s one thing to be able to have a third party requesting it, but it’s another thing to make sure that these things aren’t being turned down because of, say, commercial sensitivity. As well, I’d like him to give us a sense of whether the agglomerated data that consumers’ data might be used for is also portable.

Just to round out, a third question here is: there are a number of trade-offs that have been made in this part about trust and security in the system. Once these regimes are introduced in every jurisdiction that that they have been introduced in, there have been instances of public pushback because trust in the system has been undermined in some way, whether it’s tech companies, social media companies with data breaches and scandals about data sharing—so these aren’t hacking or scams; these are situations where data is shared in a way which is agreed and where companies can point to sort of ambiguous laws to justify their actions. They’re not illegal, but they do offend consumers’ perceptions of trust in the system. How are we making sure that the rights of consumers to use their data in a free and open way are still going to stand up to a level of scrutiny in the system once this is introduced?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to just comment on this question of joint customers because it’s a very fair and reasonable question, and it’s a practical one as well. The member Arena Williams cited a situation where, maybe, a couple have a joint bank account. One wants access to the data, and one may not, for a variety of reasons, notwithstanding the quality of her speech making. So if she goes further through clause 21, particularly 21(2), it says, “A data holder and an accredited requestor must deal with the joint customers in the manner prescribed by the regulations,” and then it goes on to list a series of things including “connection with” and so forth. But the key words in that clause are “in the manner prescribed by the regulations”.

Now, as I’ve mentioned specifically in relation to Part 1 when we were discussing it, the regulations have yet to be drawn up. So the first cab off the rank will be banking, and then we’ve indicated that the next sector to be regulated under this bill—or this Act, when it’s passed—will be electricity. Now, the manner with which joint customers or joint data holders are treated in those two sectors may be different. So as much as I would like at this early stage to give the member the precise detail relating to what those regulations will look at, sadly that has yet to come.

I’ve indicated we’ll have the banking one done—my timetable wants to have that up and running before Christmas—and then we’ll move on to the next one. So that’s the area there, but I would encourage the member to look through the rest of that clause as she goes through it.

I want to just go back to a matter that was raised relating to grounds to refuse. I’ve been advised that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee heard from submitters about the changes that were needed to refuse requests and that that those requests would cause significant harm. Now, the obvious example of that is where it might be a scam, there would be obvious harm. Again, it’s a matter of practicality, of sensibleness, and, to a degree, of common sense. So that’s provided for in that particular part.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): I move, That debate on this question now close.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. Thank you for the comment about the scams. It was what I had in mind, that we’re living in an age where also you often get that tension between a customer demanding information or demanding to be allowed the freedom to do something that, actually, the way the system is now picked up is extremely damaging in terms of those scams. They’re often their own worst enemy in those situations, and there is a balance needed between autonomy and that kind of harm happening.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of the other sections we haven’t gone through at all. The issue over clause 22—it’s a simple clause, where the data holder must provide to any person—I wondered how that would be effected with an individual, because it’s very different giving data across to a company that’s set up for it. But how does somebody actually ask for their own information, and how specific do they have to be and how general could they be? Could they be asking for crazy amounts of information, and how repetitive could that be? Because that certainly becomes something that some particular personality types like to do. So I just wondered how practically that have been thought through.

I also wanted to ask about the issue that is in clause 24, about secondary users. There are some very interesting examples there of household data. There’s the example, I think, of the electricity bill and trying to get the information around that, but you’ve not just got the customer who’s paying the bill; you’ve got a whole lot of other people within that household, as I understand it. So I’d invite and ask the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to explain to the general public what those sections are doing and how we have developed a system to perhaps cope with that situation of people in a broader group. Thank you, Minister.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. The answer to the question in relation to clause 22, “Data holder must provide product data to any person”, is actually detailed in the lines below that. The clause specifically says, “This section applies if” and then there are three provisions that I think would nicely limit the concerns that the member Helen White had.

So “This section applies if (a) a person requests that a data holder provides data to the person; and (b) the data is designated product data; and (c) the request (i) is a valid request”—so not an extreme request; a valid request—“and (ii) is made using the system described in section 27.” So this is access to data provided by the accredited third party, so the consumer or the customer gives informed consent for that entity to gather the data from the data holder and then provide it back.

The member raises an interesting question about, maybe, information that might be available for your electricity usage. I’m envisaging a flatting situation where various flatmates might want to apportion appropriately the electricity usage amongst themselves. As a parent, I would have liked to have had that ability when my children were teenagers, but I’ve noticed that since they’ve become power bill - payers themselves, their use of electricity has changed appropriately.

I don’t know how that potential can exist, but I do know that there are some very smart operators out there who are probably, as we speak, trying to figure out ways that they can make that kind of application work in a way that is going to be meaningful and useful to electricity consumers and account holders. I’m very excited to wait and see what kind of options become available using their smarts.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. I do so appreciate the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ willingness to engage on this part. I want to ask him a further question and it’s about clause 34, on page 25—and here’s where I turn into a leery free-marketeer capitalist! You know, Minister, that I am very enthusiastic about this bill, and I want it to work very well, and I think that the industry have engaged deeply with the creation of these regulations over a really long period of time. So the creation of these new provisions where we’re possible giving officials further powers to draft regulations about the manner in which information is provided—they give me pause. They give me pause in this particular frame of mind anyway.

What I’m asking you here, Minister, is about clause 34(c), “the manner of notifying or making available the information” could be read in two different ways. In an open banking scenario where you’ve got an industry body like Payments NZ doing a stellar job of driving this from an industry perspective where they have a legacy relationship with the major banks but they are also working very hard to include smaller players—varying expense and a range of feedback and views on that in the industry, but all together they have really stepped up to the plate. You have industries leading that, and so the prescribed manner in which information is being provided here, one would assume would have a level of industry buy-in—that that information being requested would not be used in a way that would benefit larger players as the expense of smaller players but would also turn out usable information.

What I’m getting at here is requiring small fintechs to give information in a way that lined up with the sort of information that the large banks hold would be unreasonable now, because the small players keep a range of different information on customers than the banks do. The banks have large—varyingly large but mostly very large—investments into tech systems that record transactions on a per-second basis with a range of other information and algorithms to analyse that data. Small players don’t.

If you were using rules that were restrictive under this kind of provision, then you could perhaps have a market impact and an anti-competitive impact. That’s one way to read it. Another way to read it might be there might be a bureaucratic overlay here, where Government is interested in a particular kind of data, a kind of presentation of data, that might not be industry-driven. So you need a balance between industry and Government setting this kind regulation, but that wasn’t what was envisioned first. It was envisioned in this overarching legislation that we would simply be talking about information, that there would be an information disclosure requirement, and then it would be up to secondary legislation, which, as we know, goes through fulsome consultation processes with industry where industry are consulted on the kind of information that they want, and that would be set out in the regulations.

I can certainly imagine industries where you would want to keep that very, very high level, where you wouldn’t want the regulator setting the sorts of calculations that providers were required to use. I want the Minister to explain where that’s come from, give the industry some certainty that that is, where possible, going to be industry led.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Just striking while the iron’s hot. The member Arena Williams was referring to clause 34(c) at the bottom of page 25. The answer to her question is, actually, if she turns the page and looks at the guidance note that says, “subpart 9 of Part 5 for provisions relating to the making of regulations and standards.” So we aren’t at that part yet, but, with the indulgence of the Chair, I would point the member to looking towards the parts further into it.

There was the question I didn’t address relating to data portability. That’s also worth just noting that data portability is actually fundamental to the bill. Although the bill uses different terminology, the bill ensures data portability by imposing obligations for data holders to transfer data to customers and accredited requesters. These transfers must be in standard formats and allow the data to be used effectively. This whole regime isn’t going to work if the data holders then provide, through a variety of different mechanisms, kind of disjointed data, blurred data, or data in a format that isn’t actually usable to the to the provider.

Just going back to clause 22, the product data that it refers to is the sort of thing like mortgage rates, for instance, that are currently publicly available. But in order to make comparisons, that’s quite a complicated process. People kind of draw up their own little grid and they have a look at this bank or that bank or this mortgage adviser and then try and come to that themselves. The concept, I think, that’s very exciting is the potential for a fintech to actually provide that kind of comparative service to a person seeking a mortgage. I think that’s an ideal and classic example of how this legislation can be used.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): I move, That debate on this question now close.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I’d like to ask a question about clause 35A, and I’d like to get your comments on this—it’s actually 35 as well as 35A, so we’ll just put it in context there. You’ve got here a section that is about having to provide information, and if you don’t, then you’re going to be penalised and there’s going to be an infringement fee and a fine. Then, 35A has an exception to that, which is that you must not act if there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the authorisation or instruction is given under the threat of physical or mental harm.”

Now, I appreciate the point that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has made that some of that stuff about what’s reasonable is going to be resolved in the courts, but I wondered whether that standard would include things like domestic violence orders or whether people would be notifying, for example, the bank that there were issues around this, or what that kind of standard would be in that way, because I don’t know—I simply don’t know where that line would be at the moment.

I can see that there is a good spirit in this part of the bill, because we’re trying to deal with anti-competitive processes, etc., and this sort of brings in a balancing of the sort of personal, in a way. So it’s a personal circumstance that has been seen as a problem that should count against that kind of approach. So I’d be interested in that wider issue of why this particular exception is here, but also what practically that means for the general public. Thank you, Minister.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, the protection and proviso in clause 35 is deliberately inserted to ensure that coercion, threats, potential blackmail—all those sorts of things that we often choose to not look at—are included in here. So I’m very pleased that these two clauses are in the bill. The member will note that there are some quite specific and fairly weighty penalties should coercion or threats be signified or be brought to the attention of the data provider.

So, again, it comes back to a question of reasonableness. How much information does someone need to know before they think that the request is being made under coercion? I don’t have a specific answer to that. I don’t think that’s quantifiable. That’s kind of a matter for individual data holders to determine. But what I do know is that for the various fintech companies that are going to be establishing these offers, these solutions, these tools, it’s in their best interests to ensure that the people they are engaging with and the entities they are engaging with are legitimate, that they operate under best practice, and that they assume all the obligations of a responsible corporate citizen that go with any kind of trading—whether it relates to this particular bill or any interaction, commercial, social, or personal.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): I move, That debate on this question now close.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 254 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Protections

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 3. Part 3 is the debate on clauses 36 to 53, “Protections”. The question is that Part 3 stand part.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I just thought, again, it’s probably helpful to make some introductory remarks to this part. So Part 3 provides the important safeguards and protections which ensure that the regime is trusted by customers. It kind of follows on from the conversation we were having in the previous part. Some of these safeguards include the rules for authorisations by customers; identity verification, which is going to be important; record-keeping requirements; and the dispute resolution and customer complaints process that are key parts of this legislation. The rules for authorisation ensure that the customer’s data or actions on behalf of a customer can only be requested under the bill if the customer provides express approval.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for that explanation. I’m asking him questions about clauses 36, 37, and 38. I’ve got seven questions about this. I hope we can have a bit of a back and forth dialogue on it.

My first question is about whether he considered any further provisions at the primary legislation level or whether he thinks this is for secondary legislation, or, indeed, whether he thinks the control for this is the accreditation of requesters and holders of data. My question is: how should the initial authorisation process ensure customer understanding and consent? It’s one thing for the legislation to require authorisation; it’s another thing for the regulations, or, indeed, the accreditation process for requesters to be asking about whether a customer actually consents and whether they actually understand that. In the tech context, we see a real range of practice. There is, in fact, probably no sort of best practice about consent and understanding in the context of this authorisation that we’re talking about at clause 36.

While the Minister considers that, my second question is more about clauses 37 and 38. It’s the same question about where this sits. Is it primary legislation, secondary legislation, or in the accreditation process around where safeguards should be in place to prevent the misuse of data after the initial authorisation? Many of these regimes around the world have come under fire because once the customer has authorised data sharing, the question for them is how they can ensure that their data is being used only for that intended purpose, or for the purpose that they thought they were consenting to—the purpose that they understood.

There are really good examples here. The example given at page 27 of the bill is about a customer authorising their electricity provider data holder to provide their details through an electricity usage company. So when you’re doing that, you might expect that they would use that specifically for the purpose of giving you the best electricity deal in the market, but they might also use that if they carry on their business as a comparer of electricity products to offer other products and information to other people, in an aggregate way. And so my question there is about the safeguards in place to prevent the misuse of data while also allowing those companies to build out really useful consumer-centric, helpful uses of that data.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): This is quite an important consideration about what amounts to authorisation, how it is collected, how it is obtained, and when it occurs. In general, authorisation is about the process of ensuring that the customer’s information, or actions on behalf of a customer, will only be disclosed or performed under the bill if the customer provides approval. So the approval is crucial. Authorisation is given if the customer, or secondary user, is reasonably informed—so, again, it’s that element of reasonableness—about the matter, about the authorisation, given expressly in the manner prescribed, and that’s set out in the clauses. When responding to a request from an accredited requester, “The data holder must check that the service is within the scope of the authorisation given by the customer”. So there’s a protection there not to say, “Oh, yeah, it’s OK.”, and then that’s carte blanche for all information on all matters of everything. It’s quite fine, it’s quite finessed, and it’s quite focused.

A data holder and accredited requester must have systems in place to enable authorisation to be changed by the customer, so it’s not an authorisation in perpetuity. If the customer changes their mind or wants to do something differently or, maybe, in fact, engage with another entity, another fintech, then that opportunity has to be there. So an accredited requester must comply with their duties in respect of authorisation, and that’s part of the accreditation process for the entity. And, for example, here’s one for how they must ensure the customer or secondary user is reasonably informed: a person must not require a customer to authorise a regulated data service as a condition of providing some other good or service. So you can’t say, “Well, you can have this, but only if you give us that.” Again, I think that’s a good common-sense application. It comes back a little to the introductory comments I made, when we first started this committee stage, that one of the benefits we have in New Zealand of being a little slow to this legislative regime is that we have learnt some lessons from other jurisdictions where they haven’t quite got it right and we can pick up on their errors and take the good bits and not replicate the bad bits.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just circling back to one of the questions just raised and not quite yet addressed by the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs—but I thank him for those most recent answers that really addressed the issues around the collection, the obtaining, and the changing of authorised data. But the question I have, specifically, is around the ending of that authorisation. So it says here in clause 37(a), “the expiry of the maximum period for an authorisation specified by the regulations”—and my understanding is the regulations are yet to exist—“(b) the occurrence of an event specified by the regulations (if any) (for example, when the customer closes an account with a data holder):” and “(c) the time (if any) specified by the customer (or a secondary user on their behalf) when the authorisation is given:”.

So really the questions here are around—and I thank the Minister for his answers which made it clearer around the collection, the obtaining, and the changing, but often what we find is that people, especially in online contexts, find it very easy to opt into a system or a service but find opting out of that or knowing whether they’ve officially opted out of it quite difficult. So I really wanted to get an understanding around what those regulations will look exactly like and also to pick up on a point in the Minister’s answer around ensuring that companies, businesses, users of this legislation cannot compel somebody to provide greater access than necessary to their data or for a longer period than they would be comfortable.

Is there a similar consideration in place to ensure that there wouldn’t be the compulsion for individuals to remove access or data provision to one provider in order to proceed with another? So really making sure that people don’t have to withdraw a whole lot of information from one place to be able to engage in another. Just some clarity around some of those questions would be great, thank you.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Again, some good questions. The bill addresses the issues that the member has raised in a couple of ways. There will be a maximum length of time that an authorisation can last. Now, the detail of what that length of time might be will be in the regulations, because that will be potentially different from one sector to another, but the concept involves a finite endpoint. So it just means that once you’ve done it, there will be a point at which it has to be refreshed, that further consent has to be obtained, and so forth. So the circumstances when an authorisation ends—for example, when the customer closes an account—that brings to an end that relationship. But we want to make that very clear in the regulations.

Authorisations, of course, must also end at the time specified by the customer or secondary user once the authorisation is given. For example, a customer might only authorise data to be shared for, say, six months or eight months or whatever. It could be for a very finite period of time. And again, I’m envisaging a situation where, for instance, someone might be thinking about trying to obtain a mortgage. They want the information about all that for a set period of time, but maybe once they’ve got their mortgage, they no longer need that information. That would be an obvious and convenient time to bring that authorisation to a close.

There’s also an option—well, there’s also a requirement that authorisations may be ended at the time determined by the accredited requester as well. So that would be the actual fintech outfit. They might say, “Well, we don’t need this any more. Time to turn it off. We’re finishing that authorisation.”

Again, the option for the secondary legislation through the regulations—I think that that’s where the detail will come. As the member may have heard me say earlier on, we’re expecting to see the regulations for banking before Christmas. Well, in fact, we want it to be before that, because we want to have it up and running by Christmas.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for his really helpful answers there, and the expiry being different for different sectors makes sense but wasn’t something that was well understood or traversed, so that is a really helpful answer and means I don’t have to ask him a number of my questions.

But I do still have a question about what his expectations are for customers to remain informed about the ongoing use of their data, especially after the initial consent. So this is a question about how, you know, there’s nothing in the primary legislation which requires reconfirmation for subsequent actions, and that’s fine; that’s a policy choice that’s being made here. So how do customers remain confident in the use of the data if they’re not required to reconfirm it? What part of the system gives consumers confidence that once they have given an authorisation that the ongoing use of the data that they may well have signed up to is, you know, being monitored appropriately?

Another question about scope change, when the scope of an authorisation changes. So it is intended that the regulations will deal with having a customer who is able to change the scope of the authorisation that they’ve given, then modify that. But are the protections appropriate to ensure that the customer is aware of the ramifications of that change, so that they’re not going to have a part of their service turned off because they’ve turned off another part of their service?

My final questions are about withdrawal of consent at a later stage. The Minister has pointed to the regulations giving customers clear ability to do this but, again, you know, easily revoking consent for part or for a whole of a service that you are paying for should be quick, be easy, be painless, and match up with not only your privacy rights but then also your rights as a consumer. If you’re not getting the service you’re paying for, then you shouldn’t be paying for it.

The last question: penalties and consequences for companies that fail to confirm or adhere to authorisation scope when it changes? It’s not something that’s dealt with at the primary legislation. Is that because it needs to be different in sectors or is that a policy decision that is based on the accreditation scheme?

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I move, That debate on this question now close.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I wanted to ask about the Privacy Act part of this, and the overlay between this bill and our own Privacy Act. My understanding is that when we were on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, the Australians had a very different system. That was because they didn’t really have the same Privacy Act overlay, and we’ve opted for a situation of very much relying on integrating this with the Privacy Act. So I can see that clause 52 and onwards is about those, and I wanted to give the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the opportunity to talk about the Privacy Act protections that are in place in New Zealand that might not be, in particular, in other countries. Thank you, Minister.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you. Again, I’ll work a little bit backwards. So Helen White’s question about privacy is a good one. So the bill complements existing protections provided under our Privacy Act—the 2020 legislation. The Privacy Act provides rights and obligations for personal information which apply across the entire economy—so not just in relation to this piece of legislation. They touch everything that we do in many respects. This bill only sets out the rules for providing certain customer and product data upon request, so it doesn’t relate to the actual data itself. It creates the framework for the data, rather than trying to prescribe detail or define the data. That is for another day. What it means, in effect, is that the Privacy Commissioner will continue to have investigation, guidance, enforcement, and redress powers over any breaches relating to personal information. So those powers, as the member will know, are quite strict and readily enforceable.

I want to just go back to the matter that was raised about how consent is given, because I’m not sure that I’d quite answered that as fully as I might have done. But the primary legislation provides the principles for how consent must be obtained—that’s specifically clause 36. Regulation and standards can provide further detail—that’s clause 36(1)(b). Existing industry standards in the banking sector, for instance, provide further requirements. Now, these could be adopted under the bill in the regulations. And clause 40 means that there must be compliance with the duties there stated and penalties apply for breaching authorisation provisions—clause 75. Those, as I’ve indicated previously, are fairly hefty.

The question relating to opting out is also significant. Clause 39 requires data holders and accredited requesters to provide systems for customers to end authorisation. So they have to be kind of proactive in terms of providing opt-out options. This is backed up with, again, some quite stiff penalties, should that clause be contravened. For those penalties in that clause, have a look at clause 75(1).

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to ask the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs about deleted clause 47 and clause 50. These are unrelated to each other, but deleted clause 47 is about the publication of policies. Some of my questions to the Minister earlier and his very helpful answers fleshed out this issue where a lot of this is going to come down to individual arrangements between the fintech and its customer or the electricity competition provider and its customer.

This provision was originally designed to say, “Look, these are arrangements that each customer is going to be able to enter into. We can have some faith that the market will work in a way where people know what they’re signing up for and agree to varying levels of risk and privacy.” But this is gone now. So we’re then relying on industry standards, and that works quite well for banking where banking industry standards are quite well understood. Banks have very long had obligations that exist outside of this law, but in other areas of the law where they have to know their customers, they have to know about their financial circumstances, and they have to report on that in other ways, so publication of those policies might not have made sense in the banking sector.

But in something like where this might otherwise apply, in electricity, New Zealand doesn’t have the very, very, very long history that, say, an Australian jurisdiction has of consumer rights codes, law around consumer rights, and well-established case law around the rights of consumers and the electricity provisions, whether that is at the being-connected level or whether that is understanding the prices that they pay and regulation of the prices that they pay. So removing this clause seems to enable banks but hurts other consumers in other sectors, and I want the Minister to explain his thinking around this. Is the control simply the accreditation regime so that we’re then in those areas where there are not gold standards and where there are not well-established principles of using consumer data that we would simply only be having a few providers in the system, and those providers would have the very best privacy standards and the very best systems.

My question about clause 60 is—again, dispute resolution schemes in the industries that we’re talking about vary greatly. Banking dispute resolution schemes are great, very useful for consumers, and very accessible. In other industries where this might apply there, there are just not dispute resolution schemes like that. Is the intention here that every industry would be building out a suitable dispute resolution scheme, or is the intention to have dispute resolutions specifically for consumer data in those industries?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’m wanting to unpack and ask some questions in relationship to clause 45 as well as clause 46 in Part 3, particularly in relationship to the infringement fees and a fine imposed by a court, both in relationship to the “Data holder must keep records about regulated data service” as well as the “Accredited requestor must keep records about regulated data service” and, I guess, the consequences that are being put in this bill should those things not happen.

If we go to clause 45(5), what we’ll see is that it mirrors the amount laid out in clause 46(4) of an infringement fee of $20,000 or a fine imposed by a court not exceeding $50,000. I wanted to ask the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, in terms of the work that went into creating those two figures, how he believes that was the right amount to arrive to because if we have a static figure, and these are not proportionate to, say, for example, someone’s income or a profit made by a company that this person may be part of, we then create a situation where disproportionately wealthier individuals will be more easily able to pay that fine without that having a deterrence factor or huge adverse impacts in their life. Particularly, since those figures are static, I wanted to ask the Minister about whether he foresees that there needs to be some work around looking at these figures and adjusting them as inflationary pressures change things to ensure that these infringement fees and fines imposed by the court actually act as a deterrent factor, which is what I am assuming is the intent of these figures.

Again, the reason for that is that in other systems that we have, when we have infringement fees or fines imposed by a court that are static to act as a deterrent factor, what we end up seeing is that absurdly wealthy individuals get, effectively, a free pass because they’re able to afford these infringement fees. I know that none the less these are quite steep for the everyday person, but I’m assuming that some of the people that we may see being more likely to be at fault of not being able to keep records of regulated data services or holding records adequately when it comes to data, that they may be on that higher income, higher wealth bracket.

I’m curious to know whether the Minister did any work to model whether these figures need to be adjusted as time goes on, and how he arrived to the conclusion that you needed a $20,000 and $50,000 break for those two things.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. Ricardo Menéndez March asks a question about how the quantum was arrived at, and the short answer is that it was a comparison with other existing commercial and criminal penalties in similar regimes. So it’s in parallel and in line with others.

I want to just come back to a matter that Arena Williams raised about the removal of clauses 47 and 48, and she made reference to the New Zealand Banking Association, I think?

Arena Williams: The Financial Service Providers scheme, yes.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Yes. So as a result of a submission made by the New Zealand Banking Association, officials decided, upon further reflection, that those policies in clauses 47 and 48 would add unnecessary compliance cost, especially for data holders. And for accredited requesters, they considered that the need for a policy could potentially be part of an accreditation criteria. So that was the reason that those have been taken out, because we think that those sorts of provisions are better placed within the accreditation criteria regime.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just picking up on clause 51, around the complaints and regulated data services, I am just wanting to get a sense from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs around some of the penalties and some of the complaints but also some clarification around clause 51(2), where it says—and this does seem quite broad, so I’m wanting to get a bit of a sense of some clarification around how broad it is or what the restrictions are and what the discretion might be in this space. This is clause 51(2), which reads: “The regulations may disapply any requirement or restriction imposed under any other legislation in connection with a change to the rules of a scheme.” It does seem particularly broad and it would be good just to get some clarification from the Minister on that.

It does go on, in subclause (4), to provide a little more definition of this, but it still feels that clause 51(2) reads quite broadly and quite openly, and it would be good to get some clarification from the Minister specifically on 51(2).

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Deliberately broad, because, as I’ve indicated several times now, the detail will be in the regulations and that detail will differ from sector to sector. The detail that may be in the regulations for banking may, by definition, be different to the regulations for electricity or indeed other sectors. Again, the legislation is the framework upon which the regulations for each sector will hang, and that’s the best answer I can give the member Reuben Davidson on this occasion at this point.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 3 set out on Amendment Paper 254 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

Part 4 Regulatory and enforcement matters

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 4. This is the debate on clauses 54 to 95, “Regulatory and enforcement matters”. The question is that Part 4 stand part.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): My question to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs on this part is: is there anything in this part that would disincentivise small players—the smallest players—to be able to be effective in the market? That’s something all of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee wants to see: a “go for it” attitude from this Government on this. There are some enforcement provisions which we heard submissions on that people were worried about, but I’m really asking him to comment on the way that the system works and enables.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Well, just quickly in answer to that, again, the system is going to be regulated, so that will again differ depending on the sector that is being regulated under the primary legislation. I’m not in a position to give a specific answer to the member, but this part has been drafted and worded in a way that provides the framework for regulations to occur, and that’s, I think, now been well explained on several occasions.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 4 set out on Amendment Paper 254 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 4 as amended agreed to.

Part 5 Administrative matters

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 5. Part 5 is the debate on clauses 96 to 147, “Administrative matters”. The question is that Part 5 stand part.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 5 set out on Amendment Paper 254 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 5 as amended agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Schedule 1 stand part.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): This is a great moment to be supporting this bill. It is a bill which many parties in this House have come together to work on and to come to some practical solutions to issues which have been really troubling for the introduction of this consumer data right. But we are here now. There are some things that Labour members would have changed, but we can absolutely live with this regime.

It’s got to be a regime which allows the secondary legislation to be enabling for fintechs and for small players, especially in open banking. That is something that the Government continuously points to as an important structural reform for competition, and so we want it to work. We need this on the ground now. That’s why we’re supporting it in haste, although I would have liked to see this bill called the “Consumer Data Right”. Restricting it to customers is unnecessarily narrowing—it makes this about transactions. People should be at the heart of the way we design our digital economy. There is no need for us to ignore the potential for this to be applied to all consumers. All New Zealanders can benefit from a regime which encourages innovation and which encourages small tech companies to be able to use data to benefit everyone.

In the situation that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs described with energy companies being able to use data for people who are not the bill payer, but they are people who will massively benefit from being able to use technology with smart meters in their homes to better understand their bills—so I would have liked this to retain its name under Labour, the Hon Dr David Clark, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb and former National members who have been involved with this, the Hon Jacqui Dean, people who have championed the use of this kind of right by all people. We would have seen that as a consumer right; as a consumer protection. So it is a missed opportunity to say clearly what this bill is about, but we still commend it.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Customer and Product Data Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I present a legislative statement on the Customer and Product Data Bill.

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

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: I move, That the Customer and Product Data Bill be now read a third time.

This is an important bill. It’s a crucial piece of legislation that will help improve competition in New Zealand and help Kiwi consumers get a better deal—quite literally a better deal.

I want to start by thanking members of this House, particularly those members who sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, for their collaborative consideration of the bill. In particular, I want to thank committee chair Dr Parmjeet Parmar. I also want to thank all the New Zealanders who submitted on the bill and those I have spoken to about it, and your experiences of the potential that it has for trying to access better data.

Put simply, this bill will enable easier and more efficient sharing of customer and product data. It will give people more choice and more power in a range of settings—for example, when shopping for a mortgage, and that’s an example that we used during the committee of the whole House stage.

This legislation will also support innovation and competition across key sectors, encouraging businesses to offer new products and services using the data they already hold. Better choice and competition, of course, leads to higher productivity and, ultimately, to economic growth.

The third reading of this bill could not have been more timely, and I would point to a couple of news stories from just the past week that illustrate why we need this bill and why we need it now. Radio New Zealand did a report on the Commerce Commission’s study from last week, and it found that nearly one-third of mobile and broadband consumers have not switched providers because, simply, it’s too hard. In a National Business Review article earlier this week, Powerswitch said that because not all retailers are playing ball and sharing information, it’s difficult to support people wanting to switch.

Until now, businesses holding customer and product data had little or no incentive to invest in better data-sharing technology and/or agreements, and this has stifled innovation and consumers have suffered as a result. This bill sets up the framework to change that and puts power back in the hands of those who own the data: consumers.

So what does this bill all mean? Well, how does it help the average Kiwi—fed up, for instance, with their power plan or wanting to switch to a new bank? Well, it means easier, more efficient access to, and sharing of, their own data—saving them, ultimately, time and money. And it means the obvious potential for no more manually comparing different providers to find the best deal, the potential for no more downloading and sending statements to accountants manually, the potential for no more imbalance in negotiating power for companies that hold mass data on your behalf. Instead, this bill means that more time and money for what matters to most people, their families, their businesses, and their personal enjoyment can be freed up.

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking at a fintech industry event in Auckland where I met Dr Bill Roberts, a UK expert in open banking, and he told me about an app in the UK called Snoop, that links to the major banks and, among other things, helps consumers avoid the loyalty premium. And you might ask, “What’s the loyalty premium?” Well, that means alerting users to hikes, for instance, in subscription or other regular charges that they might not otherwise notice. I think that’s going to be enormously beneficial, should something like Snoop be available in New Zealand.

But I want to make it clear that this bill doesn’t just benefit consumers. When they gain access to new products and services, businesses also can increase productivity and concentrate on innovating and growing. Easier and more efficient data-sharing means businesses—not just customers—can also reap the time- and cost-saving benefits that I’m sure will accrue as a result of this piece of legislation. Going back to the UK, just as an example, businesses there have saved, on average, 150 hours a year thanks to a simple open banking application. That’s a case of, literally, where time is money.

So what does this bill do? Well, as I’ve outlined, the bill establishes a flexible framework that can be applied to different sectors of our economy, like banking or electricity. This will be introduced gradually through the regulations that the legislation provides for, sector by sector.

Let me give you a few examples of how it will work in practice. For banking and electricity, people may no longer need to sift through months of bank statements when they want to get a mortgage, or months of statements and payment bills or invoices when they want to compare electricity plans that sometimes can be confusing, to say the least. If a fintech provider can amalgamate that information in an easy-to-use application, in a format that is customer- and user-friendly, then all power to them.

People may no longer need to give away their online banking details to use cheaper payment options when they’re, for instance, booking or wanting to book an airline flight. That’s another simple potential application for this piece of legislation. Budgeting and saving applications will be significantly optimised to help customers make the most of their hard-earned money.

The bill provides a safe environment in which customers, including individuals and businesses, can get the most out of their data. The speedy roll-out of open banking is a big priority for me and my ministerial team, and that’s why I’ve committed to have open banking fully operational by the end of this calendar year. I will be seeking Cabinet approval on an open banking designation very shortly, and I look forward to announcing more details about that very soon.

In conclusion, I want to close once again by thanking everyone who’s had their say in shaping this important legislation, to the many Kiwis who have shared their experiences, and I recognise the difficulties that some of them have faced. I’m pleased today that this Government will be passing this bill that addresses these problems by enabling better access to data. I want to also note that the support of cross-party consensus around this legislation, I think, is welcomed and is an example of this Parliament working at its best.

I’m excited to see the opportunities that the bill unlocks for banking and other sectors, and the part that that will play in people’s everyday lives. I commend it most excitedly to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call in this third reading of the Customer and Product Data Bill, that I’m told should be called the Consumer Data Bill—but, look, missed opportunities. There is no desire from Labour members to slow this down. We’re happy to see the progress of this bill and we welcome the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ enthusiasm to announce an—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Excitement, even.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —open banking designation. My colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking is excited about it. We’ve got some laughs and good cheer on this side of the House. We are happy to be seeing this through.

There are things that we would have changed. In the time that Labour members have shepherded this piece of legislation through, Ministers have been working very closely with the sector, not only the fintechs but also in electricity and other sectors like telecommunications. There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and goodwill from the industry, to work with Government and to get these systems right so that customers and consumers in New Zealand can use the products and the innovation that this bill promises.

But, yeah, there is a bit of an irony in the Government using the urgency process to do this when it is non-contentious legislation and when we could have given this a really good going over and made sure that not only our select committee process but our committee of the whole House stages were used in a way to really iron out some of these details. Because, let’s be honest, there are going to be parts of this legislation which don’t work as intended. There are going to be parts of the regulation, which are not drafted yet and are not finalised yet, that we are going to need to revisit. And it brings me back to the need for this process to be robust and for people to have faith and confidence in the system to be not only taking the needs of industry into account but the needs of consumers.

I reflect on the opportunity of the Minister to speak at a recent fintech conference. The fintechs have been very, very, very helpful to members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and members around this House, in understanding how this will roll out for open banking. I really want to thank them, especially those smaller players who are taking time off work, they’re coming along to the select committee, and they’re submitting to a group of parliamentarians when they have put not only their own money into developing these systems but a huge amount of voluntary time and effort, as well as the voluntary time of others—a huge amount of mentoring goes into this.

Then, there’s also the voice of consumers. We have many New Zealanders who absolutely do not know what’s coming with this. It is, hopefully, going to massively improve their experience of using not only banking services but other services, so we need New Zealanders to know and appreciate and understand this. We have an advantage, here, in being able to use the existing privacy provisions in New Zealand—they’re great; they should be respected and be better known by people, but they are a great starting point that is well established in New Zealand, which other jurisdictions didn’t have. But it still doesn’t mean that New Zealanders are going to warm up to the system quickly. We know that for the industry to be able to be scalable and to be able to take advantage of a great, empowering piece of legislation like this, we’re going to need customers to understand these rules widely and have faith in it.

I want to make sure that everyone will be able to use this. It’s not going to do everything, because people won’t be able to use it, won’t be able to understand it, in some segments of the market. There are people like—I held a clinic for pensioners recently at Glenveagh Park Drive and I spoke to a chap there who would have been in his 80s and he walked down to the corner to see us. His big concern was his electricity bill. He’s seeing another $10 being added on from 1 April, which he is already planning for. As a person on a fixed income, that’s something which will affect him—it might not seem like a lot. But for him, there is no solution to his worries, in having a more open and enabling system of consumer data rights. It’s all well and good for the Government to point to choice and power being the intervention that it would choose in these industries that are very uncompetitive, but there are going to be these consumers who are not helped by this at all.

When we talk about competition, we want competition that benefits everyone. Not all competition is good. We want competition which actually delivers price benefits to people and price transparency over not only the short term but the long term. So with an open banking regime, we absolutely expect that to drive efficiencies and pricing in certain products. But we need to make sure that our banking system, supermarkets, air fares, and the price of getting around and living is something which remains a focus for this Government—this Government which campaigned on the cost of living. It was the number one issue in New Zealanders’ minds then; it is the number one issue in New Zealanders’ minds now. If customer data rights is the Government’s way of changing the playing field for customers, then we need to make sure it works for everyone, because it won’t make a difference in those industries where we know there are huge competition barriers still. We know we need to do more in that, and I look forward to the Government really tackling that, because that is what it promised New Zealanders it would do and it would focus on. We cannot afford distractions from that project of making sure that Government power is being used for the little guy, that the little guy is getting the best deal possible here in all of these sectors. These consumer data rights are only a part of that—they’re enabling, and that’s why we are so keen on them.

I’m thinking about how consumers being in the driver’s seat in how their data is used is going to make a difference in the long term. The way this is used in the UK, and in those jurisdictions where there’s been a proliferation of different sorts of apps, is there’s not only a comparison of product in between players in the sector, like home loans across different banks, but products within a certain provider, like within a certain electricity provider that offers a range of products based on usage. Those are products which are going to be incredibly helpful for New Zealanders. Currently, there are different sorts of providers that offer different sorts of products and compete in different sorts of ways, but if you’re not someone who has access to, as the Minister put it, your own little spreadsheet or grid where you’re comparing these things, you just don’t have access to that in a way which is digestible. So being able to use that data, not only your own data but being able to compare it to other people’s rates and uses, is really important and will be very useful.

I also want to acknowledge the work that’s gone into this over many years. The need to design a system that is both industry led and industry responsive has been huge here. It has created, I guess, real enthusiasm from people to be involved with the Government officials that have been working on this. The way that people, from my experience, have been engaging with it has been really hands-on. In the committee stage, we were able to traverse some of the issues—around the way that Payments NZ have nobly stepped up to the plate here and led a process around open banking that has not only involved the big banks but also some of the smaller players.

The way that Labour was approaching this was different with the smaller players. We were making sure they had other ways to feed into the system. But this has the benefit of having been quick, being really efficient, and we all acknowledge that we need something in the legislation that enables this work to happen and happen now. So I hope that we get this right. But we do want to keep the door open to those smaller players. We need to be saying and, all around this House, agreeing that the small fintechs that do this off their own bat, that maybe mortgage the house—that they’ve put their own savings into this—all need a fair shake on this. So if the system isn’t working for those players, that is the canary in the goldmine that says it’s not working. So we want to hear from those players, as soon as the open banking designation is announced, whether it’s going to work for them, because we cannot afford a system where smaller players are either left behind or can only succeed when they are partnered with a bigger bank. This applies to many, many different sectors, but I’m thinking about banking particularly because that is the one that the Minister is concerned with now, and that is the one that the Government is pointing to as the industry that it is interested in the competition effect of opening banking in, now.

The policy intent of this has to be that you do not need to succeed, if you are the Doshs of this world, by partnering with a bigger bank like Westpac, which was announced recently. You must be able to succeed on your own two feet, under this kind of regulation, because, otherwise, we are not enjoying the benefits of competition, where lots of little players are nipping at the heels of the big guys; we are in fact incentivising the big guys to eat them right up. That is not a system that anyone around the House was agreeing to when this legislation was passing. It is a system which is anti-competitive, in which we’ll see anti-competitive effects in New Zealand’s market going forward. So we want to hear about that; we want to hear about the operation of that. We will certainly, on this side of the House, be watching the way that the regulations are designed to promote that competition rather than to shut it down and incentivise the smaller players to need to partner with the bigger ones. Also looking to the—and that is my speech; I commend the bill.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you very much. I rise in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think particularly when so much of the time in this House is consumed by members of the coalition importing culture wars, scapegoating our migrant communities or queer communities rather than addressing the material needs of people, it’s refreshing to see a bill that actually aims to address the material realities of people. It’s doing it in a way that reforms the system in relationship to a consumer data right regime. In this case, it will liberalise it and will enhance consumer rights. The intent in here is that through consumers having more options and more information to be able to make decisions about, for example, which bank provider they choose to go to, which gym they will get a better deal out of, or an electricity provider, that will have a tangible material cost of living benefit for families.

I think, to me, this is why in the committee of the whole House stage I was trying to get more granular around the outcomes that this bill is promoting, because there are a lot of definitions in this bill, but I think the bill fails to capture and make the argument for competition and innovation driving better material results. In the case of this bill, I do think, particularly when it comes to the banking sector and a few other businesses, those cases have been made, particularly by advocacy groups who have campaigned for many, many years to have this kind of regime in place. I want to acknowledge the many campaigners out there who have campaigned for things like an open banking regime. This is one of those important first steps. I acknowledge former Ministers from the previous Government who started this piece of work, and commend the current Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for carrying it forward. This is one of those rare examples where we do have cross-party consensus on an issue.

The other issues that I think are important to acknowledge as well will be on the implementation side, because as we have this economy-wide consumer data right regime to give consumers in some sectors more control over how their data is accessed and used, and to promote innovation and facilitate secure, standardised, and efficient data services, how consumers are able to make the most of this bill will actually rely on information that is provided and delivered to communities on the ground so that they can make the most of what the regime is putting in place.

So the Government may come into some equity issues, and who’s taking up the benefits of what this bill is actually proposing? So I’m thinking, for example, English as a second language communities—they already struggle, actually, accessing many services, for example, in places like banking, so some banks do decide to go the extra mile to ensure that their services are accessible to migrant communities and English as a second language communities. But, when it comes to them, for example, being able to access the data and the information to actually be able to get a good deal out of a provider, I think them understanding how this new regime will affect them will be absolutely critical. What I think we don’t want in the implementation of this bill is for there to be new inequities arising as a result of inadequate resourcing to bridge the divide on who already has been able to access services like banking, which has been used a lot, in relationship to the bill.

Disabled people will be another group that I think stand to benefit from the Government investing a bit more resource into how this bill is implemented. We know already that disabled people face additional barriers to, for example, accessing banking services and accessing utilities, and those businesses don’t often take the additional steps to make the information accessible.

So when it comes to how disabled people are able to access this data, I do think that the Government may think of how they choose to, again, roll out the benefits of this bill and the information in relationship to this bill. This is also a challenge for particularly the big players in some industries to do what is right. Because, ultimately, what we have here—and once again I’m going to reference banking—is the big players in the banking industry continue to make humongous profits, even when the everyday person is struggling to make ends meet. What that tells us is that these companies have their resources to actually do what is right in ensuring that information is adequately available on how people can make use of the regime in this bill to get a good deal. I think, to me, that will rely on the Government itself actually issuing a challenge to big businesses to make sure that they cooperate and do not become barriers in the uptake of how the information in this bill can be facilitated.

The other area that I think is worth noting—and the previous speaker, Arena Williams, touched on a huge amount of substance and technical details in this bill—is on deterrence factors that have been put in this space to prevent this data not being adequately used. We have some relatively static figures, and I do thank the Minister for being really upfront, actually, in the committee of the whole House stage in giving fulsome answers to our questions. That does not always happen in other bills, so I appreciate the Minister being new to his role and yet being so willing to constructively engage in the committee of the whole House stage.

I think, though, the infringement fees that are being laid out in this bill pose the question that when you have fees that are static, what this means is that for the really, really wealthy individuals, they become less and less of a deterrence factor. So I think, to me, that’s something that we’d like to see reviewed and ensure that the deterrence factors put in this bill actually deter the particularly big players from not taking part of the stuff that is intended to benefit our communities.

I also wanted to comment on the fact that we are seeing this bill advance under urgency. It is something that has been used a lot, actually, throughout this term, to advance different pieces of legislation. I think our communities, particularly when we see bills like this one that has been relatively constructive, do deserve the guarantee that we’re following due process. I just cannot see an argument for why a bill such as this one needed to be progressed under urgency. The case has not been transparently made by the Government, and I think, to me, that’s something that we deserve clarity on as to why this specific bill was chosen to be progressed under urgency this week. That’s incredibly important.

Finally, I hope that the Government also takes actions to measure and work with the industry to quantify the cost of living benefits of this bill, because I think, once again, if the argument is that innovation and competition drives material benefits for our communities, I think the Government needs to be able to take steps to quantify those, to make the case for advancing bills such as this one. I think the late work on the quantification of the cost of living benefits of a bill like this was actually done by community advocates who actually put forward case studies and stories around the barriers that people face when it comes to having the information and the data that they need to make informed decisions as to which provider they go to, whether it’s banking, electricity, even things like the gym that they choose to participate in, and whatever else it may be.

I think that will also help to quantify, for example, whether it is in the big players’ space—like big banks, where we’re seeing the greatest benefit—and whether the small players are actually also then delivering better outcomes by the nature of whether consumers are able to access information more easily and therefore to compete for better prices, for example. That’s going to be really, really important, particularly for those people that are living week to week, month by month, many of whom, for example, when it comes to the decision that they make in terms of going with a specific provider, have a genuine opportunity cost about whether they’re able to, for example—if they choose to go to a fitness centre that may actually infringe on them being able to meet their needs at the grocery store. So, you know, this is why it’s going to be really important to have that information put in place.

The Green Party does support the intent of this bill. We commend the select committee that did the work on the bill to honour the contributions by submitters, and we hope that the Government focuses more on delivering material improvements for our communities rather than caving into imported American culture wars that only seek to divide our communities.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Customer and Product Data Bill. This is a bill which I have seen so far, from those who have spoken before, is being supported by all parties that have spoken, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. What I would say is that this is the bill that is to set up an economy-wide framework to allow easier access of customer and product data.

Ultimately, it’s all about data. We know that consumers are always creating data, and that data is held by the entities they deal with. Consumers sometimes really struggle to get that data transferred to other entities. So this bill will enable easier and convenient transfer of data and that will be controlled by consumers. This is ultimately about empowering the consumer. What will that lead to? That will lead to innovation, competition, and we expect that with the passing of this bill, there will be new entrants in the market. I heard a lot of excitement about open banking, so yes, that is the area that is going to be designated first, and then electricity, and telecommunications, as we have heard from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. So all these sectors will be up for competition. We expect new entrants will be coming because of easier availability of data. With data, these different companies can see what our consumers need, and they can provide product that will suit consumers.

Another thing that this bill provides for is that the product data that is made available should be easily read and processed by a computer. So that will make it easier for consumers to switch suppliers. So sometimes if consumers can’t understand what that product data is, then they won’t be able to make that decision. But this bill will provide for ensuring that product data is easily read and processed by a computer so that consumers can make a calculated choice of where they want to be if they want to switch from one supplier to the other supplier. When the suppliers know that consumers can switch from one supplier to the other supplier, they will innovate, they will do their best to provide the best possible service of the products to their consumers.

Now, when it comes to data transfer, one thing that comes to mind is about how secure is that data transfer. So this bill also provides for a standardised and secure way of transfer of data. There are a lot of incentives for customers to use this bill once it’s implemented to allow for sharing of data. We have learnt from Australia. In Australia—as we have heard before as well from the Minister when the Minister was in the chair during the committee of the whole House—the uptake of this consumer data regime hasn’t been that great. We have learnt from Australia, and we have tried to make changes in the committee stage to ensure that those kinds of hurdles are removed from this legislation so that the uptake is better.

Finally, I want to say that there are a few things that I know that are in the bill. If we had started working on this bill from the start, we might have done those things differently, because I know that this bill originated under the previous Labour Government. But overall, to support innovation, to support competition, and to ensure that consumers are able to get better deals, the ACT Party supports this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

TANYA UNKOVICH (NZ First): I stand on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I too was also on the select committee for this bill and it was a very interesting process seeing it go through. Look, it’s a much-needed piece of legislation. Times have changed. When I was a young accountant many decades ago and I bought by very first computer, it was a Macintosh Classic. It was about the size of one of our handbags and I used to literally take it from client to client—pick it up. So I suppose that is what data transfer was like back in those days—“the olden days”, as my nieces and nephews used to say.

Things have changed and it is now important that we are able to provide a service for not only the customer but also for businesses—small and big businesses. This will be an advantage to all. It will allow people to have a bit of control as well. It’s an area where a lot of people may want to put their head in the sand and not have to look at spreadsheets and numbers, but this will make it easier for them to have a little bit more control of their finances and their lives. New Zealand First commends it to the House.

KAHURANGI CARTER (Green): I stand in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. We support the intent of this bill to combat and to protect ordinary people from anti-competitive behaviour. We want to make sure that ordinary people have choices so that they aren’t taken advantage of and feel secure that their data is serving them and not anyone else.

We know that this won’t make a difference to the vast and real issues of capitalism—you know, capitalism, colonisation; best friends—but I know that the intent of this bill is that we are going to be serving the people of Aotearoa, and I think it’s really important that when we go through these select committee processes, we are hearing a wide range of views from our communities that this bill will affect, and particularly our disabled community. We need to hear their voices in this because we know that things like banking and access are a real issue to them—actually getting the same services that people who don’t have the same barriers have access to.

When I was a banker, at the beginning of the week—in fact, most days—we would sit and get the comparative rates from all the banks around New Zealand. We knew, actually, which banks were probably going to be serving our customers better, but we couldn’t give that information to our customers unless they asked specifically, and this bill will go a long way in making sure that customers have access to that really important information. It means that third parties are able to go, “Hey, what you are asking for, tailoring those banking needs—the bank you’re with isn’t actually serving your needs as well as this bank over here could.” And that just makes sense, because New Zealand is a modern society and we need our laws to reflect that.

In saying that, I think that making sure that people feel like their data is secure and only being used for purposes that will actually benefit them is so important for our modern society and ensuring that we are moving towards the intent of this bill, which is to move away from that anti-competitive behaviour and protect ordinary people. So we’re very happy to support this bill.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a delight to be able to speak on this bill, having been part of the progress through all stages, including the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. We did have excellent discussions, and it was wonderful to be able to make some sensible and, hopefully, very impactful changes to the legislation as it’s come through. We are very excited about the potential improvements that this should make in several sectors, including banking, towards improving competition. I think this will actually be a great first step amongst many that our Government will be making. It all comes down to improving options for customers and reducing barriers. I commend this bill to the House.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. There are so many short calls on this Customer and Product Data Bill that we’re moving through very quickly, and I think the pity about that would be that we missed the opportunity at this third reading to actually dig deeply into what it is that we agree on but also what points of difference there may still be with the Customer and Product Data Bill at this third reading, even if there is broad support across the House.

I was really lucky to sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee and to hear and witness the development process as this bill came to that committee and as we heard from submitters, and also to get the various perspectives and inputs. They are all slightly different and slightly unique, even though, in principle, we all agree with the idea of opening up things like banking and opening up things like the electricity market, because what it comes down to is empowering consumers. We do that by increasing competition and, by doing that, allowing consumers more freedom to create fairer outcomes for those consumers and for them to get some better value.

A number of speakers have acknowledged the long lineage of this bill, first through David Parker, then Duncan Webb, then as a member’s bill led by—

Hon Rachel Brooking: It was Clark.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: Sorry, David Clark—David Clark, before that, then Duncan Webb, then as a member’s bill from Arena Williams, then by Andrew Bayly, and then Scott Simpson. Someone has suggested that potentially a bill like this needs a bill of its own just to manage its lineage because it has moved from so many different supporters and suppliers over its lifetime as it has moved through the House. But that’s why it’s so good for us to be here tonight and to be able to step through it with a little care, and to take the time to do that.

One of the things that I wanted to speak to was the name change that it had along the way. Different parents have different priorities—that’s true in all areas. Under Labour, this was called the Consumer Data Rights Bill. Under the National Government, who have seen this come to its third reading, it’s morphed into the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think that whilst that may seem subtle, it’s worth noting the differences there, because the Consumer Data Rights Bill really focused on prioritising consumers and focusing on the needs of consumers to be able to be more nimble, to be able to deftly move between suppliers much more easily so that they can get a better value and a better deal.

When we’ve looked into studies and seen the differences that consumers can achieve, right now it’s quite difficult for people to think about shifting power suppliers, for example. But if you move power suppliers or if you look at moving power suppliers, the average saving for a New Zealander is more than $500 per year. That’s a significant amount of money, and that’s what a good bill like this can achieve for New Zealanders—that ability to move much more easily between suppliers, and, in that example, suppliers of power.

So in reviewing this bill and looking at what this bill does, I think it’s important that we focus on the consumer benefit aspect of the bill. One of the objectives was to realise the value of certain data for the benefits of individuals, organisations, and society. That felt quite broad, but it did ultimately capture what we needed to capture. Although, really, in essence—as I alluded to earlier when I spoke about the difference between the Consumer Data Rights Bill versus the Customer and Product Data Bill—a truly consumer-centric approach is essential to ensuring that the bill achieves its goals, which is empowering consumers through increasing competition and creating fairer outcomes.

Now, one of the things that we did speak about a fair bit this afternoon—but is worth revisiting—is that regulation of derived data. I think that data 10 years ago was very different in value and in volume than it is today, and if we look at what data is going to be and the power of data in 10 years, it’s almost impossible to imagine just how significant that shift is going to be over the next 10 years, with the kinds of technology and the kinds of opportunities that are open to us in the data space. So there is an enormous power in data and that’s why getting these key components and the framework in this bill is so important to ensure that whilst we are allowing people to share more of their data and for that data to empower consumers, we do need to put the protections in place to prevent any abuses of people’s data and to ensure that there are adequate facilities for people, whilst they may have granted permission for their data to have been received and stored and potentially shared, that it is equally as easy and fast and simple for people to then be able to withdraw the provision of their data and withdraw the supply of their data so that that data continues to belong to them.

There was quite a bit of discussion as we went through the committee of the whole House this afternoon with exactly what that looked like and exactly what the considerations of privacy looked like in the New Zealand context, given the variance with the older sibling—Australia—that we often compare ourselves to when we roll out this kind of bill. So I think it was really good that we acknowledged that through that process, and I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for the time and detail that he allowed through that process. It was really valuable that we were able to see the different context in the older sibling Australia, who don’t have the Privacy Act provisions that we do here, and, therefore, the variances for that data consideration in the New Zealand context.

Now, the other piece—which I don’t have time to go into fully here, but I will still address it at this point in the third reading—is really the penalty and dispute resolution portion of the bill, and looking at whether that got the balance right between having a significant-enough penalty to dissuade and disincentivise the abuse of power, which there is the scope and potential for, and not creating an environment of keeping people out. One of the major considerations that was particularly raised a lot from this side of the House was ensuring that a bill that aims to serve consumers does provide the incentive and the opportunity for smaller operators, potentially and particularly in the instance of open banking—smaller fintechs—to be able to step into this space and know that even though they don’t carry the weight and resource of the larger banks by way of personnel, they will still be able to work within the framework of the Customer and Product Data Bill to provide an additional service, another option, and a level of service that can be trusted and can provide good value for consumers, because that’s the thing that’s quite easy to lose sight of.

When we get into the detail and what we call sometimes the weeds in this legislation, and we start to look at clauses and numbers, and letters and letters after letters, it’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that, actually, what we are trying to do here is empower consumers. So I think it’s really important that we don’t lose sight of that in amongst all of the backwards and forwards agreement, in general, on this bill. What we saw today was broad and general agreement with the direction of travel towards empowering open banking and towards creating an electricity market that allows consumers to move around and get a better deal for them and their families in order to make sure that they are paying—yes—a fair amount, but not more than they need to, because we know that the impacts of those fixed costs have a real negative impact on families and people who are trying to make ends meet in these times.

So a bill like this really provides greater flexibility for consumers. Thank you to all of those people who have shepherded it through from the very beginning under Labour, and thank you to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee colleagues. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is a good bill, and has the potential to drive competitiveness, productivity, and innovation in the target sectors that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will designate. Target sectors like banking—and I’ve been on the banking inquiry, and I think there’s really good feedback about this bill in terms of driving competition. I’d like to thank the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, the previous Government, plus our previous Minister Andrew Bayly and current Minister. It is all part of our plan to grow our economy and lift productivity. And with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the difficulties in a place like this where you can be swapped from one committee to another, and I want to acknowledge the very hard-working and well-led Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, which I was a member of up until recent times—I now find myself on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee that considered this bill and am excited about the opportunity given the collegiality I’ve seen in the debate on this particular bill moving forward.

We can talk about the semantics around the difference between customer and consumer, but I want to use the words of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, which I think are quite relevant and something that I know we all believe in, which are: this is my data, it belongs to me, it is part of me, it is who I am. I think, ultimately, when we look towards the way we protect that data, the way we share that data, the way that businesses like banks and others might use that data, and then the expectations we have on them protecting it just as much as we’d look towards protecting it ourselves, I think this bill does a good thing in making sure that, as already mentioned, we can look towards new markets, new horizons, new opportunities in business. But ultimately, it comes down to how we protect, how we store, how we share our data, and that’s really important.

I’ve raised, during the debate on this bill, the work of a group called Te Kāhui Raraunga. For those unfamiliar, it is a Māori data collective born out of the Iwi Chairs Forum. I raise them because they do some amazing work when we think about data sovereignty and the way that we look and care for data, the way that we enter into partnerships with external partners from our daily lives, not just at a tribal level but also at a macro and a micro level in the way that we interact with people in the use of our data. And that only works if the public and if the consumer—the customer, the person, the individual—buys into a secure system or a secure institution where they know that their mana, their data, and their information will not be compromised.

What we know is that’s difficult. We’ve seen it in the past. In fact, there have been a number of reports about how data can be misused, how data can be used in a way that doesn’t keep the individual or even the collective safe. So we want to make sure that whatever we pass today continues to build that trust and confidence that’s needed to make sure that we believe in these kinds of institutions. That’s easier said than done given the kind of mood that we see voters, New Zealanders, people all around the world—the mood towards public institutions and the confidence they have in those institutions.

The same can be said with matters such as banking and where we put our custom, if you will. So in passing this bill—this is a good bill—we take the point, though, that it opens up into new horizons, and the ability for the Minister and this House to come back to make sure that we can keep a regulatory framework that’s agile. A lot of the examples we used during the debate of this bill were, “If I walked into a shop”, and that’s what we would normally have done; that’s how many of us in this House have grown up. COVID taught us that shop doors look very different right around the world. Shop doors aren’t just ones you walk in; shop doors are portals that you visit. There’s so many different ways that you can achieve what we used to do by walking into a shop door once upon a time.

So we want to make sure that we’ve got this rock foundation—or this foundation legislation as the Minister described it—good, and I think we’ve got consensus across the House. The second part is that regulatory framework and the flex that’s required to make sure that it does continue to serve New Zealanders into the future. And we’ll continue to work, I’m sure, collegially across the House to make sure that particular thing happens, and we look forward to playing our part in that.

The only thing I’ll caution here is too often, and we all know it, in a place like Parliament, the world moves on a lot faster than we can do things in here. So that’s a warning to each and every one of us as we look towards the flexibility I know the Minister was hoping for in the regulatory framework in this bill: we must consider the way that we do things in here in order to keep agile, flexible, up with the current times, and up with the people who put us here. So we commend this bill to the House.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): As the previous speaker, the Hon Peeni Henare, has so eloquently said, this is a good bill. It’s a bill that has been well canvassed. One of the many good things about our legislative process is that it is nothing but thorough, and we have considered all angles and all details of this during the debate this afternoon. So rather than delaying the debate further, it is my pleasure to commend the bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I wanted to start by actually thanking the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for the full answers that he gave in the committee stage, and I wanted to thank the many people who’ve been involved in building this legislation, including my colleague Arena Williams, who took it on as a member’s bill, and it’s come through now to the Government.

I think this bill is a little bit unusual in terms of what I’ve seen come through this House in that it is actually quite a creative bill. The fact that it started under a Labour Government is actually something that I think still remains integral to what we’ve ended up with in this bill in some pretty important ways. While there’s been an argument about the use of the word “customer” and the deletion of the word “consumer” between the major parties, because Labour preferred the term “consumer”, because that’s based on kind of people rather than a transactional business approach, I think the use all the way through the legislation of a recognition of power imbalance is actually a reflection of that early drafting.

So what we have here is a changing world, where something like data has become more valuable than it was and has been subject to misuse in a way that wasn’t true in a world before. I take my friend the Hon Peeni Henare’s point that data sovereignty is a pretty important principle. That links to the concept of consumer rather than simply a customer, but I think it also links to the wider importance of our duty to change up as things go on. What we’ve got now is a world where this data that belongs to us has been monetised but it’s also, in this situation, the dragging of information, so that it’s closed off from people, that has been used anti-competitively.

We’ve seen that do real damage. We can see the black and white damage that that’s done by the example given by another one of my colleagues, which was the issue over power and how much people are saving when they go to something like Powerswitch and they look at the comparative information and they make a decision to switch providers.

Now, Powerswitch are hampered by a lack of information in this area. I went on to the site myself and I looked at what I could put in and it was better than it could have been. I could see that I could generate a saving, I think, of over $1,000 a year, but it was based on guesswork. This availability of data is going to make sure that that becomes a slick process and a more reliable one, where I can actually see what the best saving scheme is before I sign up to a term of maybe a couple of years of being locked in.

So that’s the changing world we’re in where that information becomes power and the dragging out and the keeping of that information can also be a depository of power against, yes, customers, but also consumers. So it is very much an important part of this that this House—all sides of this House—are becoming aware of a changing landscape. So while I’ve heard some words in this House this very day where people have accused each other of being—I think at one point it was capitalists; another point it was communists and Piketty devotees, etc. Actually, despite all of that banter and really banal rhetoric, what actually has to happen in this House is we have to show flexibility. We have to look at those big problems we’ve got and look at them in terms of our basic values.

For the Labour Party, we do care a lot about power abuse. It’s not a matter that is going anywhere very soon. But this little bill does some good in that area. It starts to redistribute that power and put it back in the hands of the average citizen. So for us, this bill is a very important one and it really is going to have a large impact.

I think when I was in the committee stage I asked the Minister about some provisions where there were actually additions made to some of the protections that recognise that people who were perhaps saying that they wanted to give this data across might be also subject to kinds of abuse like financial abuse. To see those things go into the legislation at this late stage means that people are still thinking in those terms. This piece of legislation has opened people’s minds to all those forms of power abuse, and so I really love this bill because of what it attempts to do.

Now, it won’t necessarily get all the way. It will be a case of looking at it again. It will be a case of making sure that the regulations are actually appropriate. I love the way that the piece of legislation also involved those in the industry, also involved the submission process. I think we are on our way, when we look at something like this, as we adjust to a modern world—we’re dealing with a situation where globally we really do have to concern ourselves with the power of big business. It is so serious out there. That’s our greatest threat to our democracy; it is the concentration of power in the hands of a few people. None of this would suit them. This is not going to suit someone who wants to monopolise the power of data, and so making this call now to take a step away from that, to give it back to the individual, that’s a big deal. It’s a very important thing, because it recognises that problem.

So I don’t expect everything in this will be absolutely un-revisable. I hope that we will revise it, we will look at it, and we will make sure that we aren’t just going for the banks and the telecoms and the obvious areas but we’re looking at this bill and its application beyond that, and we keep on adding to those regulations, not because it’s red tape. Often regulations are viewed or cast in that way. It’s not red tape; it’s the flexible detail that those regulations can have to make this work for average New Zealanders, to save them money, to make sure that they’ve got the power in their hands over the information that they’re generating. Those are really important to New Zealanders right now. If you’re talking about cutting your power bill by $500, it would be nice if you could do that without taking a risk or taking less risk. That’s the kind of thing that I think this starts the process of doing, and it’s the kind of thing I’m really proud to see the whole House behind tonight.

I’d like to thank, again, my own select committee for looking at this piece of legislation. I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee at the time. I think there are concepts here like “derived data” that were difficult. We had to get our heads around them. I’d like to thank all the businesses that involved themselves actively in this, the Xeros that came along and told us how this would affect them and what more they could do for the New Zealand consumer if they were allowed a little bit of flexibility. I’d like to thank everyone for trying to get the balance right here between freedom for those companies to grow and protection of the individuals involved, and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I call the Hon—oh, sorry. I call Dr Hamish Campbell—a very honourable man.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): Oh, I was hoping for a promotion, Madam Speaker! It’s a great honour to rise in this last debate spot in the third reading of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think it’s great that every party in the House is supporting this bill. It’s a great step forward to empowering individuals and fostering innovation in our economy. It’s not just about individual empowerment; it’s about unlocking the potential for innovation, so therefore I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it would appear that I might be the last speaker on this bill, rather than the previous member for Ilam there.

Dan Bidois: No, it’s the last last.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: It’s the last laugh, perhaps—we shall see. So it is with great excitement—as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and my colleague Arena Williams and some other colleagues have mentioned their excitement as well—that we are speaking on the Customer and Product Data Bill. Of course, talking about the member for Ilam, I should acknowledge that I’m the member for Dunedin, and the previous member for Dunedin was the Hon Dr David Clark. He did a lot of work on the earlier versions of this bill, and I know that it is something that he was very excited about, as well, and about consumer rights. That is the issue that we’ve heard about on this bill from my colleagues, who have been speaking about how it is not as focused as it could be on consumer rights.

However, I also want to acknowledge, then, the work of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, and we’ve also heard about how Arena Williams then took it up in this Parliament as a member’s bill. It’s wonderful that the Hon Andrew Bayly then picked it up, with some differences that we’ve heard about, and then we’ve seen the Hon Scott Simpson bringing it to the House.

I do want to pause for a minute to note that we heard from Greg Fleming, and in his speech earlier, he mentioned that it’s good to have such robust lawmaking processes in New Zealand, where there’s a good committee process. I was in the House briefly and was watching some of the committee stage on this bill and I do want to acknowledge the Hon Scott Simpson for answering a good number of questions whilst he was in the chair in the committee of the whole House—not in the Chair. He wasn’t in the Chair; someone else was in the Chair—but it was whilst he was sitting in the House as the Minister in charge of the bill. It is very good to see Ministers answering those questions, but, unfortunately, that is not what we always see in the committee process. So I will acknowledge him there, though.

Now, this bill is interesting because, of course, it relies a lot on secondary legislation. We’ve heard—and we see in the report back from the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—that the likely first two issues to go into force will be banking and electricity. How that works is interesting from the legislative perspective of how this bill is drafted, and we heard Helen White talk a little bit about that before as well. So we have the purpose section, and whilst it doesn’t talk about consumers, it does talk about customers and society.

But then the interesting part, and it seems like a useful purpose clause, but I won’t read it out or anything—it is clause 3. But the interesting structural part of the legislation is found at clause 4, which is the overview, and the people watching won’t be able to see if I hold up the bill exactly how that works. But I’m going to try a little bit anyway, because why it is interesting is that it tries to set out for people who are reading the legislation how it works, almost like a flow chart. So it’s got the words “If” a person has these different circumstances, “Then” something happens, and “However”, where there are certain provisions that apply.

I think that’s a really interesting legislative tool, and I commend the Parliamentary Counsel Office for doing the work on that, because it is quite a dense piece of legislation. I’m somebody who enjoys reading legislation, but when you come to this it does have a lot of terms. We heard Helen White talk before about derived data, and about how it took the select committee some time to get to terms with thinking about data in that way. So this overview is helpful when you come to the bill—which will soon be an Act—and I’m just acknowledging that the regulations, or the secondary legislation, is so important as to how this whole framework works. So, again, like our earlier Labour Party speakers, we really ask the Minister, when making those regulations and looking at the various settings, that the consumer be at the forefront of his mind when doing that work.

With that, I say well done to the select committee, to the Ministers, and to everyone who has been involved in progressing this bill. There’s still some more work that we can do for consumers, but this is very good and I commend it to the House, as the last speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon NICOLE McKEE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I am pleased to bring this bill to its third reading, therein completing the second phase of our work programme to reform New Zealand’s firearm laws. Shooting clubs and shooting ranges throughout the country play an important public safety role in New Zealand’s firearms regime. They provide spaces where individuals can learn how to safely operate firearms in a controlled environment. Clubs and ranges are mostly run by volunteers who give up their time to ensure that clubs and ranges are well-maintained, safe venues—a place where members of the firearms community can take their families and friends to practise, to compete, to learn, and to have legal and legitimate fun.

Without these spaces, firearm users will not have safe places to perform shooting activities, to train for international gold medals, or, most importantly, a safe place to sight in their rifles before they go hunting. Without these clubs and ranges, we will be creating risks that people will engage in these behaviours in areas that could put the public at risk, like down at your local riverbank.

Legislative changes introduced in 2020 placed a heavy regulatory burden on these volunteers. Some of these changes went beyond what is necessary to ensure public safety. I’ve heard from club members and range operators that this regulatory burden is unnecessary and repetitive, it does not contribute to public safety, and it may force more to consider closure.

This bill simplifies the regulatory requirements for clubs and their ranges to reduce the unnecessary burden on the mostly volunteer operators, all while maintaining safety requirements and helping these places to stay open, which is, ultimately, in the interest of the public because it is an excellent public safety initiative. This bill represents a shift to a more collaborative approach—to work with the club and range operators—to boost compliance, and to produce regulation that is fit for purpose while keeping members, range users, and the public safe.

I’ll now cover the specifics of what the bill does. The bill splits regulation of clubs and ranges into two categories: pistol and non-pistol. This reflects the distinction between how pistols and non-pistols are already regulated in other parts of the Arms Act. For pistol ranges, the settings are largely the same, with one minor change to the timing of their annual reports. For non-pistol clubs and ranges, the existing approval and certification systems are replaced with a new system of enrolment. The new enrolment systems are designed to be a more streamlined system that makes sure the regulator has the necessary information to ensure public safety, while reducing unnecessary operating costs for clubs and time spent by operators on things that do not enhance public safety outcomes. I expect that this change will increase compliance.

Non-pistol clubs will continue to be incorporated if they sell firearms and/or ammunition. However, if a club only sells ammunition and that ammunition is used on the day of sale or is not taken off the club premises, then the incorporation requirement is waived. This change will ensure that ammunition sales are only recorded when necessary for public safety.

The bill enables the operation of temporary non-pistol ranges by removing the barrier of certification. Those persons with the appropriate experience will be able to establish a temporary range for two events per year, each event being for no more than four days. They must notify the regulator of that event.

Regarding compliance, the bill specifies the time at which inspections are to occur. This will be when the shooting range’s initial application is submitted, and every five years thereafter. This includes the inspection of clubs where they are connected to a range. This is a welcome change for many clubs and ranges throughout the country which are operated by volunteers. An inspection often means volunteers having to take time off occupational work to make themselves available for the inspection. This change provides them certainty as to when they will be inspected. Importantly, additional inspections can take place if there is a change in circumstance which impacts the safety of the range, such as weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle.

The regulator will have suitable powers for monitoring and enforcement in relation to non-pistol ranges to ensure the safe operation of these ranges. This includes improvement notices, temporary suspensions, and cancellation of enrolment, if required. During an inspection, only hard-copy documents will be able to be removed from the premises. This will reduce the burden on volunteers, who often have limited funds and access. Finally, the bill will amend the Act to complete the transfer of the administrative function of the Act from police to the justice portfolio.

I would like to reiterate why these changes are so important. There is a clear need for safe, modern firearm laws in New Zealand. We were told that the changes made in 2020 introduced a wide range of measures to ensure public safety. While some of these have been positive, others have gone beyond what is necessary, and officials have said that it is unknown how far these measures have increased public safety.

The majority of clubs and ranges in our country are run by volunteers. I’ve heard that they have struggled to come to grips with the new requirements and they feel unfairly targeted. It is important that our regulatory regime strikes the right balance to regulate well, without being overcomplicated and burdensome on those regulated with no clear benefits.

This bill takes us towards a more balanced and collaborative approach. It recognises the important role that clubs and ranges play in our communities. Keeping clubs and ranges open ensures that firearms activity takes place in safe, well-regulated areas, where there are minimal safety risks involved.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have worked on and contributed to this bill. I thank the Justice Committee for its comprehensive scrutiny of the bill and all of the submitters who took time to share their views. Finally, I wish to thank all those volunteer club and range committees from the multiple disciplines that they all cover. Their endless dedication to their disciplines, their members, and their communities is recognised here and I hope these changes go some way to helping their continued operation.

The result of all this work is legislation that is a step in the right direction towards a better, modernised firearms regime, and I look forward to returning to the House later this year to introduce legislation rewriting the entire Arms Act. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Members, it is time for the dinner break, so the House is suspended until 7 p.m.—please note that that’s 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good evening, members. The House is resumed. When we left at the dinner break we were in the third reading of the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. We are at call No. 2, and it’s a Labour Party call.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We find ourselves here once again debating under urgency a process that suspends time in this Chamber but does not suspend scrutiny. We may not be measuring time in this House but the people of New Zealand are, and they are watching now. They are watching a Government that claims to be tough on crime but today takes its first deliberate steps towards weakening our firearms laws. People are watching tonight, from home, a Government that promised to keep our communities safe but now puts politics before public safety. They are watching a Government that with this bill has officially chosen to forget what happened on 15 March 2019.

This is a dark day for our Parliament, because today, through this legislation, the Government begins a slow and systematic dismantling of the very laws that were put in place to prevent another attack like the one that happened in Christchurch on 15 March.

New Zealanders know what happened on 15 March 2019. It was the darkest day in our modern history. Fifty-one innocent lives were lost in an act of terror. We know why it was possible—because for decades, successive Governments failed to act on the warnings we were given. Warnings from experts, warnings from police, warnings from former judges even were ignored for years. Justice Thomas Thorp, as far back as 1997, told us our gun laws were weak, riddled with loopholes and vulnerable to exploitation, yet no action was taken. So on that day in 2019, the worst came to pass, and as a result this House took action. MPs across the political spectrum came together, and by 119 votes to one we voted to ban semi-automatic weapons, to tighten our licensing laws, and to establish stronger oversight mechanisms. We made a commitment not just to the victims in Christchurch and their families but to all New Zealanders that we would never allow such an attack to happen again.

Yet just 71 months later, this Government has chosen to wind back those hard-won reforms. The arms amendment bill before us today is not simply a technical update to the law, as the Government would have you believe. It is a step backwards towards the dangerous, unregulated firearms environment that enabled March 15 to take place in New Zealand.

This bill weakens the oversight of shooting clubs and ranges, precisely the place where the Christchurch terrorist was able to train. The royal commission of inquiry into the attack found that he was able to practise rapid-fire shooting techniques on an unregulated range with no scrutiny, no accountability, and no intervention. We fixed that. We introduced laws to regulate shooting clubs and ranges to ensure that those using them were monitored properly, and to ensure that those clubs and ranges were able to prevent extremists from accessing the training grounds that they seek. And now this Government wants to undo that work. They are handing control of shooting ranges back to the very groups that failed to ensure safety in the past.

The Government says this is about cutting red tape and being practical. But this is not about practicality; it is about ideology. It is about appeasing those who believe that firearms’ ownership is a right, not a privilege, and it’s about a Government that is willing to trade public safety for political convenience.

We do not have to look far to see the hypocrisy of those sitting opposite us today, because the very same National MPs who are now weakening our firearms laws stood in this Chamber and supported them. Let us remind them of their own words. The Leader of the House, Chris Bishop, was overseeing this shameful reversal of the legislation today. Six years ago, he said, “I want to, on behalf of the party, acknowledge the Prime Minister for her remarks in opening this third reading debate, and also acknowledge her leadership in the hours and days and weeks following the shooting. I have received many comments in the last few weeks around your leadership, Prime Minister, and I think all of New Zealand has been impressed by your steadfastness at a time of great trial for our country.”

Let’s not forget the contribution of New Zealand First in 2019, either. Here is Mark Patterson, “We stand behind our Prime Minister, and I would like to acknowledge her and the leadership she has shown. It has been comforting for us all. New Zealand First, right from the get-go had absolutely no trouble falling in behind what was, in one word, leadership. In this time of national crisis, our own leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ initial reaction was that at 1.30 p.m. on 15 March our world changed forever and so will our gun laws.”

I even found a quote from the current Minister of Police, from six years ago, which was lucky because he hasn’t uttered one single word in the debate on the legislation before us today in this House. There is silence from the Minister of Police when briefing after briefing through the Official Information Act reveals that the Police and the Police Association, representing front-line officers, have been urging him to intervene. [Interruption] It’s true from what front-line cops say. Mark Mitchell will turn up in a heartbeat if there’s a photo op with a blue uniform somewhere but he will run a mile if he’s actually doing any hard work to back them. Here’s what he said back in 2019, “Can I acknowledge the Prime Minister first of all. I was very grateful of the fact that she shared with us some insights around how it crystallised in her mind, the leadership that was required, and then, of course, the Parliament coming together to bring this bill to the House to make the changes that we needed.”

Here is another, from former Minister of Police, Judith Collins, “I’m so proud of us. This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we will pass during Parliament because it is not only about keeping people safe, but it’s about putting a marker in the sand of our New Zealand culture.” That was a mark in the sand for the National Party and it’s obviously been washed away very conveniently when a political deal had to be done to form a Government.

The weakening of our gun laws that is happening today is the price of the political deal done with the ACT Party. But what has changed? Has the threat of extremism disappeared? Have our police stopped warning us about the risks of firearms in our community? Have the lessons of 15 March suddenly become irrelevant? No. The only thing that has changed is this Government’s priorities. The truth is this is not about what is best for New Zealand. This is the price of a political deal with ACT. This is the cost of appeasing a minority ideology that places gun ownership ahead of public safety. And for that, the National Party is willing to betray its own past positions, its own past commitments, and the very principles it claimed to stand for.

The weakening of firearm laws is not the only thing contained within this bill. What is buried deep within this bill under “other matters” is something deeply concerning. It’s a transfer of power from the Minister of Police to the Associate Minister of Justice, Nicole McKee, and it takes control away from police and into her hands. And that is the framework for the Firearms Safety Authority being taken out of Police. It is a real concern that that is being done without even the review of the Firearms Safety Authority even being made public.

Let me talk in conclusion on this bill. Labour’s commitment in this area will be clear. We will not stand for this. We will not allow the lessons of 15 March to be simply erased. We will not allow New Zealand to return to the weak, ineffective firearms laws of the past, and we will not stand by as this Government prioritises politics over human lives. So let me make this commitment today, here in this House. We will overturn these changes. We will restore the protections that are being dismantled in this House today because we stand with the police, we stand with the communities who have suffered from gun violence, and we stand with the people of New Zealand who deserve a Government that values their safety over political expediency.

This bill is a betrayal of the progress we made as a nation after 15 March. It is a betrayal of the promises that were made to the victims, to their families, and to the people of New Zealand. And it is a betrayal of our history that we will never forget. We oppose this bill. We will fight these changes, and we will make sure that when the time comes, this dangerous, reckless legislation is repealed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just before I call the next speaker, I did hear a few comments in the House during that speech about reading the speech. There were a lot of quotes in that speech, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be not reading quotes at the risk of getting them wrong. So there’s a good level of acceptability around quotes.

SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m in alignment with my colleague from Labour, in that this piece of legislation is not a minor thing. It’s not minor stuff. What we’re talking about is a relaxation of gun safety. As a gun owner, as a firearms owner, and as someone who hunts, I can’t see the sense in relaxing the rules we have, particularly when we have had the crises that we have had—15 March and Aramoana.

This bill is, essentially, a rushed bit of legislation. It is something that we don’t need. And we’ve seen switching from the Minister of Police to the Associate Minister of Justice with no support—no support—from the wider communities of interest and no consideration about how people feel—how this makes our vulnerable communities feel after the massacre of 15 March.

Now, some people might say it’s only making things a little bit simpler. The Arms Amendment Act 1992 made some changes to gun laws in response to the Aramoana tragedy, but it did not include a ban on military-style semi-automatics, despite one being proposed by the then Opposition, Labour. And we know what happened: the Thorp recommendations were not implemented. We know what happened on 15 March. After that point, after that moment—as has been pointed out—Parliament did come together and did put in place mechanisms to safeguard our communities. They were thoughtful. They were done in response to extreme trauma. What we have got in response is a shockingly slack, rushed, messy process to meet political contingency, because a soap salesman wants to be Prime Minister. This is absolutely shocking in a civil society where we value democracy—that we’ve sold out simply for political contingency.

We in the Greens do not accept that amending Part 6 of the Arms Act 1983 will meet any legitimate need of any firearm owners or provide greater safety and reassurance to the general public. There is no sense to stopping the police from doing checks on gun ranges except every five years. Why would we want to limit the checking of gun ranges? Who is that going to benefit? I would like the members opposite to consider who that will benefit. Anyone who is a legitimate gun owner should not be afraid of the police checking a gun range, should not be fearful of having to present their firearms licence, and should not be worried that somebody will be selling ammunition when they shouldn’t be, because we all want to live in a safe society. We all want to live in a society where we can trust our neighbours—not like Aramoana and not like the situation that we had on 15 March.

I’ve certainly read here that the bill amends the Act so that non-pistol shooting ranges may be inspected when the range is first applying for enrolment, then subsequently at 5-yearly intervals. As I’ve said, this just seems ridiculous. It might be a small thing, but it is—as my colleague said—a slow, inexorable dismantling of hard-won safety measures. This is what we’re facing.

I just don’t understand how anyone who purports to support our communities, our most vulnerable, can be comfortable with this—can do this with a clear conscience. Is this what it means to be in Government—that the Government will hold their nose and do the most odious things, simply to be in power? As we’ve seen, this legislation is not thoughtful, it’s not considered, it has not gone out to the wider public, it has not considered the broad variety of views, and it is narrow, rushed, and quite frankly—I don’t think I can use that term, but it is a very poor process.

This bill is, essentially, retrospective legislation to try to fix something that was not wanted by one party in the coalition Government. As a consequence, it bears all the hallmarks of that party, but it is owned by the whole Government. This is something that we will all remember. This is something that we will ensure the public knows as well.

As a firearms owner and as a hunter, I talk with our firearms community and I talk with other hunters. Nobody wants there to be nonsensical firearm legislation. Nobody wants rushed, poorly thought-out legislation either. This is what this is—this is exactly what this is.

Liberalising gun ranges is about rolling back necessary controls on firearms. Rolling back safety measures makes our communities less safe. This is very simple stuff. This is exactly why the Green Party wouldn’t come near this bill with any kind of support. We certainly support a rewrite of the Arms Act, but we support doing this in a way that involves our wider community. This piecemeal approach is breaking down all the safeguards that we have had in place and that we have agreed through time across the House. This is why it is so difficult to stomach—because I know, in my heart of hearts, that through previous Governments we have been able to work together. This feels like showing us the finger again and again and again. The Government knows that this is not palatable, this is not sensible, this is not good for our communities, and this is not addressing the trauma of our most vulnerable communities, and still the Government seeks to proceed to do something that they know is deeply unpopular and has no merit.

It is a sad day. It is a sad day to be speaking on the third reading of the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I would like to work with the Government on ensuring that we have safety in our communities and ensuring that legitimate firearm use is supported. Actually, I’d quite like to be out chasing deer in the roar. But we’re not; we’re here, and we’re debating this very poor bill, and that’s something that I don’t want us to be doing again and again and again. I would like there to be much more listening and much more dialogue, and more consideration of the real concerns that we have on this side of the House.

This is a dog’s breakfast of a bill. We have had plenty of time to debate, but we have not had any listening or dialogue with the Government.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): This not entirely a sad day; I understand this is a birthday. Rā whānau ki a koe. Although I have to say, technically it’s not, because while we’re in urgency, while you’re in this Chamber, you are actually ageless. Rā whānau ki a koe e te Māngai o te Whare.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you to the member. I’ll excuse you on this one occasion for bringing me into the debate. Thank you.

GREG FLEMING: It is my honour to rise on the third reading of this bill. It has been well canvassed. It has been well debated. There are clearly very different positions on this bill. On this side of the House, we are happy with the balance that is struck here, and so I commend this bill to the House.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Police): I rise to speak in support of the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendments Bill, on behalf of the New Zealand First Party. I would like to clarify a few points. It is the duty of this House to consider legislation and to review its effectiveness. It is the duty of this House to take time to look at laws that were passed and see if they are still relevant. To quote members who supported a piece of legislation when they responded to a horrific incident that brought the whole country to its knees, where we all stopped and responded to the fact that this was something we needed to deal with quickly, and, therefore, that legislation was passed exactly as was criticised across the House—in rush, without consultation, without thinking about what the implications were going to be. Therefore, we are now in a position of having the time—the six years since this horrific event occurred—to consider if this legislation is still appropriate, if it is still effective, if it is still right.

In the midst of this firearms legislation that you believe solved all the problems, we have had escalating crime that we have never seen before in this country. We have had violent crime at an unprecedented level. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate to sit back and look at where our responses should sit, where we have the duty to ensure that law-abiding citizens can be allowed to do lawful activity without the restrictions and inhibitions that bad legislation puts in place.

In response to the members across the House, we do care. That is why we were passing legislation that helps reduce violent crime. We have seen violent crime come down because we are the Government that cares, because we actually understand what the front line needs, we actually understand what crime means, and we actually understand what victims want, and we don’t advocate for the fact that the Police is a terrible organisation and we don’t promote the fact that prisons are full of hungry people. We actually understand what law and order means in this country, and, therefore, we have approached a piece of legislation that is very simple. It’s very clear that we are reviewing a rushed piece of legislation and we are making changes to ensure that lawful activity can continue. That is why this party will support the legislation and we commend it to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. In my view—in our view, it is more than a sad and bad day. It’s utter madness. It’s deeply disappointing madness made legal, is what I want to share. When this bill is removing safety regulations, surely you can see the madness in that whole idea. Why would you make something less safe? Why would anyone in their right mind do that? It’s mind-boggling, dumping the need for non-pistol shooting ranges to be certified and—adding insult to injury—scrapping all penalties. As you get into the detail, it’s definitely where the devil resides and clearly the devil on the other side of the House will land a point.

When we’re measuring this against our own tikanga and our own tools, we talk about mana motuhake. Kore he motuhake i roto i tēnei whakaaro. [There is no self-determination in this idea.]

Nothing enhances, nothing elevates, and nothing honours the life of every precious individual. Why on earth would we give the rule, and the regulation, and the power to a former gun lobbyist? Well, I don’t know how “former” former that is, but it seems very current, just saying.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think we should just broaden it out to the Government. It is a Government bill. Thank you.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: I will—yes. All right. When it reflects clearly the loosening of the regulations on firearms—again, loosening regulations on firearms—surely, for anyone in their right mind, if you were looking up and listening, that cannot be smart thinking, and it astounds me and disappoints me deeply.

Then I want to bring us home. On 4 March this year, if you read the Northern Advocate you would see the opening “Whangārei Fatal Shooting” and then you’d see the sad and terrible shooting of a woman on Beach Road in Whangārei, and then there was another piece to that. But just “fatal shooting”, that heading, it shocked us all in our small community in Whangārei, as it should across our whole motu. But clearly people aren’t reading enough.

I want to take us back again; I’m going to take you back to Tai Tokerau. In July 2017, a mum and her daughter go to work—this is the heading in the New Zealand Herald: “Mother and daughter die as repair visit turns to tragedy.” The tenant in the house comes out—disgusting, horrible—and both the mother and the daughter die. They were shot by this man.

These are important points because it’s the same reality that was shared when we’re talking about the events of 15 March. Our memories are clearly very, very short that you will only remember—and you’re selective in what you recall, because why would you want to even think about that? You might talk about it on the other side of the House, but does it resonate today? It might have back then, but where is the memory now? Where is that discussion now? Where is the serious debate in this?

We too want to work with whoever—the other side of the House, ideally—to have you understand what works. This makes it much, much more detrimental and difficult for our vulnerable families. In fact, it makes it blinking detrimental for any blinking family—for all families, for all mokopuna, particularly our mokopuna and families that live in in vulnerable communities.

So it’s nuts. This is nuts. It’s madness. It makes no real sense in any way, in any social justice—even like giving the guys a gun to go out and have a little bit of a play and a hoot. I was just listening to my Greens colleague here and he’s a hunter, he knows what it takes, and he’s saying, “Cut it out.” My army mates are going, “This is utter madness, Meno. Stop this Minister, and stop this thinking, and stop this person.” I wish I could. If I could, I’d just tear this bill up too. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We have heard, from this side of the House, the grave concern that we have for this bill—not simply the repercussions of this bill but the process of how this bill came about in the first place. This bill is a solution without a problem; there was nothing that suggests that this is needed other than the prioritising of a small lobbyist pro-gun group instead of public safety.

In the regulatory impact statement, literally every single option that has been proposed said that it would have a negative impact on promoting public safety. So there is no positive aspect to public safety with this bill. What’s even more concerning is that because of the narrow scope of this bill, in the regulatory impact statement itself it says that for this bill, the Minister shared insights with officials in order to identify her key areas of concern. Combined with the time restraint, we have a limited scope of options consulted on with stakeholders.

This is literally one person’s hot take of a legislation. We hear from the Government parties that, yes, we are here about bills and we are here about legislation and we are here about the New Zealand public. Words have meaning. We do not and we should not be introducing legislation based on one person’s hot takes.

If you’re looking at the list of stakeholders that is being introduced into the regulatory impact statement, literally most of them are gun groups: let’s say, the Arms Advisory Group, the Arms Engagement Group, the Firearms Community Advisory Forum. Only one of them was the Muslim Reference Group, because they have to include them. Whether their feedback was taken on board, and I can hazard a guess, it’s probably going to be drowned out by all of the other voices and all of the other stakeholders that were consulted as a part of this bill.

So 15 March—and we just had the six-year commemoration of that a few weeks ago—was one of the worst tragedies in Aotearoa. It was something that the Muslim community had told the Government over and over and over again of the risk to their lives, of the risk to their communities, and we did not hear them at that moment.

It’s Ramadan right now. We have people here in this very House, currently, who are celebrating iftar. Could anyone from the Government party dare show their face to that group of people and look at them in their eyes, saying, “This bill that we’re debating in the third reading right now is for you, it’s for your benefit.”? Can we, hand on heart, tell that to all of the people currently celebrating iftar?

This is not something we need. This is not something that is going to be beneficial. This is going to hurt more people within our communities. This is going to put lives in danger. You are going to see parents who will never make it home to see their children. You’re going to see children who are never going to make it home to see their parents. Do we really want to go down the same track that we see in other countries like the US, where all they manage to say whenever there’s a mass shooting of any sort is, “Thoughts and prayers”? Is that something that we should be identifying with and working with and looking forward to and seeing ourselves being reflected in what is happening overseas? We should not be a part of that. We should hold on to our values and our people and the best way to protect them. That is what this House should be doing when we are looking at this bill.

Other than that, we have heard from multiple people and organisations and committees, even the police themselves, who said that this is not going to be good, that there are going to be concerns about this. So this is not a bill that the Green Party will support under any circumstance, and we are appalled at how this bill was introduced and the repercussions that this bill will create.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill’s part of our plan to reform the 40-year-old Arms Act. It modernises the Act. Its purpose is public safety and best regulatory practice, and I commend this bill to the House.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to stand and take a call on the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I stand to oppose this bill—and I stand to oppose this bill strongly. Very recently, earlier this month, it was the six-year anniversary since the tragic events of 2019, which compelled this Government to step up and take responsibility for the tragic and hideous crimes that occurred in Christchurch. And earlier this month, our Prime Minister—or the Prime Minister, as I prefer—and members of this Government went to Christchurch for that anniversary and stood with the families of those victims, to support them in commemorating that tragic day. At the same time, in the same month, only a few days later, we are here under urgency to undo one of the very laws that was put in place to make sure that tragedy could never happen again. As someone who was in Christchurch the day of that tragedy, you can never forget what the feeling was like in that city on the day and immediately afterwards. This bill sets out to undo the immediate response by this Government and, as we’ve heard from earlier speakers, a response that was acknowledged and supported by other leaders in this House and by other members in this House, with the exception of one.

An earlier speech went through very accurate and precise quotes that detailed not just the support but the reasons for it. Ultimately, we should be here in this House to make communities safer, but that’s not what this bill does. This bill does exactly the opposite of that. Now, there’s been a range of speeches in the House in this third reading of the bill. There’s been members calling out. There’s been members who’ve chosen to use their call for birthday shout-outs. And there’s been claims from a member that crime is spiralling out of control. At the same time as crime is allegedly spiralling out of control, the suggested solution is to enable access to firearms and to practising the use of firearms. In a nutshell, the statement is: take away the patches, but don’t take away the guns. Doesn’t seem like much of a solution.

If we are here to make communities safer, this bill does exactly the opposite of that. It actually makes us less safe; it makes our communities less safe, and it creates a very real sense of danger and a sense of a lack of safety for some of our most vulnerable communities. There are multiple issues with this bill other than the principle of it, but the idea of self-regulation or no regulation of shooting clubs and shooting ranges—and there are multiple loopholes that endanger communities and that put at risk law-abiding gun users. We’ve heard from members in the House tonight who’ve spoken against this bill but have been very clear to point out that they are gun owners, gun users, and that they are not comfortable with the changes and the shift that this bill puts in place. There are not clear enough provisions in this bill to stop a club or a range opening somewhere near you some time soon. These are definitely not the actions of a responsible Government that cares about keeping people and communities safe. These are instead, under urgency, a rushed shift backwards to reinstate the very environment that allowed such a tragedy to happen in this country.

The process throughout the journey of this bill has been flawed. Rushed consultation—it did not enable communities to be involved in this bill. It was skewed, through its consultation, towards firearm users—91 percent of submitters. The panel stated that the process that this bill followed through select committee only partially met the criteria. So it’s a terrible, terrible rushed process. The Police Association spoke on this bill—and represents over 98 percent of sworn officers—and they described this bill as being politics over safety.

If we are here to make communities safer, and surely that’s what we should be here to do—amongst other things, but we shouldn’t be here to increase risk, to make communities feel less safe, to dial back the very laws that were strengthened and put in place to make sure tragedies couldn’t be repeated. So in closing my speech tonight, I want to echo the words of the Hon Ginny Andersen, who spoke at the beginning of this third reading, who took us through and reiterated the quotes from members in this House when the original bill was passed. She said not only do we oppose this bill but we will repeal it and put back in place the very protections that our communities need and that they deserve. Thank you.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): We’re in the third reading of the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I find it quite absurd the notion that the National Party, when one of our 10 values is national and personal security, would be comfortable with allowing a bill to become law that is apparently as loose as the other side of the House is saying. We went through a robust process in select committee. If the members of the Justice Committee didn’t show up for that robust process, that’s their issue. I commend this bill to the House.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is with absolutely no pleasure at all that I take a call on this bill, and I’m actually quite shocked at the fact that we’re having this debate and the fact that I know there are people who are sitting opposite me in this Chamber right now who in their hearts do not believe that this is the right move for New Zealand, that do not think that the legislative change that our Parliament should be prioritising is to get more guns in more hands more easily.

The priorities for New Zealanders are the fact that recently they’ve had increases in the cost of living, a lot of people are losing their jobs, they’re concerned about the health system, and they want to have a secure future. It is not the priorities that seem to be upheld by this current Government. It is not the deregulation of gun control; it is not the repeal of the Plain Language Act. It’s simply getting quite farcical to be turning up to this House and seeing the types of laws that this Government is putting forward.

This couldn’t be a more serious matter. We will all remember, those of us—and we’ve had many Christchurch colleagues speaking tonight and will have others to come and to speak on this debate, but I think those of us, no matter where we were in New Zealand, remember 15 March, remember the horror of that day, remember how terrible it felt to lose 50 New Zealanders in that way, remember the shame of the fact that there is something that we could’ve done to do with regulation and the way that people access guns, and, too, the pride that we felt collectively as a country in the fact that this House stood up and voted for a change that would mean that that would never happen again.

To be standing here looking at this bill only six years later fills me with shame. It fills me with shame, and I will use my vote that I have in this House to vote against it. It should fill those of you who are voting for it with shame, because this will lead to more violence. It will lead to more situations where there could be mass killings in this country. Whatever you say about the fact that this is looking at the regulatory—not you, Madam Speaker. Whatever one is to say about the purpose of this bill, you simply have to look at the introduction of this bill to see what it actually does. Simplifying the regulatory requirements—well, what does that mean? It means fewer regulatory requirements. It means it’s easier to get access to guns. It says different levels of regulation between pistol and non-pistol shooting clubs—different levels of regulation. There should be regulation when it comes to firearms. Owning a firearm is a privilege and should only be used with the maximum amount of safety, and I think most New Zealanders would agree with that. So it is shocking to be standing here and seeing this law being passed.

When I was preparing for this speech, I was looking at the regulatory impact statement, looking for a reason why this could possibly be coming through our House, and I could not find it. Then, looking at the people who would be supporting it—the Police, the Police Association, some of whom members of this House have had a long history with. The Police Association opposes this bill. They say it will make matters worse, and I say that we on this side of the House believe the Police. We know that they are experienced in making sure that New Zealanders are kept safe.

To see this go through under urgency, to see people I respect, colleagues on that side of the House—we may have different views, but, fundamentally, I believed they were good people—stand up and take short calls, not even justifying to our Muslim community, New Zealanders who saw so much pride in the fact that our Parliament was able to come together against gun violence, against that tragedy, to even justify to New Zealanders why you are doing this. It’s shameful, and I encourage those of you who truly believe that to think it’s not too late to change your mind and to vote against this terrible bill.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I know there was a groan when Paulo Garcia resumed his seat, but don’t be too hard on him: he’s got nothing to say. There’s a reason he’s got nothing to say, because there is nothing good to say about—

Rima Nakhle: Stop being a bully, man!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: And you, too, Rima Nakhle. You stood up to talk here in this House on this bill, and you had nothing to say, because this bill is indefensible. I can accept your shame. I can understand why you so hastily resumed your seat and hung your head, because you should.

Hon Simon Watts: School-yard bully.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, you take a call, Minister Watts, because I will yield my time to you if you will use it usefully to defend your party’s position. Will you explain your party’s position? Because I will yield. You will not. You will not, because you haven’t got the fortitude to stand up and defend your party’s position. Don’t pretend.

You know what? This is the policy document underpinning this bill. It is the coalition agreement. This is how much policy work went on. This is how the National Party sold its members down the river—one line in this document which says the price of Christopher Luxon becoming Prime Minister is to immediately begin the repeal and replacement of Part 6 of the Arms Act relating to clubs and ranges. That is the price of power. And here’s the true irony: not only is it only 8 percent of this Parliament, which is the ACT Party, which made that demand, but it’s only a fraction of their support. It is a fragment of New Zealand, a splinter of New Zealand, that has made this demand, which is wagging the National Party dog.

This bill is flawed in so many ways. The process alone is shocking. The idea that the evidence upon which this bill is based is, and I quote, “the Minister’s lived experience” is shocking. You are liberalising gun laws, you are allowing the freer use of firearms, and the evidence base of it is the Minister’s lived experience—her reckons, her memories. And if that’s how you’re going to run a country and if that’s what you’re going to do with firearms law reform, then woe betide us. And the consultation: was there a broad and deep consultation on this? Was the community asked what it thought? No. Gun ranges were asked what they thought. The wolf was asked what it would like to do with the hen house, and that’s what we’ve got here. No wonder the consultation suggested a liberalisation, because the very people who were being regulated were asked if they’d like fewer rules.

But there’s something more important going on here, and that is actually a struggle. The National Party appears to have changed sides because over on the far right, the shrinking of Government, the rolling-back of the State, and the leaving of citizens to do whatever they want is pretty much the playbook. But, on that side of the House, usually, we’ve had responsible government and responsible regulation, and a balance has been struck. It might not be exactly where we would put it, but a balance has been struck between personal freedoms and responsibility and responsible government. Well, they’ve just given up on that. They’ve said, “You want to deregulate gun ranges? Go for it. You want to have rifle ranges where there are no rules, where the ranges make up their own rules? Go for it. We don’t mind.”

No wonder the Police Association said this was a terrible idea. And we hear—we have evidence—that the Minister of Police has, in papers that he has seen, evidence of gang members using gun ranges for target practice to sharpen up their skills. Does that change their mind? “No, no, no, we’ll still keep on this fateful road.” It is absolutely unbelievable that, even in the face of that kind of evidence, they still say, “Oh, no, we don’t think the Police should have a right to inspect gun ranges once every five years.” The idea that it is some kind of huge incursion on the liberty of a citizen for the police to pop down and check that the ammunition is stored securely, that the range is being run in a safe manner, and that the people who are attending there are people of good repute—there’s nothing wrong with that, but, no, straight out of the far right playbook, they say that is the State intruding on to the rights of private citizens.

Well, the private citizens do not have a God-given or a constitutional right to shoot rifles. They have a privilege conferred by the law under the Arms Act if they meet the appropriate criteria. And one of those criteria should be that when they are using firearms on a gun range, a police officer can pop down and check that everything’s all right. But, no. The idea that there’s some distinction, some important distinction, between pistols and rifles is fatuous. In fact, sure, pistols are smaller and more easily concealed, but in terms of lethality, rifles are by far the more dangerous weapon. They have an incredible velocity and need just as much regulation.

The fact of the matter is that what we’ve got here is a failure of leadership. I don’t know if the failure of leadership occurred in the coalition negotiations or if it occurred later down the road. But I look at the National Party members; the backbench is sitting there, and I can see that they’re uncomfortable with this. And I can see that they’ve been told, “Shut up. Don’t say anything. Just say a couple of words and sit down.”, because at least Casey Costello—you know, to her credit—stood up and said what she thought. She thought that we have a duty to allow law-abiding citizens to do lawful activities. Again, that’s that entitlement argument. But at least she said it. Now, she’s wrong because, yes, it’s a lawful activity, but it’s not an activity which you have a right to undertake—to use a firearm. It’s a privilege under which you should be subject to reasonable and proportionate rules.

And that’s what we have. That’s what the National Party in 2019 agreed to. Look where we have come. Look from a place where we understood and came together and together worked on a set of rules in a totally bipartisan way, with support across the House, except from the ACT Party. We now have the National Party doing a U-turn in their thirst for power.

You know, as the Christchurch Central MP, I must pay homage to what went on there on 15 March and the fact that the tragedy that occurred to the Muslim community, which shook Christchurch and New Zealand to its core, was one which was facilitated because we had failed to do the right thing once. We were shown at Aramoana what was wrong, and John Banks, in fact, said that his greatest regret was not fixing up the law and prohibiting semi-automatic weapons.

So we stood up, and we did what was right. We came together, and we agreed. And, in that contract, I believed that we had resolved that that was where the law would lie, that that was the agreement that we had made across the House, both in honour and in respect for those that had fallen. But that’s not where we’ve ended up. We’ve ended up with a National Party that will do whatever is expedient at the time. And if that means giving a gun lobbyist the pen over gun legislation, that’s what you’ll do. And so when you do go home tonight, think about that. And if a tragedy does occur—and I pray that it won’t—think about that. And just think about what’s coming because this gun lobbyist in charge of gun reform wants semi-automatic weapons back too. Will you do that? Will that be the next price of power? Think about that.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is a good bill. It’s fit for purpose, it returns to practical common-sense regulations, it balances the needs of personal freedoms of law-abiding citizens versus the safety and regulations required. All three parties agreed in the direction of travel and campaigned on such changes at the general election. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Arms (Shooting Clubs, Shooting Ranges, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

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.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): I present a legislative statement on the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon TODD McCLAY: I move, That the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I am pleased to bring this bill back to the House today. As we indicated, as I said in the first reading, the dairy industry is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s economy, and I want to thank all of our farmers for their hard work. It’s expected to generate over $25 billion worth of export revenue this year alone, up 10 percent on last year, through the hard work and dedication of our dairy farmers. The changes being progressed in this bill will support the Government’s goal of doubling the value of exports within 10 years and delivering economic growth for all of New Zealand to benefit every New Zealander.

I want to briefly touch on some of the key features in the bill that we spoke about during first reading speeches. I’ll then touch on two minor changes recommended by the Primary Production Committee, which we will be accepting and moving through this process.

The bill as introduced is intended to improve the current dairy export quota allocation system. The bill makes three significant changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001 (DIRA). Firstly, it changes the bases of quota allocation from bovine milk solids collected to export history. Secondly, it creates a regulation-making power to enable 10 percent of one or more quotas to be reserved for otherwise ineligible exporters and exporters eligible for lower volume allocation.

And, finally, the bill provides quota access to non-bovine animal dairy exporters on the same basis as bovine dairy exports—for example, for sheep milk or deer milk or goat milk. These changes will remove barriers to trade and support the Government’s ambitious trade agenda. They’ll help stimulate innovation and encourage value-add to New Zealand dairy products. Importantly, the changes will help maximise quota utilisation and the benefits of export quota for dairy industry and help drive better outcomes for New Zealand.

I want to thank the chair of the Primary Production Committee, Mark Cameron, and all committee members for their work in scrutinising this bill, and I recognise that the report was adopted by the committee unanimously, and I thank them for that.

I also note that the select committee received two written submissions, one from Fonterra and one from Open Country Dairy. The select committee also heard from Fonterra, who spoke to their submission. I want to acknowledge Fonterra and Open Country Dairy for taking the time to express their views on this bill to the committee and, therefore, to Parliament.

In response to the Primary Production Committee’s advice, I’ve made two minor changes to the bill to ensure fairness, transparency, and certainty in dairy quota allocation. In respect of new transitional measures for the quota compliance programme (QCP) requirement, I have created a transitional measure for that quota compliance programme requirement. The QCP requirement provides that if a participant has not obtained a QCP for any of the three years prior to the year in which they were allocated quota, they will be declined quota allocation unless their reasons are of a reasonable satisfaction to the Minister. The transitional measure will mean that the QCP requirement does not apply to any of the 2023, 2024, or 2025 quota years. This change ensures that the current participants are not unfairly disadvantaged by choices they made under the current legislation before these changes have entered into force.

Around specific tariff headings for designated markets to be notified in the Gazette, I’ve amended the bill to require the tariff headings for each quota market administrated under the DIRA be included in the Gazette notice advising that quota applications are open. This change will make it easier for exporters to know what information they need to provide when applying for a quota.

I again express my appreciation to the committee for their recommended improvement, to the submitters for their valued feedback, and to officials for their hard work in bringing this bill through the process. The bill is now a robust piece of legislation that replaces what had become an outdated system for dairy quota allocation. This will support the success of our dairy sector and, ultimately, New Zealand’s economic growth and prosperity.

I also, again, want to thank the dairy farmers of New Zealand for their hard work, their contribution, along with other farmers, to making New Zealand great again.

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

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call this evening on this bill. The Minister of Agriculture has just mentioned the Primary Production Committee reported back unanimously agreeing to this bill.

Can I first acknowledge the Hon Damien O’Connor, who originally drove this piece of legislation, and then acknowledge the Minister, who has just taken his seat, for continuing to shepherd this piece of legislation through the House. I just want to also acknowledge my Primary Production Committee colleagues. I do believe—and I’m not biased, but I do believe—that we are the best select committee. Actually, I think, Madam Speaker, you might agree with that too. I was listening earlier to a bill being discussed in the House—the Customer and Product Data Bill—and I heard one of the speakers talk about the collegiality across the House with that piece of legislation, and I have to say that whilst that was true and it was good to see, it’s nothing as collegial as you might find in the Primary Production Committee.

This piece of legislation deals with dairy quota allocation, basically, and it fits in beautifully with the goal of the current Government—and our country, in fact, and our farmers—to double export values around the world. This piece of legislation, while it doesn’t state it explicitly, will also help create jobs across the country, create fairness among the sector and our producers, and give certainty to the sector. New Zealand has always been a country of entrepreneurs and innovators, with our number eight wire—I won’t say “mentality”, but innovativeness, I guess. I think that this piece of legislation, while it doesn’t necessarily state these things explicitly, also goes to support all of those things that we in New Zealand are so well known for.

This bill was open for submissions from 18 October to 17 November last year, and the committee received two submissions—one that a submitter spoke to orally. It was quite interesting that we only had two submissions. I thought that we might have had some more interest, given that this is such an interesting topic, and I know my colleague Mark Cameron will have lots to say about this subject, considering he is a passionate dairy farmer—I’m looking forward to his speech.

This piece of legislation simply amends the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001, or the DIRA, as we refer to it in this bill and probably throughout other members’ contributions this evening. The background to this piece of legislation—there may be people out there who are glued to their televisions this evening listening to Parliament TV and unsure what this actually means. Our dairy export quotas are negotiated, often as part of international free trade—not free trade necessarily; international trade agreements. And some of these are agreed as part of bilateral free-trade agreements. The information that we’ve received in our select committee with regard to this is that it’s been a little bit—I would argue—complicated for someone who may be on the outside looking in, trying to understand how quotas have been allocated in the past. Prior to this piece of legislation being introduced to the House, it was allocated on the proportion, basically, of the milk collected by participants directly from dairy farmers, etc., across New Zealand.

Things have also changed in the last few years, because the prior piece of legislation, the Act itself, pertained only to dairy. We know that bovine dairy is not the only product now that we find that we are exporting across the country. When I talked about this piece of legislation creating jobs and creating fairness, I was referring to the fact that there have been a number of changes in the sector itself. We’re not just milking dairy cows. We now have a range of different products that are being made—for example, deer milk, goat milk, cheese, and other types of products that have not been so common in the past, and we are starting to see more of those types of businesses come to the fore. There are lots of innovators across the country. Lewis Road Creamery is one that I can think of also.

Because of the fact that the quota system was based on the amount of milk that was collected, and a certain percentage of milk—I don’t have that specific number in front of me—had to be provided, which actually, effectively, shut out some of those smaller businesses and didn’t allow them the opportunity to become part of what is a high-value export market, we agreed wholeheartedly with this piece of legislation, and that it does need to change to allow those smaller players into the fray.

We did hear concern from one of the submitters, who did not want to see, necessarily, the changes to the quota system as such, because they were worried or concerned that there might be an opportunity for the system to be gamed. We questioned officials on that and we heard back quite clearly that it would be extremely and highly unlikely that we would see a situation like that, so the committee didn’t agree to the suggested change by that that particular submitter.

I’ve already talked about the inclusion of non-bovine dairy products. Other changes that the select committee made to this bill were with regard to the quota compliance programme—the QCP. What the bill required initially was that businesses would obtain a QCP before being eligible for export licences. Previously, they could apply for these licences without having a QCP, but this new rule aims to prevent businesses from applying for licences without the intent to use them. That could have been something that we may well have seen, and therefore people may have got additional quota without the actual intent to use that quota. We think that the changes we made in select committee, the amendment we have made, would not allow for that to happen. The amendment that we’ve made around the QCP requirement relates to the fact that the quota was going to be based on the three years prior to this legislation coming into force, to determine the eligible quota allocation for 2026. There was a little bit of concern from those smaller players who haven’t been part of this, haven’t been able to trade and have a quota system as such, because they didn’t have enough product to export. So we have made a change that would allow for those who don’t have that export history to be part of this system so long as they obtain a QCP before exporting.

I want to finish up by acknowledging the good work of the select committee—the fact that we work collegially, as I mentioned before, for the good of the farming sector, the agricultural sector in New Zealand, because we do acknowledge and we do understand, as does this side of the House, the value of the agriculture sector to our economy here in New Zealand. We will do what we can in order to support that sector; therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yes, the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act is a thing that you might be surprised to see a component of the amendment of being spoken in support of by the Green Party. Why, you might ask?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not asking. You’re going to tell the House.

STEVE ABEL: I am; I’m going to tell the House. Why, one might ask? “Dairy dairy everywhere, nor any drop to drink”, in the famous words of Samuel Coleridge. But what we have, and others have spoken to it, including the Minister, is this recognition that a large part of what gives value to New Zealand export products is that firm reputation for being a producer of natural and good quality food. Now, part of that reputation might be fictional, but the Green Party, and I think all of us, might like to make that not a fiction. Let’s make that a reality. Let’s make that good reputation something that is true and something that we stand by.

What this bill does is it allows the smaller players in dairy—and, as my colleague Jo Luxton pointed out, those who may be producing other than bovine milk; they may be producing sheep milk or deer milk or other kinds of milk—into that vital export market quota. And therefore it allows them to get a part of that export quota which is so essential to the agricultural sector in this country.

We’re grappling with another bill right now, and I won’t dwell on this, because there’ll be a chance to later, but in one of the submissions made by the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand on the gene tech bill, they made a general point about our dependency on export markets. They said, “We do not have the luxury of a large country that sells a large proportion of its product to its own domestic market. New Zealand’s major primary sectors of dairy, meat, fisheries, wine, forestry, and selected horticulture products export up to 95 percent of their output”—we know that’s true of the dairy industry—“a level not matched in other developed countries. The additional factor is the export value of New Zealand derives from complex finished, or near-finished, food products, such as infant formula, as opposed to more basic commodities such as grain, cotton, or soy.”

Now, this just goes to drive home the point that given that 95 percent of our product will be exported, access to those export quotas is vital for New Zealand businesses, and this bill facilitates the diversification of that access to those quotas. The Green Party sees that as a good thing, because this allows those new entrants, who are able to come in—they might include smaller family businesses, they might include new smaller cooperatives, they might include iwi dairy producers, they might include regenerative or organic farmers who are needing to build their reputation by producing high-quality products that overseas customers want. That contributes to our good name in the global market place, because if we are able to meet the global customer demand for high-quality products that have been produced in a way that is sustainable, that is good for animal welfare, that is good for dealing with the climate, then any step we can take in that direction is a good thing for New Zealand and for the world and for those producers who are doing that.

Now, in terms of an overall vision of where we would like to see New Zealand heading, this sort of amendment takes us in the right direction, because I believe we can be a true clean, green food producer. I believe we can be a nation that takes to its heart the principle that we need to be able to produce food in a way that doesn’t harm the viability of those core things that we depend on—the stability of the climate, the cleanliness of our river and our groundwater, the integrity of our biodiversity and our wetlands. It is possible for us to do all of those things. That might mean us having some tough conversations about land use change, about whether we should have quite so many dairy cows, and you know where we stand on that. That is not in any way to vilify farmers.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

STEVE ABEL: It really isn’t. It really isn’t, because I know that farmers in this country are able to do many things. They are able to farm diversely. They are able to do different things and find more inventive and innovative ways of making a credible buck off the land, which, we all acknowledge they need to be able to do. But if this allows somebody to innovate and find a way to make a living from producing sheep milk, and create a boutique product or a niche product that is going to be saleable to the world market, and they can now get some quota to prove that point, good luck to them—all power to them—and that is for the good of our whole country.

So I only outline this by way of explaining and expressing why we as Te Pāti Kākāriki, the Green Party, see this as a good change, a good step in the direction that we want to be going in.

Another thing is diversity in our production is resilience. Our ability to produce things on a number of frameworks, a number of products—plant-based, animal-based, forestry products, diverse dairy products—this is a good thing for our overall resilience. The more that we are able to produce things that are consistent with our values and the values that we know that a dedicated proportion of the global customer population want to buy—they want natural products, they want high-quality products, and we know that those markets exist and we should be here willing to meet those markets. One day, perhaps, one of those milks that will be counted in the non-bovine dairy quota will be organically grown oat milk from Southland. Who knows? Why would—

Hon Mark Patterson: Oat juice.

STEVE ABEL: But what’s your problem with juice? We don’t have a problem with juice. I don’t care if you call it juice or milk. The point is, if farmers can make a living producing a product that is viable and valuable and better for the environment, all power to them, and that is the direction we should be going in. We genuinely believe that that is for the best of the country.

The bill is supported. We have got the best select committee in the Parliament, admirably chaired by our dear chair over there, Mark Cameron, who does a sterling job of keeping us in order and sharing around the burden of the responsibility.

This bill will widen quota access to a range of different types of businesses. It will support smaller companies to scale up by either providing new access to quotas for those already eligible, potentially providing export licences in greater numbers than under the status quo—always subvert the dominant paradigm. It will ensure that participants have demonstrated the ability to export the relevant products, and increase utilisation by aligning capability and eligibility. The bill also creates a regulation-making power. This enables 10 percent of export licences for a designated market listed in Schedule 5A of the Act to be reserved for exporters who would otherwise be ineligible and exporters only eligible for fewer than 200 tonnes of product. We think this is a useful step.

It is nice when the House can agree on something. And, honestly, I think it would be good if we tried to find out more things that we agree on. I certainly hope, in our upcoming deliberations on the gene tech bill, that we are able to have some honest conversations about what is in the best interests of that reputation that this bill helps us to build up, and we should be thinking about how else we are building that reputation with other pieces of legislation through the House. We will be supporting this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you to my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to this piece of legislation and join the House tonight. I just want to acknowledge Minister McClay, who’s in the House, as being part of the overall oratory for this legislation.

A bit of context and full disclosure: I am a dairy farmer, as you are all well aware, and a Fonterra supplier and I absolutely love rural New Zealand. The speech I’m about to give is less so about the members of the House and is actually to celebrate the people outside of it, and the Speaker herself is a dairy farmer and will be cognisant of the wonderful people—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s the second time I’ve allowed myself to be brought into the debate tonight, so thank you. Carry on.

MARK CAMERON: —and acknowledge rural New Zealand and the dairy farmers in it. No better group of people, I would argue, to represent dairy farmers—$26 billion to $27 billion, and it will only continue to grow. This piece of legislation is indicative of the reason, and the people, I came to Parliament, as I am one.

I started my career as a little guy in a cowshed, a “ten aside”, and I don’t want to overindulge the House, but just for the moment I will—if I could, if they would bear with me. A “ten aside” cowshed—some won’t know what they look like; Mr Damien O’Connor certainly would. He’s probably cognisant of a “step-up”. We grew up with those kind of cowsheds. Hasn’t the industry that we all now represent in rural New Zealand changed? Gracious me! Rotary cowsheds, modern technology, farmers invested in better outcomes—what a wonderful story. That is Kiwi. That is so New Zealand. And we are part of that, on a global stage. How could we not pass this bill into law that gives that industry—which I would say is the bedrock of rural New Zealand—a continued future in terms of export earnings.

Another point, that Mr Abel rightly pointed out, we’ve got a fantastic committee. I am biased. Suze Redmayne is part of it, Steve Abel, Jo Luxton, others—fantastic people, great to work with. They have seen the common sense that this legislation brings, and, by virtue, we’ve got rid of all the political theatricality. We just said, “Let’s grow our economy.” The Government currently has great aspirations to see a doubling of revenue export earnings, and this will embolden that.

I won’t over-litigate the complexities of the bill. Other members have already spoken to it. I think it highlights the importance of creating an environment where new entrants can come in and we do what we do so damnably well in New Zealand, in the land of milk and honey, and that is farm. I won’t over-litigate it any further. I commend this bill.

Hon MARK PATTERSON (Associate Minister of Agriculture): It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First for this dairy bill, the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill, or the amendments we’re putting through to the parent Act, the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act. Today, the Act is probably one of the most significant—certainly from a commerce perspective—Acts that’s ever gone through this Parliament. It is an incredibly important piece of legislation that allowed the coming together; the bypassing of the Commerce Commission to bring the Kiwi dairy co-operative, which would be—you’re from Taranaki, Madam Speaker, so I’d presume you were Kiwi? Mark Cameron in Northland, he was probably Dairy Group. Were you New Zealand Dairy Group in—

Grant McCallum: Northland.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: Northland. Well, Northland got brought into Dairy Group in the end. There was only—

David MacLeod: Kiwi.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: Into Kiwi. But it was very tribal—very tribal. There was Tui down in the South Island—that was amalgamation through the 1990s. There was a massive amalgamation of small dairy co-ops that have ended up today with Fonterra because of this legislation. It is our most important company. The nation rises and falls on its fortunes more than a lot of people in this House would understand or care to believe.

I just would like to put on the record: because of that significance, the fact that Fonterra are selling their brands at the moment, that this Parliament allowed the formation of Fonterra, I’m disappointed this Parliament hasn’t put more scrutiny over that deal; those—now Mainland that they’re looking at splitting off and selling—are iconic New Zealand brands. I wrote to both the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the Primary Production Committee to ask them to bring Fonterra in to explain to the Parliament why brands that they had been entrusted with, they were looking at selling off. And I was disappointed to get a negative response from both those select committees. I think the Parliament has failed a little bit in this regard to—

Grant McCallum: Farmers’ decision.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: Well, Grant McCallum has just said it’s the farmers’ decision, and to a point it is. But the farmers also have to realise that this Parliament granted them the ability to form a near monopoly. The parent legislation was designed to foster some competition, and that’s where, I guess if we fast-forward to today, we are with this bill.

This is a modest amendment put forward by the Minister of Agriculture to allow quota allocation of export licences to smaller operators to make it easy for them to get some access, which will allow, potentially, for some of those smaller operators to grow. They will not grow into being the next Fonterra, but they might grow into being the next Tatua, which is a highly profitable smaller dairy co-operative. Lewis Road, for example, is another company that has done very well.

This bill enables that in a modest way, so New Zealand First absolutely supports it—it’s a very sensible move and made for good reasons and I’m pleased that it’s had cross-party support across the Parliament. But I think, in doing that, we’ve actually missed the forest for the trees here—the really big deal that’s going down in terms of value-add, and potentially trading away those brand businesses that have been built over generations when we’ve got technology like precision fermentation coming down the line that could disrupt the very ingredients that Fonterra are backing. That’s their strategy: is now to go fully down that ingredients path, which are ripe for disruption, and this Parliament should have shown more interest in that deal.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Well, you’re in Government.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: But, well, both select committees who were bipartisan have turned it down, so that would have been the first step.

Anyway, I have digressed a little bit from the bill, Madam Speaker, but I did want to put that on the record because we have missed the forest for the trees here. There’s some really big—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s still relevant to the topic.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: It is still relevant to the—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: But you can come back to the bill now.

Hon MARK PATTERSON: So we do support it. New Zealand First does support the measures in this bill that will allow for more diversification of access to our smaller, emerging, value-added companies to get into some of those export markets, and particularly in this time when you’ve got a situation where, actually, trade access is becoming incredibly important as the world is in some tumult around the deglobalisation, essentially, around trade and trade barriers going up.

So these quotas, even though they’re not used to their maximum degree or haven’t been for some time—for most years—could become very, very sought after indeed in the coming years, and to carve out some space for new entrants is a very good move from the Minister.

I commend the Primary Production Committee for having shepherded this through, and we look forward to the third reading. Thank you.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. Before Madam Speaker exits the chair, I just want to say happy birthday. I know that you’re getting your SuperGold card today, so tēnā rawa atu ki a koe. Tēnā rā tātou e te Whare, e tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mō Te Pāti Māori i te pō nei. E mihi ana au ki te Minita, e Todd McClay. E mihi ana au hoki ki a koe Mark te tiamana o te komiti whakahaere.

[So I acknowledge you. Greetings to the House. I stand to deliver the speech on behalf of the Māori Party this evening. I acknowledge the Minister, Todd McClay. I also acknowledge you, Mark, the chairperson of the select committee.]

I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori tonight to support this bill in its second reading. However, I do want to take this opportunity to add my own flavour, as I usually do, and add my 2c on to the broader context of this, which affects our rohe and our electorate as Māori. I am the Hauraki-Waikato MP, and knowing a Māori seat, that’s eight general seats in one, so it’s very large. That’s a lot of farmland.

Hoki ake nei au ki tōku awa koiora me ngōna pikonga, he kura tangihia o te mātāmuri. E whakawhiti atu ana ai au ki te kōpū mānia o Kirikiriroa me ngōna māra kai, te ngāwhā whakatipu ake o te whenua mōmona hei kawe ki Ngāruawāhia, te huihuinga o te tangata.

[I return to my life-giving river and its bends, each bend more beautiful than the last. Across the smooth belly of Kirikiriroa, its gardens bursting with the fullness of good things, towards the meeting place at Ngāruawāhia.]

These are the words spoken by Kīngi Tāwhiao, referring to the jewel that is Te Awa o Waikato, each bend more beautiful than the last.

The people of Waikato have a complicated history with milk. Like other iwi, our lands were illegally, excessively, and unjustly confiscated to provide for New Zealand’s dairy and larger export growth. The predicament that we face as Waikato is the mere fact that 1.2 million acres of land was wrongly confiscated off us and the majority of our land is being used for farming. The majority of our people are kaimahi, the hard-working factory workers in these industries like AAFCO, Open Country Dairy, Tegel, Fonterra, etc.

I’m fourth generation. My two grandfathers were also in the meatworks, so it is in our whakapapa, but I find it ironic that our country is one of the largest food providers in the world, exporting the world’s highest quality of dairy and meat, yet its own workers can’t even afford the very own bread and butter that they make on their own land. So it is an experience that we face as the rohe of Waikato and many other iwis across the country. So, yeah, it is a raw reality that we face.

However, while Te Pāti Māori supports this bill, it wishes to place on to the record that although iwi Māori agricultural interests are intertwined within New Zealand’s economy, there is and always has been a desire to transition to new economies of the future. We believe that there is a role and responsibility on the Government to ensure food security and availability for those who cannot afford kai here at home.

Te Pāti Māori’s vision for food security: also a project that we worked on with the Ministry for Primary Industries, prior to me entering in this job, around food sovereignty and helping whānau that own Māori land to develop different types of māra kais throughout their marae that support kuras, so that could be another option for school lunches. But we do support the use of quotas to ensure that the people of Aotearoa continue to have access to these products here at home. While export growth favours those who benefit from it most, food security here at home must surely benefit us all. Nō reira, tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka.

SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. This is something remarkable. I feel refreshed with the love across the House—the love across the House.

Grant McCallum: I always knew you loved cows!

SCOTT WILLIS: We do, we do love dairy on this side of the House as well. In fact, I am feeling rather nostalgic, because when I lived in France, I used to milk goats and sheep.

Cameron Luxton: What was its name?

SCOTT WILLIS: His name? Male goats don’t have teats. And I used to milk a cow occasionally, and we used to make a very nice little cheese called a Pélardon. Pélardon is typically eaten at about one and a half weeks old, and it needs a bit of air, needs a bit of moisture. And what happens with that milk, turned into cheese, over the course of that one and a half weeks, with a bit of moist air flowing across it, is it forms a sort of a crust around the cheese that is like a merino’s backside in shape, but when you cut into it with a glass of red wine, it is fantastic; there is nothing better.

We support this bill—we support this bill—because we see the opportunity here for real value for our small, value-added producers, those farmers who are practising regenerative, organic agriculture who want to access a market and who understand that the markets that they are accessing want our produce to be quality. They want our produce to be full of environmental big ticks—they don’t want gene-edited cheese and milk; they want the real thing. This bill gives us an opportunity to go that way. This provisioning for ensuring 10 percent of licences for what have been, up until recently, ineligible small producers, will help grow those small dairy businesses. That completely aligns with our goals to help adapt to a changing world, to help our rural communities grow.

We’ve often heard the rhetoric across the House of, you know, “We’re ending the war on farmers.” This is a nonsense, really. What we are doing here, and what we all really want, is for our rural communities to thrive. We don’t need to seed division. We need to look for moments like this, where we find common cause to support our rural communities, who want to produce, who want secure markets, who want their brand to be strong, who simply want the arguments to end so that they can get on and do what they know is right. This is a really interesting and valuable addition, this Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill, because it will allow for growth in the organic dairy sector.

We are in support of this bill. We’re in support of this bill because it offers so many opportunities to those innovative farmers who are reducing emissions, looking after their animals, and making money from doing good in their environment—restoring the whenua, replanting riparian strips. This bill is about adding value, rather than volume, but ensuring that that value has an export market that understands where it is coming from and what it can do for Aotearoa and for our reputation.

It would be remiss of me to not mention the other bill that we hope, across the House, we achieve the same sort of support for. We do not need gene-edited milk, or gene-edited anything, in Aotearoa. Kia ora.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, isn’t it nice we’ve all got the warm fuzzies because we’ve all finally agreed on something? We’ve agreed that we fully support this bill to go through the House and to develop and open up our trade and export for the little guys who can get out there and put New Zealand even further on the global stage.

I want to commend the Primary Production Committee for a fine piece of work and getting everyone across the line with this, and to the Minister for his work in this bill. It makes sense for all of us to be expanding our opportunities and heading for growth in whatever we can, so I commend the bill to the House.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tātou katoa e noho harikoa ana, e katakata ana i raro i tō tātou nei whakaaro tahi ki te tautoko i tēnei pire.

E rere rā te kirīmi i roto i ngā kēna nei

Kia tika hāwerewere, kei rere pārorirori

Kia rite ai ngā nama

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, and all of us here, happy and laughing in like mind supporting this bill.

Flow on, cream,

Into those cans!

Go straight in,

Don’t go astray,

So our debts can be paid!]

That is the chorus of a waiata written by Tā Āpirana Nohopari Turupa Ngata in 1924. I had the privilege of listening to a kōrero by also the late great master carver Pine Taiapa recounting the story of when this was written.

As I’ve said, I stand also in support of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. The message that resonates with me is that the dream and the vision remain the same. Ever since 1924, Tā Āpirana Ngata had a vision. He had a vision that remains the same, from my perspective, for people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and people of Aotearoa today. That is the utilisation of our land; economic development for the benefit of our whānau.

When Tā Āpirana wrote this song—I’m going to go through it verse by verse, because, actually, the formula, the vision, and the future of this bill was written by Tā Āpirana Ngata in 1924, so far as I’m concerned. You know, I’ve heard people quoting Tā Āpirana Ngata and referring to Tā Āpirana Ngata—and, in my opinion, not always accurately or fairly, and that is also the whakaaro of his whānau. However, I am confident that, looking down today, Tā Āpirana Ngata’s going, “Ka pai. Kei te whakatinana rātou i ōku hiahia.”

[“Very good. They are executing my wishes.”]

They’re fulfilling the dream that he also made a lot of headway in fulfilling.

So, in his first verse, he talks about how dairy farming is going to be.

Tērā te mahi pai rawa

E kī ana mai he mahi rā,

E puta ai ngā moni nunui noa

E whanga rā e tama mā ki ngā pei marama kua riro kē i ngā nama,

Auē ngā wawata.

[There’s some really good work

We’ve been told about,

Work that will make us

Lots and lots of money!

Just wait, you fellows,

For your monthly pay -

But our debts have taken it,

So much for our dreams!]

Here, he talks about how dairy is going to be such an opportunity, particularly for veterans who returned with nothing. He said here is our opportunity to fulfil your dreams and allow you to fulfil them yourselves through hard work and utilisation of our whenua and kotahitanga. Then he talks about how he made the trip. It’s a shame, Madam Speaker—I mean, it’s wonderful to see you here, Mr Speaker. But he made a trip to Taranaki to see Māui Pōmare and to learn what Ngati Porou, and, indeed, further abroad, could learn from Taranaki about dairy farming. So began Ngati Porou dairy farming, and also initiatives like the Waiapu Farmers’ Co-operative.

I had the privilege of growing up in the Tikitiki Waiapu Farmers as a rangatahi, and so it’s really endearing to remember the true whakapapa of those buildings throughout the coast, in that it was a vision Tā Āpirana Ngata had around dairy and collectives. I think that’s the beautiful part of this verse. We talk about kotahitanga all the time and working together all the time, and here is a true example, of Tā Āpirana Ngata going to Taranaki and learning from Māui Pōmare. So tēnei te mihi atu ki a koutou katoa ngā uri o Taranaki. [So I acknowledge you all, the descendants of Taranaki.]

Then he goes on to talk about the progress:

Tērā te pata rongonui,

He Nāti te ingoa.

Te wāhi rā i mahia ai

ko Ruatorea.

[There’s some famous butter,

“Nāti” is its name.

The place where they make it

Is Ruatorea.]

Then there was the famous butter called Nāti. Nāti is a colloquialism for people of Ngati Porou, and we talk about he wīwī, he Nāti, he whanoke [the Ngati Porou people, strong-willed and daring], prolific, plentiful, and resilient. So that was the name of this butter. You know, by looking at me, you’d think I’d eaten a lot of—you know, the hips; there’s a bit of Nāti butter on there—but no, it’s just other wonderful New Zealand products.

The important part in there, too: ko Ruatōria. This was produced in Ruatōria, and now, you know, we hear a lot about the Fonterras. A lot of the dairy industry has moved to big, major players. Reflecting on this waiata and our history in small places like the Tairāwhiti, the opportunities that this bill offers are very, very exciting, because we don’t have the capacity any more to build huge factories in places like Ruatōria, Tikitiki—Tokomaru Bay, perhaps—but we do have the capacity in our Landcorp cooperatives to provide product that can be sent to be manufactured and to get a fair share of the opportunities that will be provided under this bill, to take good-quality East Coast, Taranaki, Wanganui products to the world, and everyone has the opportunity to showcase what we could potentially call boutique products.

The final verse in that waiata is dedicated specifically to the opening of the factory. [Grant McCallum’s phone rings] I don’t require backing tracks, thank you, that side of the House, but I’ll let you know next time—I’ll actually coordinate. Grant, this is our waiata; you bring the sounds. Heoi anō, the last part of the waiata is:

Haramai rā, Pirimia,

māhau te kawanga

E pono ai te mahi nei.

He mahi pai rawa.

[Welcome, Prime Minister,

You are to perform

The opening ceremony

For this food-producing work.]

And it was referring to the Prime Minister of the day. Welcome, Prime Minister, you are to perform the opening, because it is true that this is an excellent industry for us to partake in. So I look forward to one day the Prime Minister of the day attending openings of many smaller boutique initiatives across Aotearoa on Māori land holdings, on non-Māori land holdings—wherever throughout Aotearoa—to take advantage of this opportunity to take even more amazing New Zealand product to the world.

On the issue of cooperatives, I just want to also acknowledge the fact that I’ve been given the fantastic and exciting opportunity as Labour spokesperson on Māori economic development. So, obviously, this is a very relevant bill to that and to my electorate, and, of course, to Aotearoa whānui. So I want to acknowledge some of the current initiatives that I’m sure Āpirana Ngata would’ve smiled fondly upon—initiatives like Miraka, who produce over 300 million litres of milk a year i raro i te whakaaro kotahi [with a unified understanding]. That is another example of kotahitanga. Initiatives like Maui Milk—and both of those initiatives I’ve been asked: why are people so attracted to the Māori economy? It’s because of the values initiatives like this embrace, the values of kaitiakitanga, the nurturing of the resource that they utilise and trade so that it’ll endure for generations. That is the uniqueness, and that is another exciting opportunity. We know the Māori economy has boomed and it will continue to boom under bills like this because people are attracted to the long-term vision that Māori traders have and the whakaaro that goes into not just producing a commodity, a product, but to portraying the pride they have in their whenua, their taonga, and the moemoeā they have for future generations.

Heoi anō rā, hei whakakapi māku i tēnei wā, he hokinga mahara ki a koe e pā, e Tā Apirana Ngata, nāu tēnei moemoea mō tātou o Ngati Porou. I tēnei wā ko te hiahia kei te kite koe kua pūāwai ō whakaaro. Tērā pea anō ka whakatū mai anō ētahi kaupapa pērā i roto i a Ngati Porou, i roto i ngā iwi katoa puta noa i a Aotearoa. Heoi anō, hei kōrero whakamutunga māku, tēnei te mihi atu ki a koe, e te Minita.

[And so, in closing, my thoughts turn to you, Sir Apirana Ngata. This was your dream for us, for Ngati Porou. Now, the hope is that you can see the fruits of your labour. Perhaps another initiative such as that will be established in Ngati Porou, and in all iwi throughout Aotearoa. And now, my final words: I acknowledge you, Minister.]

Also want to acknowledge my colleagues on this side of the House, in particular the Hon Damien O’Connor, who drove—

Hon Todd McClay: He’s a good man.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: —he’s a pretty good fella, yeah—this bill, and the Hon Jo Luxton for sharing the technicalities of this bill earlier. I couldn’t end the speech without acknowledging my amazing colleagues from the Primary Production Committee. Heoi anō rā, huri noa ki a tātou, tēnā rawa atu tātou katoa. [I acknowledge everyone here.]

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill essentially changes how dairy quotas are administered. It’s not contentious. It’s common sense. It’s all about doubling export receipts. I just want to take time to thank the best select committee in Parliament. Yeah, we miss you, Cushla. We can’t believe you ditched us!

Anyway, I’d also like to thank the Minister. We got the bill through pretty quickly and that was really important because we had to have the Royal assent done by the end of the month to make this bill able to come into effect straight away. I want to shout out to all the dairy farmers, including non-bovine dairy farmers, whom this bill also benefits, and, of course, to the dairy farmers in the mighty Rangitīkei. I commend this bill to the House.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Speaker—and in case you’re wondering, I’m not going to sing.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Disappointing.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: I’ll leave that to my very able colleague here, who does it beautifully, I can assure you. I’ll also leave it to other members of my family, who do it much better than me.

I am standing up to speak, it will come as no surprise, in support of this bill, partly because of what we got started last time we were in Government but also because it’s about increasing access to export quotas for our smaller dairy producers. We think that’s important. I’d also like to acknowledge the work that the Hon Damien O’Connor has done to open these opportunities for innovative dairy exporters.

It’s always good to round out speeches by just revisiting some of the key points—starting, really, with the background and the understanding that dairy export quotas are often negotiated as part of international trade agreements, and some of those were agreed as part of bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations. These quotas allow New Zealand, in our dairy products, to export to designated international markets at better and beneficial rates, and that includes the US, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, and the Dominican Republic. Now, exporters that do not hold that quota can still export into quota markets, but they’re subject to much higher tariffs and potentially other barriers to trade. This is a good opportunity for us, through this bill, to address some of those challenges.

The original dairy export quota allocation system was established back in 2007, so we can see that’s almost 20 years ago. Since that time, there have been a number of things that have changed. There’s been an increase in the diversity of business models in the industry, including—and we’ve heard a lot of mentions this evening—companies that do not collect milk. There’s been a low utilisation of dairy export quotas over the last 10 years, and we’ve also progressed and agreed to new free-trade agreements with the UK and the EU, both of which have quota allocations that dairy sector participants have indicated a high level of interest in.

So if this is a bill about increasing access to export quotas for our smaller dairy producers, then it’s also good to look at four of the key factors of that. One is the export volume history - based allocation. This change has widened access to export quotas beyond just those companies that collect large volumes of milk solids. The next is reserve quotas, where the goal is to support smaller and niche businesses that may not yet have the scale to meet the regular criteria but do show potential for growth. The inclusion of non-bovine dairy—and we’ve talked a little bit about that, and one member confessed to milking goats in France, so there’s definitely opportunities here for non-bovine. This futureproofs the system to accommodate new sectors within the dairy industry. And, of course, really importantly, there is compliance and oversight: this bill also introduces measures for compliance, which are very, very important.

Ultimately, what we’re looking at and what we’re supporting in this bill is increasing access for smaller producers. We’re looking at opening up opportunities for smaller companies here in New Zealand to diversify into niche products. We are empowering regional development, and that’s a really important element—creating new regional development opportunities with tangible benefits to local communities. And, overall, we are enabling these companies to innovate and compete more effectively in global markets. That does increase our access and their access to export quotas, and that’s what we know they need. It rewards innovation and entrepreneurship in our proud farming communities, and that’s why we’re supporting this bill.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just before I do go on to the content of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill, I do want to talk about the dairy industry that has actually held our economy strong for decades and decades. And didn’t it show through the pandemic stages there? At the worst of the pandemic, when everybody was in lockdown, weren’t we a lucky country to have the strong dairy industry that we had? We can thank the many producers that we have in our country. And, of course, the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act, which helped the formation of Fonterra, also saw the development of the global dairy trade, which arguably has actually created billions of dollars’ worth of value for our country as well.

I would like to thank, firstly, the former Minister Damien O’Connor and also the current Minister, Todd McClay, for championing this bill to where it is today. As the previous speaker has just said, this does provide greater opportunities for the country in realising more value but also for the smaller exporters to get the opportunity to get a part of the quota that they don’t have access to at this time and also, for the producers of other non-bovine milk—the likes of sheep, goat, and deer—opening it up for them as well.

This has a lot of positives all round, this bill. Thank you very much to the Primary Production Committee, which unfortunately I wasn’t part of. But their humbleness has shown us tonight that they were a very good and harmonious group to be able to get this work done. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Mr Speaker, thank you very much for this good opportunity to say a few words on this. Probably 30 years ago, people would have thought you never wanted or needed a bill like this. In fact, the world and New Zealand was embarking upon a free-trade agenda that would have kind of gotten rid of all these barriers in some of these very important markets, and dairy has always been a critical industry for us. We’ve done our best, and the trade Minister there and many before him have tried to break down the barriers. But the reality is that there are still quotas or limitations on the volumes of product that can go into markets, particularly around agricultural products, and in dairy in particular.

The US, the UK, the EU, Japan, and the Dominican Republic are the higher-value markets that we sell dairy products into, but there are limitations on volume, and there has been a lot of explanation over the reasons and the technical issues of this bill. I’m not going to repeat those, other than to say that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that this would be in the House, either. In fact, we’d done the work in Government to go out and talk with the industry about the need to adjust what was a kind of an assumed structure—that is, the volume of milk that you picked up from the farmers as a percentage of the total volume; it gave you quota access into the markets. It’s pretty simple: Fonterra got most of it, and a couple of other dairy companies, but there were emerging new and innovative players in the dairy market.

We’d negotiated better access into the UK and the EU, so we, in Government, considered that it was important to take a look at the quota market access mechanisms, and there wasn’t enthusiasm, as I say, from the existing players. Fonterra was quite happy just to get automatic allocation of that. Keeping out potential players and competitors is probably not a bad strategy, but, in fact, it is not a good long-term one for “New Zealand Inc.”

So this bill was designed and had its consultation and its early development. Then it’s come through the Primary Production Committee to be a vehicle for innovation in the dairy sector, and it’s even more important now, given that Fonterra have indicated that they’re going to step back from some of the consumer brand sales, back into an ingredients strategy. I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of that at this point in time, other than to say that we need to look for innovative players in the dairy industry that will add value to milk powder and the core components of milk here and get as much as we possibly can, particularly if we’re going to double the value of our exports.

What this bill does, of course, is it just changes access to that and says that if you’ve exported—and probably anyone exporting outside the main players, anything in dairy around the world now, they’re pretty smart to have survived. They deserve to have some protection and a greater access as of right into some of these higher-value markets.

I go back and say again that the assumption that quotas would be kind of gone by now was a wishful hope and thought back in the 1980s and 1990s. The free-trade agreement that we—actually, Labour—negotiated with China, once again, kind of brought some comfort and ease to the dairy industry to say, “Well, here’s an easy market—a huge market. We’ll just carry on, and the quota markets aren’t that important. We’ve got some going to the US and the EU.”, but, in fact, we’d neglected some of them, and many of the quotas hadn’t been taken up in full. So we were at risk—and still are at risk, if we don’t use these quota markets properly, as intended—that the country that we’ve negotiated them with will say, “You haven’t utilised them all, so therefore we’ll take back some of that volume.” That’s why we need good, robust trade agreements—so that we can protect the access that we have negotiated.

But moving forward, and not taking any of this quota market for granted now and appreciating the fact that these are the higher-value markets, we’ve got to push the boundaries of those volumes in any way we can. So it will be new and emerging companies, and what I’d say is that Fonterra, as an ingredients company, will be providing high-quality ingredients offshore to many of the traders and many of the people who are going to then turn those ingredients into high-value consumer products, which is another issue.

But I hope they have the same enthusiasm to supply New Zealand companies with the same ingredients so that they can develop their own products and export into these markets. They may say, “Well, we don’t have to be quite so generous.”, but we say—as Mr Cameron said here—that Fonterra is a construct of this Parliament. Exemptions from the Commerce Act were to allow the scale, the scope, and the vision for Fonterra to thrive. It’s been through a few ups and downs, but it shouldn’t do that at the expense of others who might want to grow and thrive, as well.

So in passing this piece of legislation, we have to make sure that the intent, as it was at the start of this process, is carried right through when we do allocate this quota market access. Now, that doesn’t guarantee, of course, that people are going to make a whole lot of money going to the market. They’re still going to have to be good individual companies and they’re still going to have to have good products, but, ultimately, this provides a vehicle for the kind of growth and innovation that we need to see in the dairy industry.

Can I just go back and say that, again, in the early stages of this process, there wasn’t a great deal of enthusiasm, as I said, from the industry, and neither was there from officials—they don’t like kind of stirring things up, I have to say. I’m not dumping on them; I’m saying that stability is a wonderful ideal, but, actually, some healthy tension in the market, particularly in our biggest industry, is very, very good for each and every one of us. The Ministry for Primary Industries will be allocated the responsibility to oversee this process, and I hope that they do it—as they usually do—in the best possible way.

The dairy industry is a very proud one. Mr Patterson spoke of it in the way he should have, and it’s very important to us. But if we make mistakes, it can affect our economy very, very quickly. We are about 2.5 percent of the total global production of milk. We trade, or fill the gaps where it’s needed, at about 35 percent of the total global trade of dairy products, which is very significant. But we shouldn’t ever get ahead of ourselves and think that because we trade a large volume, we have a large global influence.

Indeed, the Minister of Trade and Investment, who is also the Minister of Agriculture, is now talking to India and I wish him all the very best. India has a massive dairy industry. They’re very sensitive to traded product around the world. If he can get a quota into India, that will be a wonderful achievement, to go along with the comprehensive free-trade agreement. It might be possible, but, again, we’re making sure that the quotas are into high-value markets that make it worthwhile to have the additional administrative compliance costs with that, so India might not be one of those markets that people rush to trade into. In the meantime, the US, the UK, the EU, Japan, and the Dominican Republic all do provide high-value opportunities for our exporters, so people now will have the opportunity, hopefully, to get zero tariff, and if not, certainly under the quota limitations that are currently into those markets. On top of it, as has been said before, the new innovation in goat milk and sheep milk that we’re starting to see emerge from our country—they too, as producers and exporters, need to be given the opportunity, where possible, to trade into those valuable markets.

So Labour in Opposition supports this piece of legislation, as we did in Government. We wish all those exporters the very best in terms of utilising the opportunities that they now are provided.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s with great pleasure that I rise to support this very logical and sensible bill. As a proud dairy farmer and someone who’s been part of a dairy farming family for many, many years, it’s great to see the harmony around the sector in the House tonight. I look forward to the same level of harmony as we look to pass other Acts of Parliament which affect the dairy sector to quite some degree.

I’d like to commend and thank our Minister, the Hon Todd McClay, for the work he’s done in this space, and acknowledge the previous Minister, the Hon Damien O’Connor, and the work of the Primary Production Committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for the consideration of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments relating to international trade with designated markets

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the committee is considering the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. Members, we come first to Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 9, “Amendments relating to international trade with designated markets”, and the Schedule. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thanks, Madam Chair. This is a fascinating piece of legislation for someone who’s not deeply embedded in the area of dairy trade, but I am interested in competition. From what I understand from this bill—and I ask the committee’s indulgence if I don’t have the depth of understanding of other members in the Chamber—it’s a shift from historical exports as a basis for allocating quota, as opposed to dairy production. In a nutshell, that seems to be the centrepiece of this bill. I guess, from a competition standpoint, I’m always concerned with any rule that looks backwards in giving an advantage, because these quotas are clearly highly advantageous. If you’re given them, you have preferential access to an overseas market. In terms of the business that’s going on in New Zealand, we want the most effective and efficient, nimble businesses that we can.

So my question, essentially, for the Minister for Agriculture is this: is there a risk here that a new business without history of export into markets will be disadvantaged and they will, in fact, suffer greater barriers to entry, because, in dairy, exports are the biggest game in town? Will they suffer a disadvantage because they don’t have an export history?

So if they’re a start-up who’s got a better milking practice and better nutrition and all of those important things and they’re actually doing it better, but because they don’t get preferential low-tariff entry, or no-tariff entry in some cases, will that, in fact, mean that they’re more likely to fail and they can’t compete on an equal footing? Because that’s what a kind of historic, looking-back to say, “What’s your history of export?”, seems to say.

Now, it may well be that, within the organisation, there’s room for allocation of quota to address this kind of competition issue. But, along with, I’m sure, everyone else in this House, we want to see a dairy industry which rewards innovation and new entrants and best practice and doesn’t reward legacy dairying simply on the basis that it’s done it for a long time in a good way. So it’s just a very brief question to kick us off. But I am quite interested in that because competition is critical not only for domestic cost of living issues but also to make sure that internationally we’re highly competitive.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you for the question. The answer is no. There won’t be disadvantage, and I’ll come to the exact reason why in a moment. But, in fact, this will allow greater competition, not take competition away.

If it is based upon the amount of milk that is collected, and then a quota is divided up based upon that, you actually don’t have to be an exporter to get a quota, or you may never use it, although you would have to apply for it. In its essence, what it means is that people who are exporting have a greater ability to get quota. Now, the majority of our dairy exports go to countries where there isn’t a quota. Australia is an example. China is an example. Therefore, based upon your percentage in a tariff line of a dairy product of your exports anywhere in the world, if you reach 3 percent, you are eligible for 3 percent of the quota into a market where we have a quota.

In the case, though, that somebody is a new entrant—they have started collecting milk in New Zealand, or let’s just say they actually are buying milk from somewhere, not collecting it and they’re making cheese—you are right that it would be challenging for them without a three-year history of export anywhere in the world to get quota. But we are creating regulation-setting powers to create a pool that would allow us to recognise that under circumstances, to allow a new entrant to build up that profile by exporting into a market.

The final thing here, though, is exporting is not easy. In fact, as many colleagues will know, exporting dairy products around the world is very challenging. It’s extremely competitive and it is hard to get into markets. In fact, dairy is one of the most heavily protected commodities produced in the world, traded, and certainly one of the most heavily subsidised in the world. We have none of that here in New Zealand.

So the point I guess I’m making is that if somebody wants to create a product and say, “I’m going to export and I only want access to these preferential quotas with lower tariff rates and not elsewhere.”, you’d actually suggest that they are using that to be more competitive than they are because they haven’t reached other markets. Therefore, my view is this is a fair balance.

But the point around “Will it hold a new entrant back having to wait three years?”, we have the ability to create a pool to reserve some of this quota to share where necessary, particularly for smaller players that may never get to a large enough percentage for it to be meaningful in a quota market.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to ask a question that follows on from my colleague the Hon Duncan Webb with regard to the quota. The Minister of Agriculture just talked about those who haven’t been part of the system—making this a bit fairer for them to be able to enter the quota system. I note, though, Minister, that the volume is based on the three previous seasons, for those existing. So my question to the Minister is: why did you land on the three previous seasons as opposed to perhaps the one season beforehand, and not make your decisions based on those?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Mr Chair. In essence, it’s to smooth out differences from year to year—so view it as an average, as opposed to one year to the other.

Coming back to the earlier point, because it’s linked: if it’s merely upon milk production, those who export more than perhaps they might collect milk in New Zealand would be disadvantaged. So this is based upon what you export, not the amount of milk you produce.

If you come to a tariff line—in this case, perhaps it could be a very special type of cheese that has special access to a market around the world and we have a quota for it—actually, you could be a very large part of that export but a very small part of milk collected or production of milk within New Zealand. Therefore, the large companies that bring in a lot of milk would have a greater share of that.

So it’s coming to us desiring that we want to fill these quotas, to sell them, to allow many others to share in them, particularly as they go up the value chain, with higher-value goods. Ultimately, we believe this will give all exporters a greater chance to benefit, as opposed to those who collect the most milk in New Zealand.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for that answer, Minister. It’s really helpful that you are happy to answer after each question thus far.

Hon Todd McClay: It’ll stop soon, but let’s have another go!

Hon JO LUXTON: Ha, ha! Minister, I want to talk about the bill creating a regulation-making power that enables 10 percent of export licences for a designated market listed in Schedule 5A of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act to be reserved for exporters who would otherwise be ineligible and exporters only eligible for fewer than 200 tonnes of product. So clause 7, which inserts new section 26AA, in the bill states, “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister, make regulations that reserve 10 percent of export licences per quota year for any 1 or more designated markets listed in Schedule 5A if the available export licences equate to a volume of 10,000 tonnes or more of product in that designated market.” I’m interested to know why only 10 percent of licences are set aside—why not more; why not less? How did you come to that figure, please?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister of Agriculture for being so engaging on this particular issue. I have a question for the Minister regarding clause 4, particularly subclause (2), and I’m looking at questions between the “eligible participant” and “eligible reserve participant”. I’m just checking in terms of what we’ve heard previously—the fact that when we have our free-trade agreements or closer economic partnership agreements (CEPAs), etc., that there is a degree of flux in terms of the volume that we’re able to work. I think we heard previously that, for example, if we do have an NZ-India CEPA, what does that actually mean?

Can I just check, in terms of the “eligible participant”, whether locking us into something that equates to a volume of 20 tonnes, for example, is an appropriate mechanism, considering that—is it to do with the amount that we’re able to export, or is it to do with the amount we’re able to produce, as the baseline for that determination? So that’s one of the questions I have: whether it’s better to do it as a percentage for the quota year, or as an actual volume for that percent a year. I just want to get some ideas behind that.

I also just in general really appreciate the fact that both the Minister and also the Primary Production Committee took on board the option two and option six of the regulatory impact statement on this, particularly allowing small to medium sized entities, in this case, under option six, to have that possibility of being an eligible reserve participant.

But I have a question from that in terms of the idea that it has to do with export volume history under a tariff heading. I genuinely would like to know from the Minister—because I don’t know this at all, and this is something that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has been very interested in, in terms of non-tariff barriers—when we’re looking at export volume history, whether the idea of the eligible participant, or eligible reserve participant in this case, will only fall under a tariff heading. Are there any sort of non-tariff, dairy kinds of export, etc., or are they all simply tariffed? In which case, if there are non-tariffed exports, how do they fit in this picture, if there are any?

So those are my two quick questions. Number one, this is clause 4(2)(b), around the volume, the “20 tonnes”—whether that is the amount to be exported or the amount that we in Aotearoa are physically able to produce, and whether a percentage would be better. Also, are there are any other non-tariff options, and, if there are, how do they work; if there aren’t, how would the export volume history work?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): I’ll take these in a bit of order. Otherwise the list will be long and I might miss some of them.

To the first one around the 10 percent quota. The 10 percent is just what is deemed to be fair, meaningful enough for those who may not have access to be able to participate, should it be demonstrated that there’s a need—and I’ll come to that in a moment—but not so significant that it hampers those or holds back those that are already exporting. We don’t want to say to the larger companies that are doing very well for New Zealand exporting into these areas, filling their quotas, that, actually, they should get less but, at the same time, just because they’re large doesn’t mean we don’t want innovation and others to take part in the market through access to quota.

For the reserve to be set up, a number of things would have to happen before any recommendations are made. “The Minister must be satisfied that—(a) there is demand for [the] reserve export licences from eligible reserve participants; and (b) there is evidence that those persons will be able to use the reserve export licences; and (c) the proposal [for the] reserve licences is consistent with any import licensing and other requirements in the designated market [they’re going into];” and that there is full consultation where things need to be demonstrated. So it is a situation where somebody may want to access, they can prove these things, and full proper public consultation takes place first.

Around the suggestion of India and a potential comprehensive economic partnership agreement: has no impact at all, except if, in a future negotiation, we reached agreement with India or any other country where a quota for dairy exports is agreed in a trade agreement, and therefore this would need to be modified with the implementing legislation for the free-trade agreement. The same rules we’re setting up here would apply. In the case of India or any other market where we’re able to trade into with a trade agreement or without a trade agreement, that amount of trade is the overall amount that New Zealand exports and therefore forms the basis of how an exporter is able to work out what their access to a quota might be.

The member asked about whether it was a tonnage as opposed to percentage. It actually is the same thing. If you take the total tonnage exported and your tonnage that you export and divide it, turn it into a percentage, that’s a percentage of the quota you would be eligible to.

No, it doesn’t have any impact or effect upon non-tariff barriers. The quota is giving a lower tariff rate, from zero to something below what somebody normally would. So if we take the UK as an example, where—well, actually, China is a better example, where we had tariff rates in place and they fell over time and now they’ve fallen to zero. With a quota going in there, people could apply for the quota at a lower tariff rate so they pay less duty on the way in. Others could still sell into that market with a higher tariff rate outside of the free-trade agreement until the point now with China, where it’s gone to zero, and so it wouldn’t be necessary any more. Ultimately, what that does is it means that people are getting preferential access to a lower tariff rate, paying less duty on the way in to a country via this tariff, but if they want to sell more than that, they’re able to; they just pay a higher tariff rate.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d also like to acknowledge the Minister of Agriculture’s fulsome answers. It’s really helpful to have the Minister so engaged. Certainly, as the MP for Taieri, which is a mixed rural-urban area, I know that farmers in my rohe will really appreciate the cross-party collaboration on this, a consensus of the House, and also a nuanced approach to quotas.

I want to pick up on a point made by both of my colleagues—the Hon Dr Duncan Webb and the Hon Jo Luxton—and also the Minister’s own point about innovation, looking at the criteria that have been applied in making this determination about wanting to, I guess, assess risk. When I look at the regulatory impact statement, it talks about the options that were considered being retaining the status quo; allocating quota on the basis of export history, or production history—it could be on a “first come, first served” basis, or based on an assessment of an expression of interest, or reserving a proportion of quota for participants that are otherwise ineligible.

It seems to me in that list, if you like, there is a bit of bias towards track record rather than innovation. That would seem to be fair enough, but when we consider what has also been raised in the second reading speech by my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor, we’re looking at new products such as goat and sheep milk. The question I have is: why have we got, in clause 4, amending section 5(1)(b), the average export volumes as being the only determinant, because it seems to me—particularly when we also look at inclusion of all markets—that if somebody was wanting to apply a traditional product and then also go into an innovative area where perhaps there is more risk, there doesn’t seem to be a nuance around facilitating the innovation of that. They’re going to be assessed on their track record, and there could be a disincentive to be more innovative around these new innovative products.

I just wondered, in terms of both the regulatory impact statement with those criteria, were other criteria considered to give a stronger weighting towards innovation? Was there a consideration given to exporters who might have a very traditional and safe and tested track-record - type product, who would perhaps be most likely to be going into new markets with a more innovative product, because they can afford to do so? I would never expect new suppliers or producers to be able to do that. And what nuanced considerations were given to that clause? I did hear the Minister talk about the fact that there is a mitigation but I would like to understand specifically in that example how the totality of the three years track record can be weighted towards a less risk-averse regime, so that those who are genuinely wanting to expand into new markets with new products are not counted against. We definitely don’t want to see a chilling of innovation through something that has been heralded across the House as a pretty good bill, thus far.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I think, as has been said, there’s widespread support for the bill.

There are a couple of questions I have for the Minister of Agriculture, through the select committee process and when it came before him—some have been asked—around the threshold of the 20 tonnes, or whatever it is. I just want to know about the innovative players, and if you can take a product like lactoferrin, which is worth about $1 million per tonne, compared to, say, milk powder, or whole/skim milk powder, which would probably be, I don’t know, it could be $3,000 to $3,500 a tonne. There is a difference in terms of the way that is considered, and I want to know whether—officials: if there is someone exporting lactoferrin and they don’t necessarily have an export history, will the value of the product be considered, even though it’s a very small volume compared to what might normally have been traded?

The question for the Minister is: are they going to set up a regime through regulations that protect the small-volume, high-value players—and perhaps the Minister may have a view on that now.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll take a couple here because it might help with further questions. In as far as innovation is concerned, well, look, we’re all in favour of that; I think everybody in the Chamber is. However, if you innovate a new product, it doesn’t give you an ability to sell into a market under a quota, because a quota is based upon a product and a tariff line. So the example that the Hon Damien O’Connor gave around interferon versus milk powder—you can’t substitute a quota for milk powder for something else. It’s a tariff line. In essence, if you look at our trade agreements, if we have a quota into the United Kingdom for milk powder, it must be filled. If it’s not filled, we don’t sell in there at a lower tariff rate. We can’t say, “Well, actually, we’ve decided to sell you some cheese instead of milk powder at a lower tariff rate.” You can’t substitute. So innovation is still possible, but it actually won’t always be affected by this.

To give you another example, and the example of other products coming in from sheep or non-bovine milk product, ultimately they’re a very small part of the market. The majority of what we sell is from bovine milk and, therefore, in part, the reason—so, for the first time, they are eligible for quota. In essence, if they got 5 percent of the quota overall for a product, the likelihood of being able to fill it is very, very slim, given that it is more of a niche product and they’re not producing the same amount as the wider dairy industry is. We also don’t want them not be able to be in that market. So, for the first time, they could get quota where it’s allowed through definition. In part, that’s the reason also to have the reserve.

A final point on this, I suppose, is think about cheddar cheese. Cheddar cheese, under international rules, is defined as coming from buffalo or from cows, from bovine cows. So you might make a cheddar cheese from sheep, but you wouldn’t be able to get access to the quota under a lower tariff rate, because it doesn’t meet the definition that’s agreed between those countries.

On the 20 tonnes, it’s because it is one refrigerated container and there was a view that anything below one refrigerated container wouldn’t be commercially viable or meaningful. But, having said that, there are opportunities, not less than that but with that reserve quota, should regulations be set in the future, to ensure that those who want to innovate and can have access, particularly up the value chain, will have the ability to do so.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and, again, thank you, Minister McClay, for the very comprehensive answer. I just want to pick up something the Minister of Agriculture said before in terms of having no substitutes. Can I check? I understand what the Minister is saying in terms of having no substitutes when it comes to milk powder versus—you know, you can’t substitute part of that with cheese, etc. But I just wanted to know in terms of clause 5—and I know that the Minister mentioned non-bovine dairy. But can I just check for clarity: if someone has non-bovine dairy, would they be able to match—for example, when we’re looking at the eligible participant, we’re looking at two separate issues. But when we’re looking at non-bovine dairy producers, or if someone’s got a mix, are they able to supplement, let’s say, that 20-tonne eligibility participant requirement with, let’s say, 19 tonnes of bovine dairy and 1 tonne of non-bovine dairy? Are they able to mix, in that case, if they have a mix—oh, I’m seeing nods from the officials. Yep, great—that’s really clear. Thank you.

The other question I have is just following up from what, previously, the Hon Jo Luxton was asking regarding this new section 26AA, inserted by clause 7, around reserve export licences. I know that the Minister gave quite a nice and wholesome answer around what the Minister would need to consider in order to reserve that 10 percent of export licences, but can I just check: does the Minister have any idea in terms of how often he anticipates that that is something that might actually happen? Do you anticipate this happening with additional markets that have been opened to us? So, yeah, just mainly a question around the frequency of that particular Order in Council being made.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): That’s a perfect segue from my colleague there with regard to section 26AA, where the Minister of Agriculture talked before about making a recommendation with regard to export licence, and he listed off all the criteria that the Minister must be satisfied are in place before undertaking that. My question to him, and it’s just a quick question, is: how is the Minister going to ensure that all of these things are in place before making the recommendations? What will the processes and assurances be in order to make sure that everything is in place before making the recommendation?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Look, thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I appreciate the Minister of Agriculture’s explanation before. I guess lactoferrin will come under a protein tariff line, understanding that the tariff lines are quite technically difficult. The point I was trying to make is that we are still using a rather crude 20 tonne—so it’s a volumetric measure of what might be able to have access to quota, even if it is under the appropriate tariff line. I’ll raise that point, and the Minister might be able to refer to it.

The second point I’d like to make is that if Fonterra proceeds with its sale of consumer brands and those products are made from New Zealand milk, does the right of access to quota automatically go to the purchaser of that Fonterra sale, or will there be a need for some legislative change, given they will have no history of export, or it might not, depending on who the company is? Just to ensure that we do everything we can to protect the value for New Zealanders rather than selling off something that, again, it’s been negotiated through trade agreements, it’s legislatively protected, legally protected by Parliament, but could be flicked off depending on what the Fonterra farmers decide.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): I’ll take the final question first and then come to the other. So any dairy exporter who sells a part of their business—the new owner of that business would be the same as a brand-new start-up, and they would need to work through the three-year history before they have access to any quota, although recognising if there was a reserve set up, perhaps they would have eligibility to that, depending upon what the criteria had been set at, should there be a regulation in place. So I guess that means that the best way to explain it is that any eligibility for quota is non-transferable; it remains with you.

It comes back to the other reason for that three-year rolling average. What we’re trying to do is make sure that quotas are filled and the product gets to the market, and that the New Zealand dairy farmer or the New Zealand economy benefits fully from this. There are occasions when that hasn’t been the case in the past, and therefore if, for any reason over the three years, you have exported less than your quota—in some cases, it could be significantly less—you therefore no longer have eligibility for the same amount in the future, because someone else has not been able to fill that as you’ve held it, and therefore we want the quota to be filled fully.

As far as criteria around setting up reserve licences and issuing them, it’s very similar to what I said earlier. The only additional piece of information I might offer members is it has to be full consultation around that, and the consultation undertaken with the current holders of export licences, and ascertain historical utilisation of their export licences, and ascertain the potential impact that a reserve export licence will have on their businesses, and ascertain their view on the creation of a reserve portion.

So, ultimately, there will be a number of instances, perhaps, where this would make sense. It would be beneficial. It will help those who are not able to export to do so—in turn, there is a greater return for the New Zealand dairy farmer. This is set out so we can take account of that, but no decision has been made, at this stage, about whether it might or might not be used.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Look, carrying on in Part 1—and I thank the Minister of Agriculture for his explanation—another area of some concern is the quota compliance programmes. Reading through here, and maybe the Minister can explain, it says that if someone has not complied or not obtained a compliance licence, then they can just, as I understand it, through a statutory declaration, explain why they haven’t got one. I guess the question is: given the importance of the dairy industry to our country and of these quotas to our country, then for anyone who is non-compliant in any way or attempts to bypass this piece of legislation and the flexibility that we’re putting in place here, is it good enough that a statutory declaration from them explaining themselves is of sufficient legal credibility, or, indeed, do we need to have a stronger compliance regime in that area? I’ll leave that with the Minister.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): I move, That debate on this question now close.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Chair. Having just joined the debate and going through the regulatory impact statement, which is dated 25 August 2023, it was obviously conducted under the previous Government—as many members have alluded to—under the Hon Damien O’Connor.

As I’m going through the regulatory impact statement and it does apply to Part 1, it’s around section 3 of the regulatory impact statement, “Delivering an option”, and “How will the new arrangements be implemented?” It talks about the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) systems and processes that would need to be worked with: “MPI anticipates that there will be an increase in the number of participants applying to the dairy export quota.” That was based off results of their formal public consultation and the feedback that they received during that targeted engagement from currently ineligible exporters which expressed an interest in access to the dairy export quota.

The regulatory impact statement continues to say, “Some minor changes to the allocation process will be required as a result of the changes.” Then it continues that “The cost of administering the quota allocation system is recovered from participants.” However, they also have a particular paragraph around the impact on Customs, and in it, if I quote the regulatory impact statement, “Customs has advised that additional administrative costs associated with data sharing will be low and can be managed within current resources.”

So it’s quite a simple question to the Minister of Agriculture: that advice that was received by officials dated 25 August 2023, does that still apply, given the Government has gone through cuts trying to find savings within different Government departments? Has he received advice around the impact on Customs in relation to the roll-out of the options which are covered within Part 1; if so, what has that advice said, and will Customs be seeking additional funding in order for them to, basically, manage the new implementation of this policy?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Mr Chair, thank you. In as far as the example that the Hon Damien O’Connor has given, even though a statutory declaration is given, a licence would automatically be declined, although the Minister would have a discretion to decide otherwise, should there be reasons to. So, no, it doesn’t mean that it happens, and, of course, where somebody gives a statutory declaration and it’s wrong and they know that it’s wrong, we actually have rules elsewhere and statutes to deal with that.

In as far as the question about the advice given from Customs , actually, there have not been cuts to the front line. In fact, we’ve ensured that the front line, from Customs to those who work very hard in the front line in the Ministry for Primary Industries, actually continue to do their job, and they’re hard-working New Zealanders that do an even better job as a result of many of the changes and support that we’ve given them. So, actually, the point that I’ve made is that they don’t need additional resource and they can manage the slight changes in the exchange of data. As a result of this, it remains the case, because there have not been cuts to the front line, but, equally, they are already providing data as a result of an older quota regime. This is updating it and it’s modernising it. There are a few more countries that they engage with, as they do with everything. So the advice that I have received is that they’re able to do that within their current budget lines.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to first pick up on the response that the Minister of Agriculture gave before in the questions around clause 8 of the bill around the quota compliance programme. Can I just check if my understanding is correct? What the Minister is saying is that the quota are not transferrable, which means that if they are selling a company, let’s say to someone else, that quota doesn’t naturally go through to the new company because it’s not transferable, which means that that then would presumably go back into the pool of quotas that then other people could bid on or potentially the new company could bid on. So I just want to get clarification around the transferability of quota, because, again, this might be something that’s quite a hot topic right now, particularly pertaining to Anchor.

So the other questions I have in terms of this is they are more kind of getting a few examples from the Minister in terms of what would be some of the options. For example, in clause 8, inserting new section 27, we’re looking at new subsection (3)(c)(ii), where it says, “for any other reason … the Minister is satisfied”. I was wondering if the Minister could provide an example of what some other reasons are where the Minister could be satisfied explaining the participant’s failure to obtain a quota compliance programme.

Along the same vein, for subsection (4), it says that “The Minister must provide written notice to the participant of their decision”, which is understandable, but it says, “within a reasonable time frame”, as opposed to giving a specific time frame. In which case, I would also be interested to know from the Minister on what is considered reasonable and whether they are tied to how the allocation is made in the Gazette under clause 6 of Schedule 5B. So those are my two questions around clause 8, around the quota compliance programme.

But since we’re talking about the Schedule, which is clause 9 of Part 1 of the bill. For Schedule 5B, I am looking at clause 2(4) of Schedule 5B around allocations. I guess the first question I have, which is really interesting in terms of the example, is that if an eligible participant is eligible for 30 tonnes, but then they have excess produce, and then there is additional in terms of the reserve portion, they can add it up into an additional 170 tonnes and equate up to 200, which, I think, if my understanding’s correct, that’s actually a really cool thing to do. But I wanted to check how then would the reserve amount of 200 tonnes or the making up of that 200 tonnes under the eligible reserve participant be distributed across; as in, are they done as a proportion of their eligible participant amount, or they are done as in with any other kind of formula? So I would really like to know: how would people make up that additional amount if it is based off the reserve amount? So those are my three questions.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): I move, That debate on this question now close.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to also ask a question with regard to the quota compliance programme. The Hon Damien O’Connor asked questions with regard to statutory declarations, and other members have pointed out the things that Minister must take into consideration and be satisfied that the participant has, for whatever reason, failed to obtain a quota compliance.

My question to the Minister of Agriculture is: Minister, you mentioned before about allocation being declined, but if someone knowingly and falsely makes a declaration, will there be any penalties for that person? For example, will they be banned from making applications for allocations in the future or will they just be banned full stop and not ever have the option? Will there be a stand-down period for people that do that?

Also, following on from that, I note that when we heard submissions from Open Country Dairy, they raised concerns around changes to allocation of export licences outside the reserved quota portion, that it created avenue for gaming the allocation system. The advice that we received was that quota markets are a small part of overall New Zealand dairy exports, and exporting products at a loss to obtain a share of what are relatively small markets for New Zealand seems unlikely—but “seems unlikely” is not “definitive”. So is there still going to be the ability for this to be gamed in any way? I’m interested to hear the Minister’s answers to those questions, please.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, otirā, tēnā koe e te Minita. We’ve heard kōrero about quotas, etc., and I’ve mentioned the Māori economy and the appeal that the Māori economy is having internationally, but, by virtue of size, sometimes even Māori co-ops can be considered small and emerging. So my question to the Minister is: will there be an allowance or quota set aside for Māori business?

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): I move, That debate on this question now close.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): I’m looking for new material.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just have a really simple question because I’m still waiting for a response to my previous three questions from the Minister of Agriculture. My question is to do with section 4(4) of replacement Schedule 5B, inserted by the Schedule. I also want to get clarity. It says, “Export licences may only be used for products for which the dairy components are derived only from New Zealand origin milk.” But, as we know, there are processing centres of milk and milk powders in other countries that we have, such as Malaysia, for example. But what happens if they use a mixture of New Zealand origin milk and milk from [Interruption]—that doesn’t happen? OK. In which case, that answers my question.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): 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.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Miscellaneous amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 10 to 16—“Miscellaneous amendments”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I am looking forward to, hopefully, the Minister answering my previous questions, but perhaps he’s getting some more advice or thinking about it a bit more.

I have a question that follows on—that is a little bit similar but also different to the one I asked with regards to false declarations and things like that. I noticed that in clause 14, “Section 31 amended (Offences),” that “In section 31(3), replace ‘and is liable for the following, who provides a false declaration in relation to milk solids collection data contrary to’ with ‘and is liable on conviction for the following, who provides a false declaration in relation to the information or documents required under’”; (2) In section 31(3)(b), delete ‘or a term of imprisonment not exceeding 3 months, or both’ ”. So I’m pleased to see that imprisonment as a penalty for providing false information is going to be removed, or is removed. However, what penalties will exist for providing false information?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a question for the Minister regarding clause 15, “Section 42 replaced (Disclosure of information)”, under Part 2, and I’m specifically looking at new section 42(2)(c). Understanding that we’re looking at providing some framework around the disclosure of information, particularly the sharing of information between the Minister and the New Zealand Customs Service, I am very interested in paragraph (c) when it talks about “to allow the Minister to decide whether to recommend the making of secondary legislation under this subpart.”

Normally, when we’re looking at secondary legislation - making powers, there are certain criteria in place to ensure that that secondary legislation isn’t going to be ultra vires. However, what I’m not seeing under this are the boundaries and the framework for such secondary legislation. So my question to the Minister is: can I make an assumption, or is this assumption correct, that the recommendation of making the secondary legislation under this Subpart is on the basis of the information that is provided under subsection (2)(a) and (b) of new section 42, because otherwise, I think there is going to be a broader issue of how broad this secondary legislation is going to be if it doesn’t have some sort of confines.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Just on these two points. In respect of the Hon Jo Luxton’s questions around offences for providing false or untruthful information, the member is right that it is no longer an imprisonable offence. This brings the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act into step with current legislative practices, which require a strong rationale for using imprisonment penalties where there’s a strict liability offence. In this case, it goes to a fine, and a fine of up to $200,000 is the case.

For the Green member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, who has just raised questions, indeed he is correct that it is largely around the sharing of information. The section does a number of things. It allows information to be shared between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service to ensure that they have adequate information when it comes to deciding upon setting that special criteria—so to be able to check whether exports have taken place and volumes, and so on. The rest of that section is around only having access to information that they require as necessary, and data protection, so that they can’t get information that is not needed when it comes to deciding whether or not a special quota might be set.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I have a question with regard to a disclosure of information and new section 42(4) in clause 15. Obviously, we’ve talked about the Customs Service being able to collect information with regard to export volume, etc., etc. But subsection (4) says, “The Ministry and the New Zealand Customs Service must ensure that appropriate protections are or will be in place to maintain the confidentiality of information shared under this section.”

What is deemed appropriate and how can we be sure that this information would be kept confidential, and what is the risk of this information accidentally being shared—so how can we ensure, and what are the appropriate protections?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Madam Chair, thank you. I just follow on with that area of the interface between Customs and the Ministry for Primary Industries, of course, or New Zealand Food Safety. I knows there’s been a bit of pressure on some of the systems. For all Government agencies, I just need to have assurance from the Minister that in dealing with lots of white powders that generally make up milk, the Customs service will be able to distinguish between one lot of white powder and other white powders, because I’d hate to see a mix-up somewhere along the line.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): You were saying you wanted to go up the value chain! I think we’re at risk of running out of questions unless I deal with that last one.

I mean, our New Zealand Customs Service is very, very professional. Indeed, they take their responsibility seriously: both product going out, I suppose, as well as stopping product coming in.

But in this case, when it comes to privacy, there are already a number of procedures in place across Government agencies, and Government ministries take it extremely seriously. There are laws in place around privacy and the protection of private data. New section 42(2) in clause 15 merely allows them to share information where there is a reason to do so, and it instructs them through legislation to make sure that there are adequate provisions to keep confidentiality. They will take this seriously, as all ministries have, and of course we have the Privacy Commissioner to ensure that they’re doing their job properly.

Part 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we come to the Schedule. The question is that the Schedule stand part.

Schedule agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We now come to our final debate, which is clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on clauses 1 to 3, “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”. The question is that clause 1 stand part.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Sorry, can I first get a clarification from you, Madam Chair? Did you say clause 1 only or is it clauses 1 to 3?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Clauses 1 to 3.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: It is 1 to 3. OK, cool. I actually have a question for the Minister of Agriculture around clause 2 with the commencement date. Again, pardon my ignorance if there’s a specific significance of this date. But, normally, we do see that either the Act comes into force the day after Royal assent or the day of Royal assent or, potentially, within a three-month period, etc. I want to check with the Minister if there is any significance, Minister, to the date of 1 May. Is it to do with the way that certain allocations of the dairy industry work? Is it to do with a standard day for exports? I’m just curious about the date.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Well, the 1 May date’s a date of celebration, particularly for our dairy farmers. But in this case it gives the Ministry for Primary Industries enough time to make sure the procedure is in place and they will be setting allocation for the following calendar year—so if the allocation would be available for the 2026 to 2027 calendar year.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is also with regards to the commencement date. We had a submitter that suggested perhaps that changes that have been proposed in this bill take effect and shouldn’t be implemented for five to 10 years. I’m interested to understand the Minister of Agriculture’s reason for not implementing it in five or 10 years, why implementing it straight away, why get it implemented this quickly for the beginning of the dairy season. Was there any reason for that and not holding off for a year, two, five, or 10?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you. Well, I guess the point here is that we’re making the changes to make it fairer so the full quota allocation is utilised, and there will be those there who haven’t got the access they would want to the quota; they’re already exporting, although they may not collect as much milk and therefore to level and balance the system. So if we are accepting across the committee, as we’re all supporting this legislation, that this is a good idea, that I’m suggesting that every year delayed is a missed opportunity for some of those exporters, and we are able to implement it quickly, properly, so that the benefits of this legislation that are widely supported are accrued and delivered from the beginning of next year.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Agriculture): Madam Speaker, I present to the House a legislative statement on the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon TODD McCLAY: I move, That the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill proposes changes to the export quota system that include shifting quota allocation from the proportion of milk solids a company collects from farmers to a system based on their export history. The new system will better reflect the diversity of the dairy industry. It will support businesses of all sizes, stimulating innovation and encouraging value-add to New Zealand dairy products and our exports. The bill will also help to maximise the value of dairy export quota administered by New Zealand for the following countries: the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, the United States, and the Dominican Republic. This directly supports the Government’s ambitious trade agenda.

I’m pleased to bring this bill back to the House today. Passing this bill is an important step forward towards ensuring the continued success of the New Zealand dairy industry, which is a key driver of New Zealand’s economic growth and prosperity. The bill was introduced in October 2024 and considered by the Primary Production Committee, which reported back recently. I’d like to emphasise that during the public consultation in the select committee processes, we listened to dairy processors, dairy exporters, and other stakeholders across the sector to ensure that their concerns and feedback were considered. This has led to a bill that strikes the right balance between widening quota access to a more diverse group of exporters and maintaining quota access for our more established players. In addition, the changes in the bill following the select committee process will ensure that the new dairy quota allocation system is fair and provides the certainty that businesses need.

I’d like to acknowledge the support we have had from all sides of the House and all parties from across the aisle for the bill through the legislative process. The bill is a clear example of the Government’s commitment to supporting the dairy sector to succeed. Importantly, it supports the Government’s goal of doubling the value of exports within 10 years and delivering economic growth for New Zealand.

I’d also like to thank the hard-working farmers of New Zealand and the dairy farmers who get up every day and work hard on our behalf. They are, without doubt, the best farmers in the world. They produce the highest-quality, safest dairy products that the world wants and consumers are willing to pay more for. We’re very proud of them. We’re very grateful for what they do. As the economy improves and fixes itself, it is, of course, dairy and meat and fruit and others in the primary sector that are leading that charge.

Finally, can I thank all members of the House and all parties for their support through this legislation—a clear demonstration that every single one of them supports our dairy farmers.

Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the third reading of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. I, too, would also like to acknowledge all the hard-working dairy farmers across the country in New Zealand, one of whom is my son, who gets up also very early in the morning to milk the cows, and who had a very special day and got married just this past weekend. It was a lovely occasion, and he was very lucky that he had wonderful, understanding staff who took over and milked the cows for him in the weekend so that he didn’t have to, because he had more important things to do, such as getting married.

I also want to acknowledge not just the dairy farmers out there, but all those farmers out there at the moment who are experiencing the hardships that drought across the country is causing them all. It is a really stressful time for our farmers who are experiencing those conditions. I hope that they are talking to each other, talking to their friends, getting the support that they need and realising that we are here in the House passing a piece of legislation that shows them that, right across this House, we back them and we support them by passing this in the third reading tonight.

I also again want to acknowledge my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee. The process that we went through for the bill to reach the state that it is in tonight was a really collegial one, a really hard-working one. Lots of questions were asked of the officials, and they were really good questions, and we had some really great conversations throughout the process. I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor, who began the process of bringing this piece of legislation to the House, and also to the current Minister of Agriculture, who has now shepherded it to this, the third reading.

As the Minister mentioned, this bill strikes the right balance, and we also agree that it does on this side of the House, and we show that by getting in and supporting this piece of legislation by making just the couple of changes that we’ve talked about. I want to acknowledge and thank the Minister for his interactions during the committee stage this evening. It was great to get really fulsome answers and explanations from him throughout that process.

I think this piece of legislation is going to allow new players and different business types into the industry. It’s going to mean with new players that come into the industry—those like Spring Sheep Milk Company, Dairy Goat Co-operative, Lewis Road Creamery, all of those from the sector who haven’t perhaps been able to participate or be allocated quota before. It’s going to give them the opportunity to participate now, therefore also leading to doubling export value as is the goal of not only this current Government but also us here on this side of the House. We also want to see our primary sector absolutely thrive and do well, because we do acknowledge, on this side of the House, too, that our agricultural sector is also the backbone of the New Zealand economy. And without them, things would be very, very grim indeed.

I think it’s really important that we continue to be able to evolve pieces of legislation that do allow us to be a bit nimble and recognise when things change within sectors and businesses, and that we can recognise those that haven’t had opportunities before. And, as I said in my speech earlier this evening, this piece of legislation doesn’t just simply make changes to the quota allocations; it gives certainty to the sector. It gives certainty to the smaller players within the agricultural sector to look to invest. It creates jobs. And on this side of the House, we are very supportive of anything that does anything to increase job opportunities and job prospects for people right across the country.

It’s particularly good to see some of our younger people—those that are in school currently—move into the ag sector, the primary sector, because it’s such a great career opportunity. And anything that we can do to provide opportunities, access, and reduce barriers to getting our young people into these sectors has got to be worthwhile.

This is also about providing fairness and providing fairness to those who haven’t been able to participate prior to this piece of legislation coming in. I think it’s really important that the legislation has been able to, as I said before, be a bit nimble and change as things change in different business models with regard to including non-bovine dairy. And we know, in this day and age, there’s lots and lots of people out there who’ve got different allergies to this, that, and the other thing, and this means that people can grow their businesses with regard to goat milk, sheep milk, as we heard one of our colleagues earlier this evening has experienced, I think was it goat milking or sheep milking—one or the other, something like that, something that hasn’t been that common in years gone by. And I think this piece of legislation is going to really encourage that different innovative thinking.

As I said in my speech earlier this evening, New Zealand is a country of innovators. It’s a country of entrepreneurs. It’s that number eight wire thinking. And this piece of legislation is only going to enhance and encourage that type of thinking, that type of behaviour. It’s going to mean great things for our sector, our dairy export sector, our non-bovine dairy export sector, and it’s going to ensure that the value of our primary sector exports increases and doubles just as we would like to see. So thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Agriculture made a point towards the end of his speech just now where he said that New Zealand farmers produce the highest-quality, safest product in the world, and the world is willing to pay more for that product.

Now, what I think we are finding ourselves in agreement on across the House tonight is the value of that reputation, which allows our exporters to sell product around the world. I really want us to acknowledge that this legislation affects that reputation and upholds that vision and that value proposition—which is also to do, I would say, with a principle of sustainability and the reputation for producing not only a safe and a high-quality product but a natural product.

This draws into starker relief, in the context of this bill, the Government’s programme of legislation that affects the primary production sector. A couple of other things that have been raised this evening, one from our colleague in the New Zealand First Party, Associate Minister Mark Patterson, who pointed out his concerns about the sale of those iconic New Zealand brands. Now, where we acknowledge the value-add that we are trying to facilitate by this amendment that allows new players into the marketplace, that allows new kinds of non-bovine dairy milk into the marketplace—deer milk or sheep milk—the core underpinning that idea is that there are new, valuable brands to be created and products to be created and innovations to be achieved in this space, and this legislation facilitates it.

But is there not a contradiction—as the honourable member opposite highlights—with us allowing those hard-fought, long, many years’ built-up brands like the Anchor brand to be sold off by Fonterra? I am one who also believes that is something that we, as a Parliament, should be more intently scrutinising. What is the logic of us saying that we believe in value-added product and yet we are selling those valuable brands? There are not that many very globally reputable New Zealand products in the world, but one of those classics is surely the Anchor brand. How readily are we as a nation going to be able to create an equivalent of that? And should we not be giving more scrutiny to it being sold off by Fonterra? I agree with the member opposite, the Associate Minister, that that is something that should be of concern to this House. It’s certainly of concern to the Green Party.

The other thing that seems inconsistent with that well-articulated principle of the value proposition that we are trying to achieve, and facilitating greater diversity in the dairy quota allocation, is the Gene Technology Bill. It was very clearly, and has been very clearly, communicated to us in the hearings on that bill that the primary production sector is very concerned about the trade and market access risk impacts of that legislation. They’re concerned about the practical impacts of it on how we are perceived overseas.

Given our dependence on a multitude of markets for 95 percent of our dairy product—and 95 percent of other sectors as well—what is the risk of reputational harm in any degree to which we feed into overseas customers’ or consumers’ concerns about GMOs? It seems to me a legitimate question for us to be considering in this House as to the consistency of the suite of legislative strategies coming from the Government that affect the primary production sector. This is one today that we agree with, but those others are ones that we should be calling into question. I hope that we, as a House, are able to call those into question. Because surely what it is that we are doing today is agreeing that our reputation is hugely valuable, and agreeing that access to export markets is hugely valuable, and indeed why the ability to allocate quota more widely is a thing that is a great prize for smaller businesses that currently don’t have access to that.

Given we accept that value of that reputation, we should be sincerely cautious about harming that reputation with a piece of legislation that is coming up to this House that may risk it through somewhat “as fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, risking our reputation on products that we know consumers in multiple markets are not comfortable with consuming: genetically modified organisms.

This legislation before us, though—I’ll bring us back to it—is an example of what is possible when we do our darndest to find agreement across the diverse political persuasions that are present in the House. It was an enjoyable experience to sit in the Primary Production Committee and work through the different contexts of this bill, to ask a number of questions about the structuring of it. I really want to acknowledge the officials who assisted us in that process, and the thoroughness with which they considered the context of the bill.

The decision to not accept the petition of Fonterra that would have gone to maintain the dominance that they currently have—in fact, it would contradict the intention of this bill, which is to spread the opportunity across more businesses. So we as a committee unanimously agreed that we would not accept that petition of Fonterra, that submission of Fonterra.

That is a good example of what is possible, where we come from a starting point of sharing a principle of values that are unanimous—I would say—in the House that we do want to see New Zealand do well, and we want to see New Zealand do well in a context that upholds the integrity of our diversity, the integrity of our environment, the integrity of our reputation, and that is a thing that we can agree on across the House. The devil may be in the detail, indeed, but I do think that this particular bill is an example of what we should be trying to achieve on a number of pieces of legislation because, frankly, industry does not need the flip-flop of change of Governments—and we know this Government’s going to be gone in 18 months. But the industry wants—

Andy Foster: You were going so well!

STEVE ABEL: I couldn’t resist. You were getting so quiet.

But industry wants certainty, and this is to the point: across Governments, industry wants certainty. This is an instance where the industry can be sure this piece of legislation is going to stay in place. We should be trying to achieve that across other pieces of legislation for the good of the trajectory of the country; for the good of the trajectory of industry.

I would urge the Government to consider what is possible when the Government members and the Ministers are willing to open their hearts—for want of a better word—to the possibility of finding agreement and consensus across the House, because that will put in place legislation that’s good for everybody. Thank you.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Associate Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. It’s been really pleasant, actually, to be sitting here listening to a whole range of people across the House talking about how important and great the dairy industry is. Probably the only downside is that myself and Grant McCallum are the only dairy farmers awake to hear it, so thank you very much for all your kind words.

I would just say to the previous speaker, Steve Abel, that if he wishes to have a say in the Fonterra brands sales, there are plenty of dairy farms on the market right now. Buy one, then you get a say and you can tell us how to do it.

Look, I spoke on the first reading of this bill, so I’ll try not to repeat myself, but basically this is a good bill that introduces a new range of innovative ways of ensuring that our export allocation, our quota, is distributed fairly. That will encourage better export returns and more innovation in the sector. I’ve been part of the dairy industry for the life of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act, and it’s been a continual evolution and it’s been an important evolution that’s shown the maturity of the dairy sector over that time as we’ve moved forward currently.

This is a good bill. It means we’ll be picking up on export opportunities where we may have previously missed out. It will widen the quota access to a lot more diverse group of exporters while also maintaining that quota access for our more established players. I’ll offer some support for the Minister of Agriculture and the changes he’s made to the bill. I think this will improve it.

In closing, the Government’s got a goal to double the value of our exports. We’re committed to growing the industry. I believe this bill will help us achieve that and I look forward to the passage of this bill. Thank you.

Hon MARK PATTERSON (Associate Minister of Agriculture): It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First for this Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. In short, this is a good bill, and that’s fundamentally why New Zealand First will be supporting it and why it has received wide acclaim across the House. It does open access and ability for smaller, niche companies to get into export markets and to build brands in a more value-added capacity.

It strikes a very good balance. I think the Minister of Agriculture explained in the committee of the whole House how they landed at that 10 percent allocation in terms of quota that was coming into this pool, that it struck the balance between encouraging new entrants but also protecting existing rights somewhat to exporters that were already utilising this quota and doing it well.

I do want to pick up on the debate that has sort of emerged a little bit in this reading, because we are missing the wood for the trees. The bigger issue is what Fonterra do with these already established brands. We’re talking, within this bill, of creating maybe new value-added companies or the next Tatua Dairy Company.

Fonterra was created as an Act of Parliament. They were allowed to go around the Commerce Commission, and the decision does sit with the farmers, but it would not have hurt this Parliament and the select committees that I wrote to to examine this decision by their board, hold them to account, and to actually help those farmers, in an independent forum, to make an informed decision. This is a very big decision, selling off brands that are generational at a time where precision fermentation’s coming along that could disrupt the ingredients part of the business. It breaks the direct line to the consumer that they now have with those brands and with the natural milk products that their farmers are so good at producing. So I think that’s a missed opportunity, and I’ve got that on the record, and it seems like Mr Abel and the Green Party support that.

The dairy industry is hugely important to this country and it’s important we get pieces of legislation like this right. Jo Luxton, I think, in her presentation, did talk about the droughts around large parts of the country. Northland, Manawatū, Taranaki, and the top of the South Island are officially in medium-scale adverse events at the moment. I know those farmers are doing it pretty tough.

I was actually up in Taranaki last week visiting some of those farmers. It was a fantastic do at the Warea Heifer Park. Actually, it was really heartwarming—rural community at its best. I’m sure the member for New Plymouth here, David MacLeod, knows it well, but it was a great story of why it was called the heifer park, because it’s actually a bowling green, but the young fella that mowed the green left the gate open and the heifers got in and destroyed the bowling green, so it’s now called the heifer park. But it was great and uplifting and it just showed the community, heavily dairy-dependent, coming together to support each other through hard times.

Essentially, this bill, though, is a small part of a bigger strategic play to double our exports. These are the sorts of things that Governments can do to help foster innovation and brand development. It’s a small piece of a much bigger piece of work—things like enabling more water storage and irrigation, Resource Management Act reform, science, innovation, and genetics.

Steve Abel touched on, when talking about genetics, the debate that we’re having now about genetically modified organisms. That is an important piece of legislation coming before this House, and this House had better be taking notice of that select committee report, because there’s been some very important points made in that report that we need to take very seriously. This is a Rubicon that we’re talking about jumping, and we should not take that lightly, but that will be a debate for another day.

At this stage, we are here to support this Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. I would like to commend the Minister, the Hon Todd McClay, who has brought it through, and the Hon Damien O’Connor, who started this under the previous Government. As I recall from my days, it sounds like the Primary Production Committee continues to be a committee that works collegially for the good of agriculture, the primary sector, and rural New Zealand. So with that, we support the bill to the House. Thank you.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mō te wā tuarua i te pō nei, ki te wāhanga tuatoru o tēnei o ngā pire. Tautoko katoatia ana mātou Te Pāti Māori i tēnei o ngā pire, o te Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. Engari tētahi o ngā kōrero i rangonatia e au i te pō nei, me tōna hirahiratanga, me tōna motuhaketanga anō hoki ki tēnei o ngā kōrero, ko te ōhanga o ngā pakihi Māori. Nā Cushla i kōrerotia i ngā ōhāki, i ngā waiata, i ngā pūkōrero, i ngā hītori o ngā kaipāmu ki Ngati Porou, arā ko ngā hua nui i roto i ērā momo kōrero.

[I stand to deliver the speech for the second time this evening, regarding the third part of this bill. The Māori Party absolutely supports this bill, the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. However, one point I heard this evening, which is important, and unique to this discussion, is the economy of Māori business. Cushla spoke about the final wishes, the songs, the orators, the history of the farmers in Ngati Porou. There was so much worth in those types of stories.]

I think I reflect on the impact that the Māori economy has had in this industry as well. It’s doubled in size at an extremely fast rate. I think the stories that me and Cushla have brought into the Whare tonight from our respective electorates—we have many different waiata, kōrero, pūrākau, stories that go with that, right?—are a prime example as to probably why the Māori economy has taken over, not overnight, but has boomed so much is because we know how to tell a story and we also know how to sell the product.

So, yeah, I think it’s beautiful to have those contributions in the House tonight, and the whakapapa that comes with that to this dairy industry, but the whakapapa that tūpuna have and that rohe have and that pepeha have in that sector. So I do really want to highlight that that’s such a significant area into why, personally, I think that the Māori economy has just taken off, because we have international industries that fall in love with these stories and the way that we have Māori tourism, Māori industries, like Miraka, for example, and Tatua Dairy that have been able to secure those really big contracts, with which we went from 0 percent of the dairy industry to 12 percent with those big overseas contracts that Miraka had installed. Ahakoa tō mātou wā iti ki roto i tēnei o ngā ōhanga o ngā pakihi Māori, kua tino kite i ngā hua, and kua kōrerotia e mātou ngā mema Māori me a mātou rohe, me ā mātou kōrero tuku iho ki tēnei o ngā wāhanga. Nō reira e tautokotia ana mātou Te Pāti Māori i tēnei pire. E mihi ana ki te komiti whakahaere, e mihi hoki ana ki te Minita i kawe mai i tēnei o ngā pīre. Tēnā rā tātou.

[Despite our short time within this economy of Māori business, we have clearly seen the benefits, which the Māori members and our constituencies have spoken about, as well as our history in this part. As such, the Māori Party supports this bill. We acknowledge the select committee, and the Minister who brought this bill to the House. Greetings to all.]

SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. First up, I think I’d like to tautoko Minister Mark Patterson’s caution around the gene tech bill, which is the other big thing that is coming up. However, we are here to talk about the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill, which of course is related to the gene tech bill. [Interruption] Oh they rise, they rise, don’t they? I was pleased to hear that they are awake next door, because for a moment earlier I thought there was dead silence and possibly—but no, they weren’t. They came alive when my colleague Steve Abel made it clear that they’ve got 18 months to get stuff done. And boy, I was pleased to see that they were—

Steve Abel: Animated.

SCOTT WILLIS: They were getting animated.

But I would like to reassure the Government opposite that tonight we are doing something good and it will endure. Eighteen months might be only what’s left, but this, tonight, is something that will endure. And that’s a good thing—that’s a good thing.

So we are talking about the dairy export quota, but the other thing that I think is really interesting with that is what this can do here in Aotearoa. Earlier I talked about my love of cheese and particularly the Pélardon. [Interruption] What are you shaking your head—what are they shaking their heads at?

Hon Chris Penk: We just don’t know what you’re talking about.

SCOTT WILLIS: Does the Government not love cheese as well? Come on. Cheese is a wonderful thing.

Hon Member: Like a merino’s backside.

SCOTT WILLIS: Ha, ha! I do think we have a fantastic opportunity to enhance the value of our dairy produce and to make sure that we as a country also are able to enjoy the fruits of rural Aotearoa.

If we think about some of those cheeses, in my neck of the woods there’s the Whitestone range of cheeses, there’s Evansdale, but I’m particularly keen on Cranky Goat Cheese—they do a very good cheese locally. And I think what this bill does is it gives us an opportunity to think not only about export markets, but it gives us an opportunity to think about place-based production that will help build our brand in those export markets and here in Aotearoa. Rather than just selling volumes of milk and dried milk powder, we can add that value—

Grant McCallum: You’ve got a lot to learn.

SCOTT WILLIS: —we can create the—and it’s true: I do have a lot to learn, but I also have made a lot of different produce and cheeses in my time, and I think we have an opportunity to enhance our own rural economy through appreciation of what we can offer the world.

I think when we look at what other countries do, if we look at the range of Brie, of Roquefort, of Bleu d’Auvergnes, Pélardons, why do we not have the same range that we’re as proud of here that we want to export as dairy produce that we’ve enhanced its value? We’re not just selling milk; we’re not just selling dried milk; we’re doing something else and making it valuable.

I think this point is really, really important because while some of us can go and get good cheese here, we also need to think about what we do with tourism as tourism changes and how we can enhance Aotearoa’s brand both externally and internally—

Andy Foster: New Zealand would be good. It’s a good brand.

SCOTT WILLIS: —and making it unique rather than calling it a province of a small European nation, it would probably be even better.

So just to finish, we are, of course, supporting this bill, as you know, but we also see fantastic opportunity to really build a thriving rural economy based around value, not volume.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, what an interesting, ahem, speech from Scott Willis in the world of cheese. Look, I just want to speak very briefly just to say that it’s, as we’ve all said before, wonderful to see the cross-party support for this bill. In my electorate in Tairāwhiti, we only have one or two dairy farms. But, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, there are very many, and there are many, many, many opportunities to expand the offering in terms of trade and export from dairy and non-bovine dairy products going out into the world. New Zealand farmers are the best in the world. We’ve heard it all evening. Everyone has mentioned that. We’ve had some great work from the select committee, and I think—

Tim van de Molen: The backbone of dairy.

DANA KIRKPATRICK: Ha, ha! The backbone of dairy. I just want to make sure that we all remember this is critical to the mission of getting New Zealand’s economic growth agenda at the forefront of the thinking. And it’s a simple equation: more growth means more opportunities for New Zealanders, which is a great thing. So, for the love of all that’s cheesy in Scott Willis’ world, I commend the bill to the House.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā anō koe, Madam Speaker—

Grant McCallum: Song!

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: —otirā tēnā koutou katoa. I heard a request for a song from across the floor. Have you got the backing track, have you? Now, in my earlier contribution to this bill, I did recount a waiata written by Tā Āpirana Turupa Ngata in relation to his aspirations and vision around the dairy industry, a lot of which did come to fruition, so I think he’d be pleased here.

But I’m thinking of a song for this contribution. The only one that came to mind was “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard”. It might sound funny, but it is actually very relevant to this kaupapa. I’m not going to sing it. You can sing it in your head. You can sing—come on, give me a drum roll then.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

Damn right, it’s better than yours

They’re like, it’s better than yours

I can teach you, but I’d have to charge.

Now, everyone here has talked about how we have the most top-quality dairy in the world. We do. We’re not necessarily going to teach people how to produce it, because that would be stupid, but we are going to have to charge. But, in order to charge for our top-quality milk that makes these milkshakes that bring all the boys and girls to the yard, we have to protect our industry, because whether we like it or not, and we know we make the best milk that brings all the boys to the yard, it’s not the only option available these days.

When you go to Coppers or wherever you go to get your caffeine fix, you will often hear people say, “I’ll have an oat milk latte, please.”, “I’ll have almond milk please.” All power to people who are on plant-based diets, but the reality is, here tonight, we are talking about growing, preserving, and ensuring our Aotearoa New Zealand dairy industry thrives. So that’s what we’re all here for, and that’s why we’re all getting along delirious on all the lactose we’ve been drinking and having a good old laugh tonight.

We do need to protect it so that it’ll grow. Everyone’s talked about growth, and with that in mind, I want to remind us all that in order to grow this industry and our amazing products, we need to grow our people. I think what we need to also be thinking about is the education and training opportunities that we must provide to make sure that not only have we got the best cheese makers, the best milk producers, but that it’s a career for people and we are providing the best quality research to not only make sure we’re putting out the best milk for your full-fat latte—full-fat milk latte—but also that we’re producing product that is sustainable and attractive to diversifying markets. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re doing the research and development phases as well to diversify, as I said, our product offerings.

I went to school, just a couple of years ago, when that song came out [laughter]. Ha, ha! I was gonna say, don’t say anything about milkshakes bringing boys to the yard when I was at school, the opposite side of the House. But the message I received, even though I was brought up on a farm in a rural community, was “When you grow up, you’re going to be a lawyer. When you grow up, you’re going to be a doctor.” Well, first of all, they should have said, “Make sure you can cook for 300 people at the marae.”, but that’s a whole other story. But there weren’t the messages about, “Hey, we really do need more farmers. Hey, we really do need more shearers. Hey, we really do need more dairy producers.” And so we need to put that message into our rangatahis’ minds—not just our rangatahi, but Aotearoa whānui—to remind our rangatahi that, number one, “It’s OK if you want to work the land. In fact, it’s fantastic.” It is fantastic, and we need to let them know not only the benefits of a career in our primary industries but the benefits that they contribute to Aotearoa whānui and our international reputation.

Educate our rangatahi not only about how to work in these industries, how to research to make sure we’re producing the best, how to work hard so that we’re exporting the best-quality products that reflect our clean, green image and our high-quality image. But educate them about how what they do on our land and what they do with our kararehe, our animals, impacts our reputation in the world and the value that they add.

Since cheese came up and we’re talking about how this bill will provide opportunities for everyone to have a have a slice of the cheese, I want to acknowledge Waimata Cheese from Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa Gisborne, a small family-owned company, locally based, internationally renowned. Initially they started, naturally, making beautiful dairy cheese. They have since diversified into sheep-dairy cheeses—a wonderful example of how small, niche, quality producers can have a massive impact on our global reputation, while, of course, doing the things that I value the most: living where you’re from, working your land, and promoting your rohe to the world. And that’s why I think we have to understand that in order to grow not only our dairy industry but the international reputation of Aotearoa and the quality and the value we provide, we have to grow our people.

On that note—it’s a little bit of a segue, but not too far removed; it’s still primary industries—I do want to talk about collegiality today, and, like I said, everyone seems to have had a lot of milk to drink because we’re all harikoa. But, in terms of collegiality, I just want to acknowledge Minister Patterson. Recently, he and I visited Te Wairoa Hōpūpū Hōnengenenge Mātangirau together to talk about growing Māori in the wool industry. So there are definitely opportunities for us to work across the floor in general, and I would, of course, given my latest portfolio and given my electorate also, like us to look at committing to promoting not only Māori careers in the wool industry and across the primary sectors but definitely looking at the opportunities for Māori in the dairy industry, especially when it comes to free-trade agreements, as per Tā Āpirana Ngata’s vision and desires. And I want to repeat what I believe his message was, which remains relevant today: we want to grow our people. They deserve to work hard for a good living. We want to grow our whenua, and we will look after that and vice versa. In order for our reputation to stay strong internationally, we cannot separate ourselves from those two values: looking after our lands and looking after our people.

I’ll reiterate one more time. We talk about growth all the time. And to grow this industry, we have to grow our people across the board, and we have to think about our messaging that this is not just about economics; it’s about the value that this can have for each individual who contributes to New Zealand’s grand reputation.

And don’t forget our milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard, and, damn right, it’s better than yours. I could teach you, but I’d have to charge. Hoi anō rā e te whānau whānui. Once again, I stand on behalf of the Labour Party and commend this bill to the House.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Look, this bill modernises our quota system to grow exports and increase farm-gate returns. It’s about market opportunities. It’s about economic growth, competition, and innovation. It’s great for dairy farmers and it’s great for New Zealand. I am proud to commend this bill to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve heard a lot tonight about the wonderful contribution of farmers across Aotearoa New Zealand. But as the member of Parliament for Taieri, which is in the Otago and Clutha region, I would remind members of this House that Otago was number one out of the 16 regions that were listed as, in terms of performing economically—we were number one, and Canterbury was number two. Explicitly, agriculture, red meat, dairy, and so on were listed as the reasons why Canterbury had performed so well. So I too want to join in the chorus of voices that are celebrating our farmers tonight, the contribution that they make, and certainly just remind members opposite in the Government, who have a habit of not putting the South Island on the maps that they show to their members at various hui, including at, apparently, the big investment hui last week—there was a map that didn’t even include the South Island—that we are here, we are number one and number two, respectively, in the most prosperous economies, and not to forget that. That is very much thank you to our farmers.

I would also like to add my support for the words of the Hon Mark Patterson, who lives in the Taieri electorate. I had the pleasure of campaigning against him in two election campaigns, and also of him hosting various members of our caucus through farmland across the Lawrence area and into Otago. Very generous of him to do that—always wanting to educate people about the rural sector. I think Mark Patterson has made some really good points around the caution that needs to be taken by Fonterra, given that it is a cooperative business model.

Turning to this bill, we have heard tonight that there is collegiality because, really, this is a bill that promotes fairness and innovation. I would like to commend both of the Ministers who’ve been involved: my colleague, the Hon Damien O’Connor, who started the process and, again, the Hon Todd McClay, who did indulge us with really fulsome answers in the committee of the whole House stage this evening. Given that this is urgency and a fairly rushed process, it was great to have that kind of engagement and to have a Minister on top of his portfolio. We haven’t seen that a lot lately, so really just saying that’s really valued, particularly when there isn’t a select committee stage.

What we did ask in the committee of the whole House were questions around whether the balance had been struck appropriately between the fairness of the allocation, assessing for risk and track record, encouraging innovation for new products such as goat and sheep milk—those who may not necessarily have a track record or who may have a strong track record in some areas and not necessarily in others. The Minister did answer our questions fulsomely and satisfy those, I think, very well.

I think we also agree with the things that the bill is trying to achieve, which are around making sure that small exporters can have market access while still ensuring that those who have a track record and who have got an existing supply line out of the country are not jeopardised. It has achieved that well. As I say, the scrutiny in the committee of the whole House stage showed that the balance, I think, has been well struck.

The final point is something that probably hasn’t come up, I think, in much of the discussion, which is just a change that has been made where the bill removes the term of imprisonment from penalties for false statutory declarations. This is a strict liability offence. It’s really unusual these days to have any kind of imprisonment term available for strict liability offences. That is where the burden of proof is changed. Most people in the public realise where there’s a criminal offence, there is a burden of proof which is beyond reasonable doubt and people are innocent until proven guilty. When we have strict liability offences, that changes, and the person or organisation is deemed to be at fault unless they can prove otherwise. That is antiquated, it’s unfair, and it doesn’t sit well in a modern system. So it’s really good to see that officials have made sure that they have removed that kind of antiquated provision from the bill.

So it’s nice to be in urgency on a collegiate evening with a good bill, and we commend it to the House.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and be part of the third reading of this bill; we’re just about there. We’ve heard a lot of comments and we’ve traversed a lot of the bills, so I probably don’t want to speak to that, apart from I’m very supportive of all the work that’s done. But what I do want to speak to are some of the challenges that we are currently exposed to in the dairy industry, in particular regions, namely one of those regions of my home patch of Taranaki and the drought conditions that they are exposed to.

Now, dairy farming obviously has its highs. You could look at the fact that the payout at the moment is at record highs at this time. But that’s only good if you’re producing milk. The drought conditions that are exposed or are present in the number of these regions is a very trying time. Mark Patterson mentioned that he was in Taranaki last week for a visit to Taranaki, and I can tell you that was very well received. A lot of people don’t understand the pressures that come on to dairy farmers in such times as this. It’s not just the caring for the animals and endeavouring to find the supplementary feed when there’s a lack of a grass, but also the mental toll that it plays on individuals in the dairy industry. We should always remember that communication—looking after one another, looking over the neighbours’ fence and talking to your neighbour—is an important part in such trying times. So it’s pleasing, for what I’ve experienced, of being at farmers’ barbecues and having that communication.

Back to this bill here, the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Export Licences Allocation) Amendment Bill. This here is a great bill. It is providing value to more than just the bovine dairy industry; it’s also talking about sheep, goat, and deer. It’s valuable to all of them, it provides diversity for the smaller players, and I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think I might be the last Labour speaker on this piece of legislation. It is good to be able to support a sensible piece of legislation—actually, just to remind the House that it’s once more a positive initiative from Labour to help the dairy industry. And I do have to remind the House and the industry that going back to the 1930s, guaranteed minimum price, the formation of the Dairy Board in the 1950s, you had in the 1980s the Labour Government taking away subsidies.

It was interesting to hear the ACT member trying to say that, you know, we should just listen to the farmers and leave it in the hands of the farmers. In fact, I went to one of those protest meetings and the President of Federated Farmers at the time, Sir Peter Elworthy, as it was, he got up and told the farmers what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. Mr Hoggard should perhaps take that on board. They needed to hear that you could no longer just carry on farming on the basis of subsidies. That intervention by Labour, an important one, actually reset the agricultural sector to be one of the more efficient, if not the most efficient, across the globe.

So once again, the formation of Fonterra by a Labour Government enabled the consolidation so that we truly were leading the world. We did the UK and the EU free-trade agreement (FTA), and I know the Government has with other good FTAs. The Labour Government got rid of Mycoplasma bovis at considerable cost. These have all been positive interventions for the dairy industry, our single biggest industry in this country. And once again, this piece of legislation is from an initiative carried through by the Government to actually open up export opportunities for new and innovative players. That’s a good positive step forward, but it can’t be just taken for granted.

The point that I make in this final speech is the one of leadership. To go back to what Minister Hoggard said—you know, “just leave it to the farmers.” Well, the farmers do a very good job of farming, but Parliament must take the responsibility to show some leadership and intervene from time to time when it is necessary.

We had from the New Zealand First Minister, Minister Patterson, making some very good points, praised in this House for his support for the dairy industry, even though he’s a sheep and beef farmer. Good on him. It doesn’t always happen across the board, but he’s done that. But he then raised some points about the sell off of the consumer brand business of Fonterra, and many of us share those concerns. It might be left to the hands of the farmers ultimately, but actually there is a broader responsibility for Parliament to intervene in the single biggest industry, the most important industry in our country. So you can’t just “leave it in the hands of the farmers”. It has to be in conjunction, in partnership with the farmers.

Todd Stephenson: That’s not what the bill is about.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: But what had—oh, the Minister is saying “Refer to the bill.” Is that what he’s referring to—

Todd Stephenson: I’m not a Minister, but thank you!

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Or the member is. Can I just say that when left to the farmers, we saw the doss of the wool levy, and Minister Patterson himself is now trying to address an issue.

Partnership between farming and business sectors and Parliament delivers the most success, and always has done, across our economy. This piece of legislation is once again a sign of a positive partnership between Parliament and the industry. But there will be times when leadership is required, and if Minister Patterson thinks that it’s important to retain that, he has to, as a Minister, step up and take that leadership role. That is really, really important. If others hadn’t done that in the past, we would still be languishing in the inefficient, low-value production systems that were a hallmark particularly through the 1970s and the 1980s.

I’d just like to say that this is a good piece of legislation. It’s not huge, but it opens the door to opportunities. It doesn’t guarantee success. And the implementation of this by officials, by Governments, by the Minister, and by the industry itself—hopefully, in a cooperative way—will deliver added value to each and every bit of milk that is produced in this country. That’s what we need if we’re to double exports in this country, and we want to see exports grow as well. But it’s an ambitious target. It will require the extraction of every bit of value from every drop of milk in our country, along with all the other industries that export, Minister. I think that Labour has clearly stated its support for this bill and support for the dairy industry. Kia ora.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Well, it’s great to be joined, as a dairy farmer in the House—a few dairy farmers left in the House—by yourself, Madam Speaker, as a dairy farmer. Welcome.

This is very important, and I’m very proud to stand here and be the last speaker on this bill. One of the reasons this sort of thing is so important is that the dairy industry has been around for over a hundred years, and it will be around for a hundred more. As someone whose family has been farming—and I’m a fourth-generation farmer, and my son recently decided he doesn’t want to be a valuer and would rather go and be a dairy farmer. He’s taken up dairy farming and is working on a dairy farm in Canterbury. I just think that’s why this sort of thing is so important—that we get this right so that future generations are able to participate in a great sector.

I look forward, actually, to going through and finding in the Hansard record all the great comments that have been made around the House about the dairy sector, because I’ve been very happy with that and I look forward to quoting them back to people when we move on to more contentious pieces of legislation! Anyway, I think I’ve said enough. The whip thinks I’ve said enough! I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 6 March.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Last time we were on this piece of legislation, we were up to the ACT call, call No. 4. I call Todd Stephenson.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise this evening and talk on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the work of the Social Services and Community Committee, ably chaired by Joseph Mooney, the second-best MP based in Queenstown. I also want to acknowledge the work of Laura McClure—

Hon James Meager: Laura McClure moved?

TODD STEPHENSON: —the ACT member on that committee.

Hon James Meager: Did she move to Queenstown?

TODD STEPHENSON: Thank you—quiet over there in the cheap seats! I want to note that there were some submissions in relation to this bill—five in total, I think; one actually heard orally. But all the recommendations made by the select committee were actually passed unanimously.

This is a really good piece of legislation, this bill. It’s actually updating the Social Workers Registration Act 2003. Actually, this 2003 Act had a really excellent, built-in review mechanism where it had to be looked at every five years. This amendment bill is a result of that. We’re making sure that our social workers—who are a really important group in our community, delivering really important services—are up to standard and, in fact, the regulations that they operate are up to scratch. So it’s good that this bill makes some modifications, some updates, and some very simple but important legislative changes, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

TANYA UNKOVICH (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. I was also on the Social Services and Community Committee, so we saw this bill through the House. It wasn’t contentious. There were only about five submitters. A very good summary by my colleague Mr Stephenson on what the bill does.

I would really just like to take a couple of moments to acknowledge all of the social workers out there. It is a very difficult job, and when you’re in the helping profession, you do carry a lot. It is one of the reasons why social workers need supervision. Some of that is covered in this piece of legislation, but I really just wanted to acknowledge the good work that they do, and I’ll speak a little bit more in the third reading, so I commend it to the House. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

TAKUTAI TARSH KEMP (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. E te Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. I rise this evening to speak in support of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill on behalf of Te Pāti Māori. I want to make special mention of my colleague and the member for Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, for participating in the consideration of this bill for the Social Services and Community Committee in my absence.

Our people, our whānau, our mokopuna have long suffered under a system that has too often failed to uphold their dignity, their rights, and their tino rangatiratanga. We acknowledge that social workers play a really vital role in our community, supporting whānau through times of crisis, advocating for tamariki, and working tirelessly to ensure that our people receive the best-quality care they deserve. However, this work must be done in a way that reflects te ao Māori, is accountable to our communities, and upholds the mana of those it serves. This bill strengthens the regulatory framework that governs social workers in Aotearoa. It is essential that those entrusted with the wellbeing of our people are fit to practice and hold to the highest standards of accountability.

By broadening the grounds of interim suspension, enhancing the investigative powers of the Social Workers Registration Board, and enabling professional conduct committees to take multiple actions on complex cases, we ensure that there are robust safeguards in place to protect our most vulnerable whānau. A key provision in this bill is the transfer of investigative functions from the Ministry of Social Development to the Social Workers Registration Board. We view this as a positive step towards greater independence and oversight, ensuring that those who regulate the sector are dedicated specialists rather than Government officials with conflicting responsibilities. However, Te Pāti Māori remains vigilant, and we must ensure that Māori voices are embedded in this process, that our tikanga is respected, and that our social workers are not disproportionately targeted by these provisions. Given that the Social Workers Registration Act 2003 mandates a review every five years, we will be keeping a microscope on this space to ensure that the aforementioned be true, ensuring that the system remains fair and just for our people.

It would be amiss to not mention the practices in place within Whānau Ora and the work being done by the network up and down the motu. I would hope that for the greater good of our nation and an increasing need for social services, the board will lean into the Whānau Ora way in their delivery of services. It continuously proves to be effective when meeting the needs of our people. Furthermore, the bill adds a monitoring function for prescribed educational qualifications. This presents an opportunity to further incorporate Māori-led social worker training, ensuring that our whānau are supported by professionals who understand tikanga Māori and operate within a framework of whanaungatanga and manaakitanga. We call upon the Government and the Social Workers Registration Board to work closely with Māori social workers, educators, iwi, and community leaders, to ensure that qualifications meet the needs of our people.

While we support the intent of this bill, Te Pāti Māori remains committed to advocating for a broader transformation of our social services. Our ultimate goal is the full realisation of “by Māori, for Māori”—solutions where whānau are empowered to determine their own pathways and where social services work in partnership with our people, rather than imposing State control over their lives.

Ka tū māia mātou ki te tautoko i tēnei pire. Heoi anō ka whakatūpato tonu mātou kāore e mutu tā mātou whawhai mō te tika, te mana me te rangatiratanga o tō tātou iwi. Kia ora.

[We will stand confidently to support this bill. However, we extend our warning that we will not stop fighting for justice, for the authority and autonomy of our tribe. Thank you.]

KAHURANGI CARTER (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa in support of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. This bill makes a number of minor yet important amendments to the Social Workers Registration Act, improving the processes that govern social work in Aotearoa.

Social work is an essential and often undervalued profession. It exists at the front lines of our social support system, working with whānau in crisis, supporting people through complex and often traumatic circumstances, and advocating for the wellbeing of our most vulnerable. Social workers deserve a system that upholds professional integrity, protects their mahi, and ensures public confidence in the profession.

This bill allows for the Social Workers Registration Board’s mandatory review of the Act in 2020. Many of the changes are technical, designed to fix inconsistencies, streamline processes, and modernise language, including replacing outdated gendered terms with gender neutral language. The Green Party welcomes these small but very important meaningful updates.

More broadly, this bill strengthens the integrity of the profession by improving processes around professional conduct and accountability. These changes will ensure that investigations into social workers, whether related to the Social Workers Registration Act, the Health and Disability Commissioner Act, or criminal proceedings, can begin as soon as concerns arise, rather than waiting for formal action to be under way. This is a practical step to safeguard public safety.

The bill also makes changes to how interim suppressions are actually managed. Instead of the current rigid 10-day extension periods, suspensions will now align with the time required that it takes for the investigation or medical examination to be complete. This reduces unnecessary delays while still ensuring due process for social workers under investigation. Furthermore, the bill empowers professional conduct committees to make multiple determinations in complex cases rather than being restricted to a single outcome. This will allow for a more nuanced decision-making that better reflects the realities of social work.

The Social Services and Community Committee examined the bill and unanimously recommended the bill. In the first reading, the Greens raised questions about whether these changes would be used more frequently due to resourcing pressures on social workers. The select committee report didn’t directly answer this, but its scrutiny of interim suspension provisions, particularly the time frame adjustments, ensures the process is more workable for both social workers and for the people they serve. The committee paid particular attention to the interim suspension provisions, given their significant impact on both social workers and public safety. The current law only allows 10 working days for a suspension notice, often requiring multiple extensions. The bill allows the board to set a reasonable time frame while ensuring that reviews can occur as needed.

The committee also clarified the process for transferring investigative powers from the Ministry of Social Development to the board, ensuring that all relevant information, including case notes and assessments, is included. The board intends to review suspension time frames again in its 2025 review, ensuring further refinement if needed.

This bill is not a radical reform, but it is a necessary one. It makes practical improvements to enhance the effectiveness of social work systems and support those working tirelessly to uphold the rights and dignity of people across Aotearoa. The Green Party is pleased to support it.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s good to see cross-party support for the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. The bill seeks to achieve much-needed and better regulatory oversight over social workers, who deliver valuable health and social services. It protects them, and it protects the public. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): That’s probably one of the worst speeches I’ve ever heard from that man, Paulo Garcia. He can do much better than that; I know that for sure, because I’ve watched him chair at select committee, so he knows what he’s talking about.

Yeah, so in terms of this, though, this is our annual review that we’re doing. This is a bill, I suppose, that the whole House can get behind, and there’s not a lot to argue with the other side about, but I will use all my time tonight just to irritate the other side.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Make it worthwhile irritation, then.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ll try my best, Madam Speaker—I’ll try my best. The last review took place in 2020 under the wonderful Labour Government, and this bill makes 16 minor policy and technical amendments to the Act. There are some really interesting changes, I think. I was looking through it, and particularly in the ethnic cultural area, we’re making some specific changes. We’re making 16 minor policy and technical amendments.

But one of the changes that I think the whole House would find very interesting, particularly in the National Party and, I think, New Zealand First, is replacing terms like “he” or “she” with gender-neutral terminology. I think that’s a fascinating change there, and I was sort of wondering how it got through the coalition Government given their—you know, I was wondering if New Zealand First had had a look at this, because it sort of goes against everything that the Deputy Prime Minister has been talking about in terms of woke and not putting up with woke. I can’t even see a New Zealand First person in the House, which is a shame—oh, there is one over there.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: New Zealand First did speak on the bill, and there is a New Zealand First person in the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, there. So, yeah, I’ve got to say to that member: how on earth did he let this get by him? Replacing terms like “he” or “she” with gender-neutral terminology, of course, is something that Labour and the Greens support 150 percent, but to see that the Greens sold their supporters out badly just to try and be part of the coalition—very sad, really, but shows you that they’ll do anything in terms of staying in power. Sad to watch the Greens giving up all their principles with regards to this. And they—

Todd Stephenson: The Greens—the Greens?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, sorry, not the Greens—sorry. New Zealand First is—

Todd Stephenson: Oh, well, you just said the Greens twice.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, thank you so much for your correction. Anything else you’d like to correct? But what I’m saying is when I look at this and I think—

Hon Matt Doocey: That’s the problem with labels.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: That’s true, but you agree with the label, so that’s good. In terms of these terminologies, it does show you how hypocritical some of these parties can be. It does show you, but anyway, gender—I think changing these terminologies is very, very good, very woke; well done—well, according to New Zealand First, but very appropriate for us, very appropriate for us, because we’re on the right side.

In terms of social workers, this is a very important kaupapa for myself, because I managed many social workers in my previous role as a chief executive with our urban Māori authorities. I had many social workers who worked with me through the years. The key here with social workers is they go beyond the call of duty many times, particularly—and I heard the member over there talking about Whānau Ora, and I salute our Whānau Ora workers tonight, who have done so much with different whānau.

One of the things that they have been pursuing is pay equity. Pay equity is something that we were always addressing as a Labour Party Government, along with the Greens, who were supporting us, and New Zealand First, who, sadly, forgot their roots and sold their soul to the National Party, who would do a deal with anyone just to get in. Pay equity was an area that we were pushing because social workers have always been underfunded, undervalued, and they have been doing such wonderful work at ground level. When I had social workers working with me, not only were they looking after things between 9 and 5; they were looking after whānau between 9 and midnight. Many times, those social workers would go out of their way to look after whānau. I had social workers who looked after abused women, who looked after family, who went that extra mile, and we were looking always as a Government at improving their wages and their conditions. It was one of the things as a former Minister I was really proud to be part of, Labour’s push in terms of pay equity.

We’ve got to ask tonight: what is this Government doing to ensure that our social worker workforce has been compensated for the extra work? The other side of that is we have a real job shortage, we have a real worker shortage. So, again, I’d ask the question: what is the status of the social worker workforce strategy? I would say that it is at zero because this Government has not helped workers. We have workers’ wages lagging, we have the minimum wage not being increased at the rate that the Labour Government was pushing things along at, and we have social workers being totally neglected. So I’m really pleased to be able to take this opportunity. Yes, of course we support this bill, but it is a reminder to the House that yes, while we support it, there has to be a much broader and wider strategy with regards to social workers. Are they getting pay parity? Is there any equity in terms of social workers? What is happening at Oranga Tamariki? How are social workers being affected there? How are Māori social workers being affected?

The sad thing is this Government doesn’t care. They just tick the boxes off. They tick the boxes, they kick bureaucrats out; they don’t have any strategies in terms of social worker shortages. There are no targeted strategies with regards to what’s happening with Māori and what’s happening with ethnic—it’s a really, really sad thing happening.

The fourth Experiences of Care report that was released by Aroturuki Tamariki, the Independent Children’s Monitor, showed that the Oranga Tamariki social workers were still not visiting kids in care as often as the national standards say they should. Again, this is particularly because of the pressures being placed on them by the Government’s cuts. The Government is not understanding that if you do not fund and strategise with our workers and our social workers at ground level, the flow-on effect will be that social workers will not be able to get out there and assist whānau. We have seen this particularly happening at Whānau Ora level, and right now in terms of Whānau Ora there are a lot of questions being asked about the future and what’s going to happen in that area.

So when we talk about this bill, yes, obviously, we’re going to support the technical amendment changes—of course we’re going to support that—but what I want to remind the Government today is that it’s not just about technical changes for social workers; it’s about a broader strategy. What’s happening at the coalface? Are we getting pay equity? Is there a strategy around workforce development? Does this Government care? We know on this side of the House that they don’t care. Everything suggests and tells us there is a—

Katie Nimon: That’s not on.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: That is a fact; I’m sorry to inform you, but you are an uncaring, useless, hopeless Government who don’t care about workers at the coalface, don’t give a damn, and, basically, you’re just trying to tick things off. You sacrifice your principles, you have idiots in ACT over there who wouldn’t know a social worker if he fell over one—probably never met one in his life. Basically, you’re a shameful Government and you’re a disgrace to this nation.

But I’m very happy to support this bill tonight, a bill that was promoted by a Labour Government. That’s the good thing, that Labour promoted this. The other side can go and jump in the lake. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): I think I’ll just bring us back to the bill. We support the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. I will just clarify that on this side of the House we are very caring and very efficient and into very practical legislation, which, of course, this is. So without any further ado, I’d like to also acknowledge the amazing social workers we have out there, working in our communities. I thank the Social Services Committee for all the work they’ve done on this bill. It’s great to see the cross-party support on it. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Kia ora. I was on the committee, so am very happy to speak to this bill. Actually, with all due respect to the previous speaker, Catherine Wedd, it’s all good supporting minor and technical amendments, but if the member was not listening to the previous contribution and not understanding the seriousness of the situation—

Hon Member: Cos it’s nothing to do with the bill.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: It had everything to do with the bill.

Hon Member: No, it didn’t.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: It has everything to do with social workers. If the other side of the House cannot understand and cannot connect the dots to the issues and the challenges that social workers are facing, what is the point of having a registration board who has all of these powers that we have in this piece of legislation if there is a workforce shortage? So I might just start there, because the sector is struggling to meet the ever increasing needs of children, whānau, and communities.

In a recent workforce survey that was done, around 13 percent of the workforce indicate they are planning to leave or to reduce their hours. There is no strategy. There is no workforce strategy for social workers. Was the House listening to a previous contribution where it has been pointed out in the most recent care experience report, and I quote, “The Independent Children’s Monitor showed that Oranga Tamariki social workers were still not visiting children in care as often as the national standards say they should.”? And this is partially due to the pressures placed on them by this Government’s cuts.

Laura Walter’s report said, and quotes Jones: “Social workers were unable to provide the care and support they wanted due to cost-cutting measures, perceived hiring freezes, a lack of resources and training, social and mental health workforce shortages, a siloed approach to care and service funding between government agencies, and prevailing societal attitudes.” The Monitor also noted that “recent internal restructuring of Oranga Tamariki had pulled focus away from front-line work, while scarce resources were even harder to secure following the changes to commissioning and contracting.” So I did find that last contribution disappointing, and in fact the heckling around the House, because I think they were trivialising the points that the side of the House was making and the connections to the sector that we are talking about.

Let me come to acknowledging the social workers and the very important work that they do, and that we know how much pressure they are under because of the decisions that this Government is making. So it’s fine to make some minor and technical amendments to a piece of legislation for them, but why is that side of the House not speaking up about the changes and the pressures that the workforce are experiencing? Didn’t hear any of that in the 30-second contributions that everyone chooses to give tonight.

Now, as was said by this side of the House, these technical and minor amendments come out of a review that was done under Labour’s time, so of course we support these changes and we support this legislation tonight. But I did want to use my time to remind the House of the wider challenges and pressures that the social workers face and that we should be mindful of that when we are passing this legislation, because some of the provisions in here are to deal with things that can happen when social workers are put under pressure. If that side of the House can’t see the connection to it all, they are not paying attention.

Hon Member: We certainly are.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: They are not paying attention to all of the information.

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier): Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. I really enjoyed speaking on the bill in the first reading. I’ve been pleased to see what has come out of the select committee process—and, as we’ve made very clear, some very technical amendments that will help professionalise a very growing, increasing-need sector. So, with that, and to reflect the sentiments of my colleagues, with the support of the social worker sector and profession, I commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. First of all, happy birthday.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

HELEN WHITE: I want to draw on the comments of my colleagues about what the purpose of the bill is. Really, it is a very serious one, because we absolutely know we’ve had problems with abuse in care for children and that we have real needs in our community, and social workers are an integral part of fixing that situation.

I want to go to a report that was written by the Independent Children’s Monitor and just read a short segment of that. It says, “The State should be a model parent.” It then goes on, later, in a couple of paragraphs, to say, “To improve compliance in 2024/25 and beyond, Oranga Tamariki must address how it can free its social workers to do what they are trained to do—being there for tamariki and rangatahi, completing thorough assessments and plans, supporting caregivers, and ultimately helping to keep tamariki and rangatahi safe, loved and cared for.”

Now, I wanted to start with that because it’s a reminder of the purpose and the role that a social worker plays and how critical it is. Social workers don’t, of course, only work in the situation of caring for children, but they’re also out there in our health system, they’re all through our community organisations. And this bill is about making sure that we have enough checks and balances in the system, run by the board, so that there can be a job done in terms of keeping social workers within the bounds.

In this bill, there are rules about things like interim suspension—there’s a movement away from a 10-day interim suspension to a 10-day suspension and then a reasonable amount of time necessary—the board having a right to investigate social workers, and the new role of that board to look at educational qualifications but also to monitor them.

Now, we’ve got about 7,520 practising social workers at the present time. We didn’t start with this kind of registration system—that’s actually really new. In 2003, when the Act was put in place, there was no such mandatory regulation. It’s actually only since 2021 that we seem to have mandatory regulation.

I want to talk about the acknowledgment—and lots of colleagues across the House have made it tonight—that this is a really hard job. While we’re putting in place structures which mean that social workers who get it wrong, or who are unsafe for our children or for those that they’re caring for, are able to go through a process, we also have to acknowledge that it’s one of the hardest jobs. I wouldn’t really want to do it myself. It’s so hard, I think it compares unfavourably, in terms of the burden it has, to the job we all do. I think social work is a job that’s still well underpaid. Actually, the latest survey suggests that those in the profession are often burned out, there is a high work-load, there is a perception of poor pay—and I think that bears out: there is poor pay in the sector. As a result, we’ve got people moving out of it all the time. It’s a profession where the surveys that are done are well attended—people will tell the board what is going on for them—and the latest survey suggests that more of those social workers feel unsafe due to abuse from clients. So it’s a really high-stress profession. It’s also a profession that’s 85 percent women. Colleagues today have talked about the fact that the low pay of those social workers is very likely connected to the fact that it is a female profession.

I think we’re moving into a time when we’re going to have to have a really big rethink about the way that we treat workers doing this kind of work. Because while we definitely need those kinds of boundaries around a job and a process of education, etc., we also just need to pay people better and treat them better and be more reasonable about what we expect of them. We’re moving into a time when we’re going to have automation in a lot of jobs, and these are the kinds of jobs that must be done by human beings and they must be done well by human beings. At the moment, we seem to have really devalued them. That’s the moment in time we’re at now. I’m hoping that in the future, we will move away from that model and we’ll see a flip: jobs like this will become much more highly valued and will pay people better in our society. And I do think that will affect the quality of the people that we get doing this work—or will affect the quality of the work they do, is probably a better way of putting it. Because as long as we devalue the work, as long as we put people under huge pressure, as long as every time the Government changes there’s a slash to the budgets of people, then, actually, we will end up with trouble keeping people and keeping people working well in this area.

So while I am very supportive of this piece of legislation going through with the structures that it’s got, I do think there’s another harder piece of work to be done, which is getting the pay up of these workers, making sure that we are really thinking about our value system and what we value. From my own personal experience, I have parents who are ageing—my father’s 93. I think that the people who I value the most are the people that are assisting my parents stay in their own house. It’s incredibly important work, but it’s also work that could be badly done or it could be well done. At present, the people who do this kind of work are well undervalued in our remuneration. If we continue along that line, then I think we will see patchy care. So my challenge to this House is—yes, we’re all in agreement here, but it is time for us to really consider whether we need to review the way that we work and the way we structure the pay that we pay people who do this work.

I would like to extend my thanks to the social workers who are doing a good job in very difficult circumstances. As I’ve said, I just do not think it’s a very easy job; I think it’s become quite a risky job to do, so I would like to thank them for doing it.

But I’d also like to go full circle to talk just for a moment about the stakes that we’ve got and return to the issue of children. We’ve had the report into abuse in care. We know that that is the tip of the iceberg, and it was a lot of volume. We know that it’s not over. We know that it’s very likely that that behaviour continues to happen, and that happens under our watch. While the Children’s Commissioner is right to say that “The State should be the model parent.”, that actually means us—we’ve got to be supplying the model parent. We have to make sure that the people that we are supplying into the system, our social workers and those caregivers, are actually being supported by us in a way that makes that work, work that is done well and done to the standards that we would expect for our own children. So I thank you for listening to me tonight, and I commend the bill to the House.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be invited to speak on the second reading of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill, and it’s also really kind of you, Madam Speaker—well, before you, Madam Speaker Maureen Pugh; happy birthday, Madam Speaker Barbara Kuriger—for allowing Willie’s Wine Bar to go on and on about things unrelated to the bill, but it must be part of your good nature on your birthday. But you’re always good natured.

As I learnt, the Social Services and Community Committee received five submissions on this bill, and one of them was from the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers. I really was heartened to read that they said, “we strongly support legislation which achieves the purposes set out in section 3”. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Substantive amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. We start with Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 19, “Substantive amendments”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

SUZE REDMAYNE (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? That is an objection. Right, OK. So we’ll take Part 1.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to make a few opening remarks. We’ve heard tonight—and it’s really important for us to acknowledge—how valuable our social workers are, and the essential support they provide to our most vulnerable communities.

The Government is committed to supporting and enhancing the social work profession so that our communities are served and supported effectively. This bill improves the efficiency and the effectiveness of operations carried out under the Social Workers Registration Act 2003. The Act ensures social workers are registered, competent, and accountable and that they follow professional standards. The bill makes 16 minor policy and technical changes based on the Social Workers Registration Board 2020 review to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of the Act.

We are encouraged that there is general cross-party support for this bill, and outside of the bill we also know that there are workforce challenges for the social work profession, and given the speeches that were made by the Opposition before, they will be pleased to hear that the Minister has asked the Social Workers Registration Board to develop a robust workforce strategy and action plan to address workforce shortages. The Minister has also asked the board to work across Government to find solutions to systemic challenges facing social workers.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): That’s really good to hear from the Minister. I want to congratulate the Minister for that type of kōrero, because it is incredibly important going forward that we’re not just looking at the technical amendments but we’re looking at the wider issues. So I congratulate the Minister on that because we do have major workforce shortages at the moment. But more than that, as I said earlier, I was glad the Minister was listening—unlike some of the other members on the other side, particularly Mr Meager and some of those others on the other side—because there are wider issues at play, particularly in terms of pay equity. I hope that the Government doesn’t buckle to the worker-bashing ACT Party that will not attend to some of the problems we have at the moment. I want to come to the bill—it might be a good idea to come to the bill. But it’s much—

Todd Stephenson: Why bother?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, that’s a better recommendation, “Why bother?”, because we all agree. So maybe I should talk to some of the broader aspects. Oh, no, just for you, Madam Chair, I’ll come to—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): A question for the Minister would be really good.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I have a question for the Minister on clause 17, “Section 116 replaced (Membership of Tribunal)”, which I think is really important. One of the major kaupapa that sticks out in terms of what’s happening with social workers is the shortage in terms of Māori social workers and support for Māori. I’m wanting to know from the Minister in terms of the membership of the tribunal and just reading replacement section 116—but I’m looking at clause 17—there’s a replacement section there in terms of membership of the tribunal: “(1) The Tribunal comprises the following members appointed by the Minister: (a) a chairperson and 1 or more deputy chairpersons; and (b) at least 5 social workers to enable the Tribunal to be constituted; and (c) at least 1 layperson.”

Was there any advice in terms of a Māori being on there? Was there any consultation made in terms of with iwi with regards to this particular clause? Has there been any consultation, particularly also with pan-tribal organisations? I ask the Minister: can she show us a consultation process with regards to this? Because with different iwi groups coming into play, particularly in Auckland with Tainui, and you’ll see that with some of the iwi groups coming into play, there would have been a need for high-level consultation in this area so that we can get the right type of representatives on the tribunal. So what type of Māori consultation, what type of regard has been given in this area? I know it’s an area that we considered before when we were in Government. How was the difference—there’s a difference, obviously, between Oranga Tamariki social workers, Whānau Ora social workers, and mainstream social workers. I know that the others on the other side probably have never met a social worker because—

Andy Foster: No, we’ve never heard a question that’s so rambling.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —they live in a different world, and that former failed Mayor of Wellington is one of them. They don’t live in our world, particularly the former failed Mayor of Wellington. But I would like some of these questions to be addressed, because this tribunal is particularly important in terms of democracy and representation, and particularly in terms of Māori and indigenous rights. So has there been a consultation process? Has there been any work with iwi? Has there been any work with any of the pan-tribal entities? I’d like to hear from the Minister.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee is suspended until 9 a.m.

Sitting suspended from 11.57 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)

TUESDAY, 25 MARCH 2025

(continued on Thursday, 27 March 2025)

Bills

Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 1 Substantive amendments (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Good morning, everybody. I hope everyone’s had a good night’s sleep. Members, the committee is resumed on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. When we were considering the bill last night, we were debating Part 1. Just to remind everyone, Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 19, “Substantive amendments”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to address a question that was raised last night by the Hon Willie Jackson around consultation with Māori, and just to confirm that the Tangata Whenua Social Workers Association was engaged with the amendments in this bill.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I’d just like to ask the Minister for Social Development and Employment about a couple of things. The first is one that the Hon Willie Jackson started to talk about last night, which was replacement section 116, “Membership of Tribunal”. I have noticed something in that which I’m not sure is correct, and that is that in subsection (2), it says, “A person referred to in subsection (1)(a) must be a barrister or solicitor of the High Court of not less than 7 years”. Now, I was actually going to ask about the seven years issue, but I’ve also noticed that as part of the Bar, you are a barrister and a solicitor in New Zealand, and this is a barrister or a solicitor—I totally appreciate that in layperson’s talk, you are one or the other. I ended up being exclusively a barrister but I was still registered on the roll of barristers and solicitors of the High Court, because we have a fused Bar. So I do wonder if that is just perhaps an error that needs correcting.

I’d also like to ask about the seven years’ practice, and what kind of field of expertise those barristers and solicitors will be drawn from, because it does seem that this is an area with specific knowledge—and I appreciate there are five other social workers in the mix here, but this is an area where a knowledge of some areas of law will do you no good whatsoever and there will need to be some specific knowledge. Now, it doesn’t mean that that can’t happen under this law, and that that isn’t the role of the selection process. But I would like to know what is that selection process, how will that work, and who will be involved in making those decisions.

I also want to just ask a very separate question about clause 11, section 58 amended, “Revocation of suspension or change to individual scope of practice”. Now, none of us have spoken about that in our speeches, and I can see the point here that you need to be able to not only make the decisions but revoke them. But I would invite the Minister to comment on that section so that it’s highlighted for the public. I have already asked a question about the reasonableness of any further suspension. Just because the person in the Minister’s chair has changed, I thought I’d just repeat that: it’s just about what are the parameters of reasonable and necessary in terms of extending a suspension. I appreciate the need for more flexibility. Was there a decision made that that was something that needed to be very much on a case by case basis, and what kind of checks and balances are there, and therefore something that might be an abuse of that process?

We’ve had, in the past, situations where people have been on suspension for enormous amounts of time. In my experience as an employment lawyer, it changes a lot whether you’re being paid or unpaid. This particular Act has nothing to do with those settings, so, presumably, you could have people who are not being paid at all on a long term of suspension because it was deemed reasonable and necessary. So what is the guidance from the Minister as to how that clause would work? Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Chair. It’s good to be able to speak on this piece of legislation and look at Part 1 as we’re here on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill.

I was looking back and I’m looking at replacement section 3, inserted by clause 4, around amending the purpose. There are a couple of things in there. I was looking at the original Act and could see the purpose, which is quite clear. I think it makes sense to me, but I just want clarification because, I’ll be honest, I’m a simple kind of person. But in replacement section 3, it amends the purpose and will replace “consider complaints about social workers” with “exercise the disciplinary powers over social workers conferred by this Act.”

Now, I’m just trying to, I guess, get clarity on why this is important, because I don’t think it changes it a lot, but I’m just trying to understand because, on the one hand, we’re replacing to “consider complaints about social workers” with “exercising disciplinary powers.” Now, they can mean similar things, but obviously the purpose of those two statements can actually be—because one is “exercising” something and one is “considering” something. So I’m wondering if the Minister for Social Development and Employment can explain why they landed on this change, and what it actually means for our social workers’ registration.

We look at this and, across the Chamber, I am assuming that people know this is important, that this is something that’s reviewed every five years, that we come into the space to look at, and that we need, obviously, to value our social workers but also make sure we get it right, because they are working with our most vulnerable, our young people, our elderly, our sick, those in prisons, those in State care, etc., etc. So in replacement section 3, the amendment here changes it from “considering complaints” to “exercising disciplinary powers.”

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Got that.

GLEN BENNETT: So we’ll make that clear—thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I did have a good sleep, but it wasn’t long enough, was it? Was that in my head or was I saying that out loud?

The second part is—and, again, I don’t know if there’s much difference here—in clause 5, where it says to amend section 6(1)(c)(ii), which is to replace “different” with “various”. So it goes from “different ethnic cultural groups” to “various ethnic cultural groups”. Now, it just seems like semantics to me, but why is that important? What is the difference it makes? So looking up the different words, why would we change it? What would the emphasis be, to be “various cultural groups” rather than “different cultural groups”? I guess, maybe, just for the benefit of the committee. As we progress as a nation, as we progress in terms of being more diverse, more inclusive—and things like I’m glad we’re changing the language; it moves on further when we’re removing some of that binary language. But the fact that we’re changing it from “different ethnic cultural groups” to “various ethnic cultural groups”—why is that important and why does that make a difference? Thank you.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do just want to remind the committee that this is a bill that was supported unanimously, there were only five submissions, and many of the changes are technical, including the change to the purpose, which the member Glen Bennett just mentioned.

In terms of the previous questions around the tribunal, seven years is standard; that is not changing—or it’s not different from other tribunals. In terms of the selection of the members, it will have to be people who have got the skills and expertise to be able to make rulings in this type of tribunal. So there’s nothing really complicated or unusual here; hence, the fact that there were only five submissions.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu): Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask the Minister for Social Development and Employment a question, and, as she points out, the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill is unanimously supported. But can I just ask the Minister, please—and this is in relation to the amendment to section 6(1)(c)(ii) in clause 5, and is following on from my colleague Glen Bennett’s question. The amendment is replacing the word “different” with the word “various”. What is the rationale for changing the word “different” and replacing it with “various”, and how does this impact on the recognition of ethnic diversity in the social work profession?

I ask this, Minister, as the Labour spokesperson for ethnic communities, as well as the chair of our Labour Pacific caucus. Does the Government acknowledge that “different” suggests different identities, whereas “various” may dilute the recognition of specific cultural needs, and how will this wording affect the recognition of Pacific, Māori, and ethnic social workers?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): As I’ve said, this is just a number of technical matters. When bills are changed like this, they reflect the language that the Parliamentary Counsel Office recommend, and that’s been used with modern drafting techniques. To the member’s specific question, it actually helps to remove the possible perception of marginalisation.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the Minister for Social Development and Employment, regarding clause 4, Part 1—“Section 3 amended (Purpose)”. Understanding that under section 3(b)(ii) of the principal Act, it previously only considered complaints about social workers but now has expanded to include “exercise the disciplinary powers”. I want to check, under the principal Act, Part 5, in terms of appeals and the right to appeal, would that encompass the broadening of the power that this section will have? As in, for a person to have the right of appeal, can they also, in that case, appeal the additional exercise of the disciplinary powers, on top of the complaints? So, for clarity, in this bill it is clause 4—section 3 amended—but if you look at the principal Act, which is the Social Workers Registration Act, it is section 3(b)(ii). But also, in that principal Act, under Part 5, there is a section on appeals. So I wanted to check with the Minister whether that right to appeal expands to the additional powers.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): For the member’s information, that particular section has already been addressed.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): As Part 1? The question on appeal has already been addressed?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): It was raised, yes, by a previous questioner.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): 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.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Other amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we now come to Part 2, which is the debate on clauses 20 to 23, “Other amendments”, and Schedules 1 to 3. The question is that Part 2 stand part. All those in favour, please say Aye, to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.

Glen Bennett: The Noes have it—party vote.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Oh, a party vote is called for, Mr Clerk. Sorry, I’d already started to put that question.

Glen Bennett: Apologies, I had the wrong—we’ve got the vote now, anyway. I made a mistake.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): You’re not calling for a party vote?

Glen Bennett: No.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Thank you.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: We are. [Clerk begins party vote] Point of order—sorry, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We’re actually undertaking a vote.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Oh, can we raise it afterwards?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Does it affect the vote?

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Yes. I’m just seeking clarity for the vote.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): OK, I’ll hear the point of order.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: My apologies. I’m seeking clarification of whether the vote is that Part 2 stand part, or on the fact of whether we are considering the closing of the question.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): It is that the question is that Part 2 stand part.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: OK. In that case, we are in support of the bill, so we do not need to call for a party vote.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): So, just to be clear, the question is that Part 2 stand part.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the Minister’s tabled amendment to Schedule 3 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 3 as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we now come to clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on title, commencement, and principal Act. The question is that clause 1 stand part—oh, sorry. I call Glen Bennett.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair—and it’s still Tuesday, so I understand it’s been a long, long day.

I’m just looking at the title and there seems to be no need to change it, to be honest. I agree with that. I just wanted clarity in terms of the commencement date. So this bill will come into force on 1 July 2025. What is the significance of that date? Is that three months from today? Is that the reason?

I just want to understand the reason for the date. Is it because we’re moving forward and we want to make it happen? Is this within the legislative framework—it is legitimately a three-month process—or is there another reason for that? It’s just so that we can be clear that it is to set things in place, and that the Social Workers Registration Board, with the work that’s been done, will be up to speed and able to implement the changes that have been made in this technical piece of legislation.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The date 1 July is a fairly standard date for legislation—it’s the first part of the next half-year, and it just allows sufficient time for the changes to be put in place.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Minister, for that response in terms of the commencement date. Can I just check: so, the Minister for Social Development and Employment, then, is confident that, for example, if we’re looking at clauses 18 and 19 of the amendment bill, in terms of switching over the power from the previous chief executive to the board system, the appointment process as well as the transition power will be complete under replacement section 116, inserted by clause 17? Oh, I think the Minister is getting—is that a nod? That’s a yes, or a nod that you acknowledge the question?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Just to clarify, Royal assent is the date on which most of the provisions come into place, but for other measures, it’s 1 July to allow the transfer of those functions to occur. There’s nothing surprising here.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I present a legislative statement on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill, and move, That the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

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

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to begin by acknowledging the vital support that social workers provide to some of our most vulnerable populations across New Zealand. They support their communities to ensure that people receive the assistance they need to live safe and fulfilling lives.

The bill amends the Social Workers Registration Act 2003 to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operations carried out under the Act. Collectively, the changes these amendments make will help ensure the Act is fit for purpose, and help support social workers to uphold their professional standards while delivering safe care to their communities. It highlights our Government’s commitment to enhancing the social work profession and is a way to ensure that social workers are supported to serve our communities safely and effectively.

I want to just take a moment to quickly outline the six policy amendments in this bill. The first amendment broadens the grounds for interim suspension. Action will be able to be taken when a formal investigation is considered but not yet started. When there is sufficient evidence to believe an investigation is likely to begin, social workers will be able to be suspended in the period before the formal investigation starts. This change prioritises, of course, public safety, as people would expect, while, at the same time, addressing concerns about the social worker’s professionalism or practice, while ensuring that the suspensions meet the criteria to maintain fairness. This change would reduce public safety risk to those served by social workers, keeping our communities safer.

Another amendment allows for the extension of additional interim suspension periods from 10 days to a period that is reasonable and necessary for the board to complete their investigation. Currently, suspended social workers receive notices every 10 days, even when there’s no change to their status, despite some investigations taking up to the average length, which is approximately 17 months. So, of course, it will just help manage communication more effectively, reducing any unnecessary stress from those repeated interim suspension notices while ensuring that the correct process is maintained.

The bill ensures that the board’s professional conduct committee will also become more efficient and flexible. An amendment will allow the committee to combine available outcomes for complaints or notices of conviction rather than being limited to one per case, allowing complex cases to be processed more effectively.

To improve efficiency, another amendment will allow the board to delegate its registration functions to employed staff. This change will reduce delays in the registration processes for applicants seeking social worker registration and would free up the board’s appointed members to prioritise their responsibilities in governance.

The fifth amendment clarifies the board’s role in monitoring prescribed educational qualifications. While this function is already implied, this amendment would make it explicit in law and remove any ambiguity about the board’s responsibility to monitor the social workers’ qualifications that it prescribes.

Finally, the bill will transfer the power to obtain information for investigating individuals who falsely claim to be registered social workers or who practice as a social worker without authorisation, from the Ministry of Social Development to the board. Shifting this function to the board ensures there’s a single point of contact for the public.

In addition, the 11 technical amendments to the bill will address inconsistencies in the Act, streamline its operations, and update the language used. This aligns the Act with wider changes in how social workers are governed and contributes to enhancing the professionalism of the workforce.

There were a couple of concerns that were raised in the select committee, and they were out of scope of the bill, but I do acknowledge that social work shortages remain a concern for many. This has also been highlighted during the select committee process, and I acknowledge the challenges that that presents, both for the workforce but also for the people they serve. Work is under way to address those concerns, and I thought I would take the opportunity just to confirm that the board is starting to engage the sector on a workforce strategy and action plan.

These amendments, I have outlined today, will help to ensure that social workers are able to effectively deliver critical services to some of our most vulnerable populations across the country. As this bill goes through the third reading, I want to thank the Social Workers Registration Board for their work on the 2020 review of the Act, which has, of course, led to the amendments that we’re discussing today, and I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee members for their review and their work on this piece of legislation.

Thanks to the submitters and a very big thankyou to the officials who worked tirelessly to ensure that the legislative changes we bring to this House will work. My final thanks, though, go to the social workers for the essential work they do in our communities, often in very challenging circumstances and dealing with New Zealanders that have very complex circumstances in their lives. I know that this bill will assist them and support their efforts and ensure the professional standards that they uphold each and every day. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It is with thoughtfulness that I stand and make a call on this piece of legislation. And I acknowledge, in the last term of Parliament, actually, that you, Madam Speaker, and I were on the Social Services and Community Committee and got to spend many a time engaging with social workers, with legislation that is important to the lifeblood of our communities and of our people throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.

When I look at this piece of legislation, the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill, it is a simple, technical bill, but it is one that we should always take seriously, one that should always be considered on, because our social workers play a huge role within our communities, within our schools, within our prisons, within our aged-care facilities, within our healthcare facilities, within communities all across the country—and I’m sure I’ve missed many a part of where they involve themselves.

I was thinking about the role of a social worker as we looked at this, because very much I believe legislation like this is around protection. It’s around protecting not only the people that social workers work with but it’s around protecting the social workers themselves. We need to fiercely protect our social workers—that there are checks and balances in place for them, so that we ensure that they know the rules, they know the boundaries, but there are checks and balances, like the Social Workers Registration Board, that can be considered to make sure that we have the best people and the best places doing everything they can for our beautiful tamariki, our elderly, those who need support.

As I looked at the bill, and as we’re listening through the stages over the last wee while, I was thinking, “What actually is a social worker?” You know, we generally know what they are on paper, or we kind of have an idea—a social worker, they interact and often in dynamic circumstances and that sort of thing. But I just wanted to reflect, as we consider this legislation, on what a social worker is and what they actually do: a social worker is an advocate. They’re an advocate not only for a person but it might be for a whānau and for a community. They’re a supporter. They’re an empowerer. They’re a listener.

In many ways, we look around our fast-paced world and the disconnection that has happened in many parts of society, and, often, a social worker is at a place where someone maybe is at the most needy point within their lives, and a social worker is there not only to be an advocate and a supporter but to be a listener, when they may never have been listened to before in that community or with that person. They’re a protector, they’re a guide, they’re a connector, they’re a healer, they’re an ally, and they’re a problem solver. I think that’s one of the things that, as a society, we need to acknowledge and celebrate within our social work community: they are problem-solvers. Every single day, they go to work to love people, to care for people, to be allies and advocates and supporters, and to solve problems when, often, people have got to their wits’ end and don’t know where to go or what to do. We need to celebrate, acknowledge, and ensure that our social workers are not only resourced but protected.

As I look at this legislation—and yeah, it is technical, and yes, we do support it—we also need to be reminded of the challenges within the social sector we have at the moment; the challenges we face with funding, the challenges we face with staffing, the challenges we face when it seems that a Government doesn’t seem to care about what they are doing to ensure that our social workers are the best they can be and are the most well-resourced they can be. We look at funding cuts. We look at our workforce in terms of the percentage of people going through training and education to become social workers, the reduced hours, and the challenges that many social workers are facing, as well as the fact that many of our social workers are ageing.

I was looking at the numbers: around 40 percent of our current social workers are Pākehā New Zealanders. They’re actually not completely representative of the people they’re working with, and I believe that we need to be looking, as a Government, as a Parliament, and as a society, at how we ensure diversity and inclusion. How do we ensure that we make sure the people who are connecting and working with our communities look like themselves, sound like themselves? How do we make sure that we are putting the right funding and the right systems in place to empower our social workers to love and care for our communities, but also be representative of them?

It is disappointing when I look at the pay-equity settlements for social workers and the fact that it feels like it’s stalled and it’s not going anywhere, when I look at the fact of the cuts to Oranga Tamariki and what’s going on, and the implication that that has not only for our social workers and those who are doing the best that they can do—but, of course, it affects our tamariki, it affects our whānau, it affects our communities, and that is not OK, as a society, and it is not OK that we, in this Parliament, allow that to happen.

This legislation is important, but we also need to be critical and look beyond just what we’re talking about—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Not for the purposes of this debate.

GLEN BENNETT: My next sentence was to be “I understand there’s a parameter within this”, Madam Speaker. But we need to be looking at the big picture as well, because we can’t look at just a piece of legislation in isolation; we’ve got to look at it beyond that, in terms of where it fits into society. We need to get our social worker work strategy right. We need a plan. And it’s hard to look and see what is going on when it feels like this Government does not have a plan for our most vulnerable, that our Government does not have a plan to fund, to equip, to empower, to resource our social work sector, to resource our community sector, to resource Oranga Tamariki. We need to look at this legislation today, as we are, but we have to look beyond that to see what we’re doing to get it right.

Social workers are problem solvers, and we, in this House, need to be problem solvers, too. How can we work, how can we challenge the Government to look at how they’re funding things, and that people actually are more important than profits? If we don’t have people—if we don’t actually have people in the right places—what is the point of having profits? Social workers are change-makers. Social workers are carers. Social workers are mediators. Social workers, often, are responders and often end up being first responders, because they can see the situation and what is going on and what needs to be done. They’re counsellors, they’re community builders, and they are a voice—they are a voice for our community, they are a voice for society—and we need to value them.

This legislation makes some tweaks—which we agree with, which is good—to protect, as I said, our social workers, to protect those they work with—just to continue to modernise. But also social workers are a voice that should be speaking into every single electorate, into every single MP’s office, allowing us to understand what are the critical needs at the grassroots of our communities. If we were listening, as MPs, if we were paying attention, if we were meeting with them, if we’re reading the emails that they are sending us, we’d know that there is a crisis in our country. There is a crisis of community, there is a crisis of funding, and there is a crisis of ensuring that the social work workforce is equipped and that we have the right people with the right expertise and the right training, and we need to get this right.

In closing, I just want to point out a couple of changes that have been made. I asked the Minister for Social Development and Employment a question, during the committee of the whole House, regarding a simple word change—I know, one of my colleagues, the Hon Jenny Salesa, also spoke on this—changing the word from “different” ethnic and cultural groups to the reference “various”. I actually went and got my dictionary out, had a look, and realised that, actually, it does make sense, because I think it’s more inclusive. It allows more engagement. “Different”—we talk about difference; that is “I’m different to you”—whereas “various” is actually far more inclusive and brings more people to the table. So, when I looked at it, when I asked the Minister, when I read and understood, I feel comfortable, and, actually, I think it’s a good thing. We need to look at “various”—not just at differences, but at what brings us together. Of course, then, there is replacing the term “such as he or she” with gender-neutral terminology. That’s just simple stuff. That’s just making a modernisation which allows for legislation to move into the 21st century and beyond.

Our social workers are amazing advocates. They are fighters. They are champions for whānau, for young people, for the elderly, for our communities. There are people who need to be honoured, who need to be paid correctly, who need to be resourced, who need to be trained, and we must, from this House, support our social work whānau.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill on its third reading. I’ve noted in previous readings, and others have commented as well, that this is about tightening the framework that we have to ensure that social workers can be looked after, but also that there’s a level of accountability when things don’t go right.

This bill also does a lot of updating when it comes to language. As others have noted about modernising the language in our legislation, this is important, particularly, as others have noted, in the language around the gender references. So in Schedule 3, a lot of what this bill is doing is actually changing things like “he or she” to just actually say “social workers”. That is actually really, really valuable, because, at the end of the day, what we do have is a growing and diverse workforce in the social worker sphere. We do have more queer people in the social worker profession. Having gender-neutral language actually includes non-binary people and gender-diverse people in here, and it’s great that the Government is actually getting on board with modernising legislation to be more inclusive of queer people who are part of the social worker profession. I encourage them to take this inclusive approach more broadly when it comes to other pieces of legislation.

This feels like a breath of fresh air when it comes to actually modernising legislation, because, at the end of the day, the core of this legislation does a bunch of other things. The core of this legislation is actually about tightening the screws when it comes to the accountability that social workers face. But there is an opportunity being taken in Schedule 3 particularly, and in Schedule 2 when it comes to how we talk about ethnicity, to modernise things. This is something that I think the Government could take the opportunity to review and do when they’re amending other pieces of legislation to modernise them—to actually think about whether the language we’ve been using in legislation is up to date and reflects today’s society.

More importantly, I think, I want to commend the profession, because what we have right now is social workers that are working under the pump. The pipeline of training includes many low-income people who go into the profession to serve their own communities, and many are struggling to make ends meet while they are studying. What this means in practice is that we’ve got people who may come from the lived experience of being on low incomes, of struggling to make ends meet, yet they go in a profession that is overworked and under-resourced. When we have the combination of people at the front line helping others do their best and yet are under-resourced, we set them up to fail and we create the conditions for mistakes to happen.

As I have raised in other contributions on this bill, it is critical, alongside this bill, to have better accountability mechanisms and that the Government genuinely invests in resourcing and improving the working conditions of social workers so that we set them up to be their best and avoid overworking and underpaying, which leads to social workers being stressed and tired and more likely to land themselves in the very same things that the bill is trying to tighten and improve, which are those accountability mechanisms that exist for when things don’t go right.

I’m thinking of a few things the Government can do, after finishing the third reading of this bill, to improve the social worker profession. One of them is to commit to improving the wages of social workers that are working in the NGO sector and the public sector as well. Many of our social workers do their placements at, for example, Oranga Tamariki, and then they go to work in those very same agencies. But their wages actually still mean that they struggle to make ends meet.

Another thing the Government can do, after the third reading of this bill, to make sure that the intent of this bill works is to explore things like paid placements to ensure that while social workers are learning, they are actually getting paid. What that means is—and I say this as somebody who was a field educator for social workers before becoming an MP—ensuring that when social workers are doing their training out in the field, they don’t have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet and they can focus on learning, to ensure that they don’t land themselves in the very same bodies that this bill is trying to make amendments to and change the language around, to ensure that, on the other side, when we do have someone working alongside a social worker who is being failed by a social worker—because it can happen and it does happen and the consequences are often dire when it does happen—we are able to reduce those things.

If we take out the legislative jargon and talk about the real-life implications of what this bill is trying to do, it’s about when a social worker is trying to support someone who is homeless, and if a social worker is trying to help someone get on to the right benefit or navigate a complex situation with their families and relationship to Oranga Tamariki, if the social worker isn’t able to act competently for the person on the other side, it can be the difference between being connected to the community or not having a home.

To me, this is why it’s really, really important that the Government gets this right. We support the intent of this bill. We support modernising the very same bodies that allow social workers to be looked after and to have clarity around the level of accountability that social workers face. As I said earlier, so much more can be done to support social workers to make sure they are at their best.

I did want to talk a bit about the Schedule 2 component of this bill. I think the Hon Jenny Salesa talked a bit about that in the committee of the whole House. A lot of this is about changing language, such as “different” to “various” when it comes to ethnicity. I think that’s important to reflect that “different” can be othering, so we have to be intentional when it comes to the language we use in legislation. If there’s a place where language matters most, it’s how we write law. So this is not just symbolic but an intentional way of reflecting a growing and diverse workforce, particularly because recently the House updated, or more like extended, the experience pathways for social workers to be able to be registered, and that was with the intent of ensuring that we can have more Māori and Pasifika and people with migrant backgrounds in the field. Therefore, the stuff we have in Schedule 2 is also recognition of this Government, with the support of the Opposition, ensuring that we do have those pathways for a more diverse workforce to enter into social work.

I go now to the updating of gender references in Schedule 3. I really encourage the Government to review other pieces of legislation. It is about including non-binary people, but it’s actually just about making that language clear. Why would we have language that repetitively says “he or she”, when we are actually referring to a very specific type of profession and person? For example, “he or she” could be “applicant”, or “he or she” could be “social worker”. It is just common sense. If you’re reading a piece of legislation and you’re an everyday person in the public, what it means is that you’re looking at the paper in front of you and you know exactly what the legislation and the schedule is actually referring to. In many cases, “he or she” is just referring to a social worker. So I think that’s a really intentional piece that I wanted to go back to.

Finally, I want to say that the other area the Government should be looking at post the third reading debate—and I think this is something that’s been raised with me, and I’m sure with others, in relation to the social worker field—is how our tertiary institutions are resourced to adequately be able to train social workers. There’s been a lot of talk about the curriculum and how we ensure that social workers are adequately supported by those institutions. That has consequential impacts, direct impacts, actually, on what this bill is trying to do. One of the things I have noted, for example, is that, at the moment, because of that under-resourcing, many social workers aren’t even trained properly to understand and navigate things like Work and Income, and that is reflected in the field. Many volunteer organisations are working with social workers who did not receive adequate training to understand the systems of Work and Income.

I have had social workers, on the clock, being brought to organisations that have volunteers, to have volunteers explain to them how Work and Income works. That’s not their fault. It’s actually the broader system that ends up failing our social workers. So, once again, if we want to make sure that our social workers are deployed in the field in the most competent and supported way possible, to avoid them landing in the very same accountability mechanisms that we have and that this bill is trying to improve, supporting them in their training and in the field is critical to that.

With that, we commend this bill to the House and we hope the Government takes further action to support social workers.

LAURA McCLURE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on the third reading of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill in support from the ACT Party. I think this topic has been well canvassed. It’s based on a review back in 2020. Extremely sensible to have a review of legislation and tidy it up where appropriate.

I, firstly, just want to actually shout out to the social workers, because these guys are out there every day, and I know I’ve got some family and some friends that have been with our most vulnerable children overnight on a night shift, getting home, and then dropping their own kids off at school. So I just want to say I acknowledge you and I see you this morning, and thank you so much for your hard work. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I call Laura—sorry, Tanya Unkovich.

TANYA UNKOVICH (NZ First): That’s all right. Tanya Unkovich is my name. Thank you, Madam Speaker. On behalf of New Zealand First, I stand in support of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill.

Last night, during our contributions, I wanted to acknowledge all of the social workers out there for everything they had done. It was really great to hear the support from the other side. A little bit disappointing to hear a member on the other side use the reading of this bill to try and roast our party. I had the benefit of the mute button on my remote control in my office.

Hon Shane Jones: It was that troublemaker—it was that heretic.

TANYA UNKOVICH: Oh yes, yes, no. And then, I believe the member opposite also went on to say that they didn’t think that anyone on this side of the House probably even knew a social worker. I’m not sure of the exact wording. Well, part of the prerequisite of obtaining my diploma in counselling was obtaining a certificate in social work. I’ve spent many hours listening to people who are suffering, and I know what suffering tastes and feels like. So I would like to just say that members on this side—there is always a story behind the face. So just a wee lesson there.

On that note, there’s nothing more to add. We’ve all said enough on this bill. It is a technical bill and not a lot of controversy really. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

TAKUTAI TARSH KEMP (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): Mōrena tātou. Mōrena e te Whare. I rise this morning to reaffirm Te Pāti Māori’s support for the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. While we support the passage of this bill, Te Pāti Māori remains steadfast in its long-term vision of “by Māori, for Māori” solutions that empower whānau to determine their own pathways. Te Pāti Māori continues to challenge systems that seek to control rather than uplift, and we will push for a future where Māori-led social services are the norm, not the expectation.

Don’t get me wrong, social workers hold a vital role within our communities. Over the many years that I’ve worked in the community, I’ve worked alongside so many great social workers, and so many not-so-great social workers. This bill helps tighten the practice and supports the future pathway for those social workers in the field.

I want to actually take this opportunity to acknowledge a social worker who cared for me in the last seven weeks of last year, which I spent in hospital. I never thought I would need a social worker, because I didn’t know why I would need a social worker, but, obviously, at the end of those seven weeks in hospital, I truly did need a social worker who could manaaki, who had aroha, who had compassion, and, at the end of the day, was able to keep the confidentiality of what I was going through at that time. So I want to acknowledge the social worker, Moana, who supported me at Middlemore Hospital, at Te Kaahui Ora Maaori Health Service.

It’s not an easy job being a social worker, I’ve got to say. There’s a huge, negative light on social workers within vulnerable communities, and especially within Māori communities. When Māori families hear the words “social worker”, they’ve been referred to them for what? They’re scared. They become isolated. It’s like the police knocking on your door when you’re told you’re being referred to a social worker, because you’re unsure of why that is happening. So we want to be able to change that, and we hope that this bill is able to help those social workers in the field change that negativity and light for our whānau. We need social workers that are embedded and have the understanding of a tikanga-led, mokopuna-focused model of practice that will empower our mokopuna for future generations. Kia ora.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise also on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill. I think we have heard a lot from across the House, but I think it does deserve mentioning every single time, the important mahi that our social workers do for Aotearoa every single day. It is important that we do have a sufficient safety net, but also recognition of that work, but also acknowledgment of the safety net for people that they support when something doesn’t go well.

In this case, when we are looking at this bill, there are a number of quality-of-life improvements that we’re seeing when it comes to social workers and the rights of social workers here. Particularly, from us, the establishment of the tribunal and also the board when determining suspensions, or when addressing the issue of suspensions, is particularly important. It’s something that greater clarity is needed, and we’re hoping that this bill addresses some of that, and we’re really looking forward to how we are going to be able to provide that level of confidence and clarity and transparency through this. So from that perspective, we’re interested to see the work of the tribunal as it is established.

As we’ve heard, there are also additional other quality-of-life changes in here that I think deserve mentioning, and this is particularly when we’re looking at Schedules 2 and 3 of this bill. And I think this is something that my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March mentioned earlier in terms of the fact that replacing terms such as “different” with “various”, and not having that othering effect—particularly for Māori, for Pasifika, for migrant social workers and workers in general—is incredibly important.

We are seeing that, with the latest census, the demographics of Aotearoa are changing. We are seeing record numbers of Māori—proportion of Māori—and also of Asians, of other migrants, of migrants of colour, and their visibility and their culture and their experience is an integral part to how our societies now operate. In terms of this, it is really heartening to see bills like this that actually highlight some of these, and the changing nature of some of that. The fact is that, when we are introducing legislation, when we are looking at public services, we’re still seeing the fact that migrant workers, and also women and anyone with an intersectionality component, are often not only invisibilised or undermined but also that they simply are being paid a lot less in proportion.

With this particular bill, and with the broader picture—and lots of people have been talking about the broader context of social work and our public services—we would like to see other forms of legislation, or other measures and levers, to address the fact that we do not have pay equity in certain areas, from a gender perspective, for wāhine Māori, for Pasifika women, for migrant women, who are some of the key workers when it comes to social work, because it is still predominantly a female-led workforce. As we have seen with other female-led workforces, there is a general assumption that just because you care, it means that you don’t have to be paid as much. We have actually heard high-ranking officials and public servants who are in a directorship role or deputy-directorship role vocalising the fact that just because, you know, you care, they will keep taking on more burden, they will keep on burning out, and because they just care, we don’t have to give them more pay. And I think this, both in the private and public sectors, is something that we definitely need to address.

Finally, I just want to say that it is incredibly heartening to see support from across the House for gender-neutral language under Schedule 3 of this bill. As we have heard previously, we are seeing a greater representation of our rainbow whānau within the latest census, and we think that our trans and non-binary whānau are an integral part of our social workforce as well. With that, we support this bill.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill enhances the social work profession in New Zealand. It also enhances the public safety aspect of the service that they provide. Registration elevates social workers to the level of other professions that require registration, like teachers, lawyers, and doctors.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that I believe that social work is a calling, and I thank everyone who has responded generously to this call and who works hard out there in often difficult circumstances. I end with a shout-out to the very many Filipinos who are social workers and who work all throughout New Zealand quite selflessly. I commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I definitely want to join that acknowledgement of the work that social workers do, but what I want to do is talk a little bit about the wider concerns here. This legislation is an attempt to make the registration network that belongs to the social work system stronger and, actually, a bit more autonomous, because the board will have five social workers on it, and it will become much more regulated by itself, as are other professions. But I want to really just focus for a minute on the incredibly critical role that social workers play and just acknowledge that currently that system is falling down.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care noted the following: “Social workers should have been a critical lifeline to the outside world for children and young people who were being abused in social welfare care. However, the Inquiry heard from many survivors, as well as former caregivers and social workers, that social workers visited less frequently than department policy required them to, and sometimes did not visit at all. State documents reviewed by the Inquiry show that social workers’ caseloads were often too high to effectively manage, which meant they visited children less regularly than required.”

Now, that remains the case. We’ve heard from many colleagues across this House that we know we have a shortage of social workers. We know that they’re overloaded. We know that they’re underpaid. We know that that group of social workers is 85 percent female, and that we have a problem in this country acknowledging that work that is caring work is valuable work and should be paid at a higher amount. So while this is a bill that really does improve the way that social workers are regulated, it’s a small piece of the puzzle. I heard the Minister for Social Development and Employment say that this bill would ensure that the social workers would be able to effectively deliver services. Unfortunately, that’s far from the truth. This bill will be a step in the right direction, but it will not ensure that they are able to deliver services. So I would ask this House to consider what will make that difference, because this is a critical role and currently it’s falling short of the mark.

We have, I think, 50 percent of the workforce who are over 50 in social work. We are under-represented, actually, in male social workers as well as other groups. But, mainly, we have an issue with an overload of work and the work burns people out. So we are going to have to build a different value into this work. We just cannot get away with what we have been doing. We need to make sure that our social workers are not leaving because of burnout, high workload, and poor pay; and that we’re adequately supporting them in our system. That does not mean we should not hold people to account who do not do their job. Those things go side by side, and so it is good that we have put this bill in place, which is more nuanced and is also, I think, really interestingly, reviewed every five years. A very good way of handling a new situation is to review its effectiveness.

All of that is good and Labour stands with the Government in support of the bill, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t see the big picture. We now have 7,520 people practising social work under licence in this country. We need to make sure that that workforce is fit for a new generation, that it’s able to sustain itself, and that means we need to put our money where our mouth is. Thank you. I commend the bill to the House.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Social workers play a crucial role throughout New Zealand, and it’s a real honour and privilege as the member for Wanganui to meet with social workers on a regular basis, to talk to them about their mahi in our community. There are two things I wanted to note particularly about this bill in how it supports them and recognises their profession. Currently, you cannot be suspended as a social worker where there are concerns about your work, and this bill enables that to happen. It also enables the combination of outcomes for decision making about professional conduct, rather than being forced into choosing one of the outcomes, to ensure an effective resolution to a concern that’s raised about a social worker. For these two reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou ka ora ai te iwi—with your food basket, with my food basket, things will be well for all of our whānau, even up in Ngāpuhi!

Can I take this moment to acknowledge all of our social workers across Aotearoa New Zealand. E mihi ana ki a koutou mō te manaakitanga o tātou tamariki, tātou whānau i roto i tātou hapori. Tēnei te mihi, tēnā rawa atu ki a koutou katoa, ngā kaimahi tauwhiro o te ao nei.

[I wish to thank you all for caring for our children and our families in the community. My sincere thanks to you all, all the social workers of this world.]

That was just an acknowledgment to all of our social workers—champions of our children, of our whānau, our families, and our communities—who really step up in a space where others can’t, others are unable to, to ensure that the advocacy of our most vulnerable in this country is heard and that their rights are before them.

The Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill is important, and Labour supports it today because it will strengthen the regulatory framework for monitoring and governing social workers in Aotearoa New Zealand. This isn’t a controversial bill before us today. Every five years or so, the Social Workers Registration Board works together with the Ministry of Social Development to review, to update, and to improve this particular piece of legislation. The last review, in fact, was conducted in 2020, under a Labour Government, and it is great to see that the changes proposed in this bill actually reflect the findings of that particular review. We also support the proposed amendments, because they align with our values of fairness, of social justice, of workforce sustainability, which I’ll come to in a bit, and, of course, public safety.

There are three particular points, or issues, that I’d like to discuss in the House today. The first one: I have been working very closely with the North Shore Women’s Centre, which has suffered quite significant cuts from the Minister for Oranga Tamariki and has reduced counselling and social work services to our North Shore community, from Glenfield right up to Rodney, restricting them back to only two days. The services available at this particular centre service almost 500 women across Auckland’s North Shore and, of course, the children and families alongside of them. As this Government cuts back there, of course, so do those services.

The question becomes: what is that risk? What is the outcome that we will see as a result of those services not being offered, the Government burying their head in the sand and not wanting to engage with these particular services or assist them with finding any alternative support mechanisms for that provision to continue? So can I just acknowledge the team at North Shore Women’s Centre. We will continue to stand with you while others can’t, and won’t, and we will work together to ensure that those services continue to be made available on Auckland’s North Shore.

The second point here is, of course, about the workforce shortages that we experience—of social workers. It’s a tough job, it’s not incredibly well paid, but any Government has to do more to ensure that we just keep up with the numbers required. There’s an additional 142 full-time equivalent social workers each year that are required just to meet the population growth that we experience around the country. And, of course, I look to the Minister for Vocational Education and ask the question: what is it we are doing, with cuts to Te Pūkenga, to the Tertiary Education Commission, and to universities forecasted? How can we ensure that we are growing a workforce to meet the demand that is in front of us, to ensure that we have practitioners available that are well trained, that know what they’re doing, in order to support women, children, and families moving forward? I’m not seeing that. I’m concerned about that. While this is a small bill with technical changes, it’s significant in the greater context of everything.

Lastly, can I acknowledge the Government for making some step to the recognition of non-binary and trans whānau, using gender-neutral language. I know many of them are scared of this approach. It’s about the inclusion of everyone in this country. Mr Speaker, I commend this bill to the House.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is a good bill and I wish to acknowledge all those social workers across the country for the contribution they make to our community, including my sister, who is a registered social worker. I acknowledge Chontelle and all the work that they’ve done. This is a great bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Moumou wā, Dan—moumou.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Āe. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tautoko ana au i tērā kōrero. “Moumou wā” tērā kōrero i tērā taha. He aha te kōrero o tō tuahine ki a koe e pā ana ki ngā mahi o ngā kaimahi toko i te ora?

[Yes, greetings to the Speaker. I agree with that assertion. What they are saying on that side is a waste of time. What did your sister say to you about the activities of the social welfare staff?]

I stand in support of the Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill. I was a member of the Social Services and Community Committee and sat through the submission process on this, so I want to acknowledge all of my colleagues that were on that select committee for this piece of work that we have done. As others have mentioned, this isn’t a controversial bill; it does enjoy support across the House. The bill is straightforward in terms of recommending minor and technical amendments. These amendments, as has been said, have come out of a review that has been done of the legislation, and I, along with others, believe, that these minor technical amendments will improve this important piece of legislation for a very important sector and workforce.

I want to join with others and acknowledge the social workers, the work that they do with our most vulnerable people—such as children in care and the youth justice system—in our health system, and in our aged-care system. I think that it has been important to draw the House’s attention to the wider context in which this bill sits in terms of our social workers, in terms of workforce in that particular sector.

In my contribution to the second reading last night, I pointed out my concerns that we do not have a workforce strategy for social work. But I am pleased to hear that Minister Penny Simmonds, who was in the chair last night on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment who is sponsoring this bill, said that the Government is going to work on a workforce strategy and an action plan. I can’t stress enough how urgent that is—in meetings that I had this week, it was said that 13 percent are looking to leave the profession in the very short term and that we are unable to recruit the amount of social workers that we need into the profession. In fact, there’s a downward trend of numbers enrolled, and over 45 percent of social work students leave the course before completion. We heard that the number of social workers that we need is not keeping up with our population growth, and we also know—we know—and have heard loud and clear from the sector, that the impacts of this Government’s cuts to the back office of Oranga Tamariki has put more pressure, more work—

Carl Bates: Next time, don’t spend so much, and then we won’t have to clean up your mess. It’s pretty simple.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —on the front-line social workers. Quite simple, is it? Quite simple to cut back-office jobs and load that on to front-line social workers? Quite simple, according to that member across the other side of the House. It says a lot about their priorities, doesn’t it? They could have cut funding from other areas, like landlords, like tobacco companies. They could have taken the money from there, but, instead, you will take the money—Mr Speaker; instead, they will take the money from Oranga Tamariki, who service our most vulnerable children and families. We will take $30 million from early intervention and prevention services from the North Shore Women’s Centre, as was mentioned previously.

Carl Bates: Useless governing.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Oh, Mr Speaker, I was only going to make a short contribution to this bill, but—

Carl Bates: Oh yeah—I believe that!

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —but, however, when you have comments like that from the other side of the House—

Tangi Utikere: Disgraceful.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —disgraceful comments like that from the other side of the House, when they would prefer us—

Carl Bates: I’ll tell you what’s disgraceful: wasting New Zealanders’ money. That’s what’s disgraceful.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Bates, I note that you had a speech, a very short one, which perhaps gave you the opportunity—just short and sharp and not ongoing commentary, please.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Wasteful spending, that member says—wasting it on servicing our most vulnerable children and families, on early intervention and prevention services. Cutting $30 million a year—over $120 million. Wasteful spending? I could tell that Minister—that member, not Minister. I could tell that member where that Government is wasting money: bad choices, wrong decisions, and wrong priorities. And this is supposed to be a non-controversial bill—the bill isn’t, but the wider context is.

Hon Judith Collins: Listen to yourself.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Oh my gosh! Mr Speaker, now the Minister on the other side of the House is taking issue with what I am saying in terms of this sector—tone deaf. Tone deaf.

Let me read you the headline, Mr Speaker, of an article: “Fears children will be harmed as Oranga Tamariki staff grapple with overwhelming workloads”. The article says, “Oranga Tamariki social workers say they are living with the constant fear that a child could be harmed on their watch due to their overwhelming workloads as they begin industrial action”—because apparently it’s wasteful spending to give them a pay rise. They’re not happy with the 0 percent offer from the child protection agency. They said it was insulting and would fix nothing about unsafe workloads. Tone deaf—that’s what I think of the comments from the other side of the House today.

I will conclude my speech here, much to the delight of the other side of the House, I am sure. Labour was proud to have been part of this review and part of this legislation—the drafting of this legislation, the technical and minor amendments that are being proposed here. We are proud to support this. We want to thank our social workers for the important work that they do in our communities every day. I commend this bill to the House.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d also like to commend our social workers for picking up the pieces for people when they come across families that are devasted by the effects of drugs, of methamphetamine. I do want to recall that the previous Government gave $2.75 million to the Mongrel Mob, but our social workers that we’re commending around the House today—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Meth has gone up 95 percent, Rima. It has doubled in the last year.

RIMA NAKHLE: —have to deal with the mess that that wasteful $2.75 million to Mongrel Mob has created.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: What’s your Minister doing about that?

RIMA NAKHLE: What I’d like to do is I’d like to commend the Social Services and Community—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: You have no plan to reduce meth.

RIMA NAKHLE: —Committee for the work that they did.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms Prime, having been on the receiving end of an equal barrage, I thought you might like to actually take cognisance of the advice I gave to Mr Bates.

RIMA NAKHLE: This Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill is a logical, a practical, a sensible, and a positively impactful bill, and is part of changes that we’re making to demonstrate our Government’s commitment to supporting our social workers. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 17 October 2024.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to talk on the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to first start by thanking the Primary Production Committee, ably chaired by my colleague Mark Cameron, and his colleagues on that committee who have done some excellent work looking at this bill. I also want to note that it has been unanimously recommended that the bill passes, and all the amendments that were made through the diligent work of that select committee have also been unanimously recommended.

Steve Abel: Best select committee in the House.

TODD STEPHENSON: Oh, best select committee in the House, Mr Abel tells me, and, again, I want to acknowledge his contribution to that select committee.

Look, this bill, just to recap, is important in ensuring that New Zealand meets its international obligations, particularly around preventing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing—better known as IUU, which is a fun little acronym for this time of the morning. It does ensure that New Zealand regulations are around New Zealand - flagged operating vessels operating in our waters; also ensuring our ability to combat this illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; and also making sure that we do, as I said, fulfil all of our responsibilities as a responsible citizen operating in international fishing regimes.

This bill has been, as I said, extensively examined by the select committee. They did receive some submissions—six submissions—and they actually heard from two submitters. As I said, they’ve done some really great collaborative work on this bill, and so it is my pleasure, on behalf of ACT, to recommend it to the House.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Look, I’m very proud to support this bill. It’s about protecting our deepwater fishing industry and it’s an industry that contributes $2.7 billion to the New Zealand economy, $1.6 billion to GDP, and employs 8,500 people. This bill’s about sustainable economic growth and it’s about being, as my colleague alluded to, a good neighbour and trusted and responsible global trading partner. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Mr Speaker, thank you—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Just a moment.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Which call am I taking? We seem to have missed a whole number of calls from the Government benches maybe, but regardless—

Hon Member: A Māori Party call, but they didn’t take it.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Yes, I did go to stand, but today I’ll speak for myself.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Carry on. I did take a stand—

Steve Abel: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Did you stand to take that call?

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: I did take the stand, but somebody was already on their feet.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): My apologies, I did miss that. So we’ll put things right back into sequence. Thank you.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): Mōrena, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa e te Whare. We support this, obviously, and all the work that’s gone ahead. This is coming from my own precious home back in Te Kāeo. Ikanui is a very important, special name, as the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries will know, and we come for those things. Even my tupuna Ikanui—they call him that—looks like a fish, and we are known to even sound like fish when we’re speaking Māori. So in all of that and to all of the work that has gone on in the Primary Production Committee, of course we support this. We are about fish and everything that comes out of our wonderful fine oceans in Te Aupōuri land, but I’m just making sure we take to our feet to support the work that this House does for all of our whānau and all of our hapū and our iwi, particularly Aupōuri, particularly Te Tai Tokerau. Tēnā tātou.

LAN PHAM (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Very pleased to be standing today in support of this bill, particularly when we’re at a time when we really need cross-party collaboration and the attention and the energy of us collectively in this Chamber to actually make good decisions in the environmental space. This is a really great example of some much-needed legislation.

I really want to thank, for the work that’s gone on in the evolution of this bill, particularly, the Primary Production Committee who has considered it. I want to reflect that I had a very privileged experience of just a snapshot of experiencing and visualising the enormity and the vast expanse of our oceans. That was when I took up a role for the Department of Conservation to run the science and biodiversity contracts on Rangitāhua—Raoul Island—in the Kermadecs. It’s roughly 1,000 kilometres from Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. That involved a five-day sailing trip on this beautiful yacht the Tiama. But throughout those five days, you can’t help but be distinctly aware of how vulnerable our oceans are in terms of there not being eyes out there. There are simply not eyes out there. After those five days, by the time we arrived on Rangitāhua—Raoul Island—again, it was absolutely striking, the views of the ocean and the immense challenge of actually having eyes and patrolling and monitoring challenges that our whole entire agencies actually have in front of them.

So we do have these major challenges, particularly with these vessels that may be operating outside of our exclusive economic zone in international waters. There’s a number of issues which this bill luckily, I’m pleased to see, addressed. The one that is very unfortunate that it didn’t extend to is, of course, the workers’ rights when they are in these operations on these vessels—extremely poor and challenging working conditions experienced by these workers. We know that a lot of the issue with illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is that it’s often not the bad guys who are coming from overseas. Unfortunately, often it is legal, regulated vessels who do their reporting who step outside the bounds of what is legal and undertake illegal activities. So I really support the work that’s come with this.

We would love to see, as Te Pāti Kākāriki, more cross-party collaboration, particularly in the oceans and fisheries space. But I need to bring up the example of Tīkapa Moana, where the Government are starting to make moves towards protecting just a tiny slice of that. It would only take things to 6 percent protection. Yet the Government is still considering opening up these high-protection areas within those proposed marine protected areas to commercial fishing. We cannot keep behaving like this, and we cannot keep not recognising the importance and the significance of our oceans not only to functional ecosystems and a functional planet but to the wellbeing of us. There’s no place where that is more obvious than oceans.

So I really, again, support the work that’s been done and want to thank those that have been involved. Te Pāti Kākāriki will absolutely support the passing of this bill and look forward to similar collaborative work. Thank you.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pretty straightforward bill, this, really. It amends the Fisheries Act 1996 so that, as our colleague said over there, we can better meet our international obligations regarding illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and it also improves clarity and efficiency of statutory provisions and associated decision-making processes. So this update is just that. It’s clearer, more efficient, and more reasonable. I commend it to the House.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): This time, Mr Speaker, and apologies for my assumption that the Government members weren’t taking their calls—that’s my bad. Perhaps they will forgive me, given that, of course, we were in this Chamber at midnight last night because, for some reason, we are in urgency.

We’re talking about the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, which has been around for a bit of time. Of course, we see in the Chamber that the date is still on 25 March, when, in fact, we are now on 27 March in normal people’s time. Regardless, I want to note that this bill used to be in my name. So of course we are supporting this bill, and I’m pleased that it has progressed.

I’m also pleased that the Primary Production Committee has made a very considered report back on the bill. It has recommended a number of changes that, on the face of it, look very sensible, and I’m sure we’ll be able to ask the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries some questions about those in the committee stage. They all appear to be clarification changes, to make sure, for instance, that the chief executive can take into account any previous non-compliance in any jurisdiction—that’s one of the changes that has been made. As we’ve heard from Todd Stephenson before, a large part of this bill is about illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing—the IUU. We know that there were six submissions and two oral submissions made, so I thank all those people who have been involved in that process.

I just want to finish what is a short contribution in this second reading of the bill to make a call, again, just like my colleague Lan Pham has with her bipartisan plea on these fisheries matters. We can work constructively. We were working constructively on the Hauraki Gulf. That bill was reported back unanimously, just as this one has been, and yet we hear that there are going to be some changes that were not part of the select committee process. That is very poor form.

What is good form is when a sensible piece of legislation that has had a lot of input from officials who deal with international fishing—which is an interesting thing and it’s, obviously, outside of New Zealand waters. So these people, they go to the international conferences—some of the only international agreements in the world have been on fishing—and they do a very good job. This has been taken to the select committee, and, as I said before, the select committee has made a considered commentary. Now, it’s coming back to the House, and I’m sure that the Minister will be wanting to answer any questions in the committee of the whole House on the bill as it was when it was looked at by the select committee and as it was when the submissions were made on it at that select committee. So it has gone through that process where the select committee had it for a good amount of time, as well.

This is how lawmaking should be done in this country, and I would implore the Government to take this approach on many other bills. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Mr Speaker, I’ve been subject to your effective action with violations in the House today, and, interestingly enough, this bill ensures effective action can be taken in the event of fishery violations on our seas. I commend it to the House.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just to continue the theme from the Hon Rachel Brooking, who was the Minister in the previous Government responsible for this. This has been very much a work based on collaboration with successive Ministers and the Primary Production Committee coming up with something that is unanimously, I think, supported across the House. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is one of those global commons issues that we have to work with international partners to come up with a regulatory regime that works but, importantly, also the compliance machinery to make sure that we can actually make a difference.

It’s interesting to read that we pride ourselves in New Zealand on our vessels and our fleet following the rules, but there are reported instances of New Zealand vessels on the high seas actually operating outside the law, so to speak, so it’s very important that we get this fixed up.

The only other thing I would note is that the Hon David Parker gave a foreign policy speech in the Parliament this morning, and one of the things that he raised was, in the Pacific, it’s very important that New Zealand really steps up and works with Pacific nations on a number of fronts, particularly economic development. The sustainable and effective management of the fisheries resource to promote both the economic development of Pacific Island economies but also the proper stewardship of that resource is something that we need to really turn our minds to. I know that the current Minister for Oceans and Fisheries has worked in that space and, I’m sure, has a lot of views about it. Labour is happy to support this bill in its passage through the House.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): Look, I rise to support the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee; I was privileged to be part of the select committee as we navigated this very important bill through.

It was great to be able to talk about the value of our fishing industry to New Zealand, the $2.7 billion industry. Of course, the purpose to uphold the integrity of this very important industry that we wish to grow as well—so this bill is a very important part of that. We want to put New Zealand up on the global stage and meet our international obligations. With that, I commend it to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I’ll join the chorus of support—the sort of unity at times around the House in supporting this bill. I do want to acknowledge the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, who is progressing this, including my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking, when Labour introduced this back in August 2023. I had the privilege of sitting in on the Primary Production Committee. I’m not a member of that committee, but I did sit in for the purposes of hearing submissions on this bill.

When we have a look at the select committee report, which is usually what we do at this particular part of the process, at the second reading, it identifies that there were six submissions. So that’s not a huge number of submissions, but when we look at the nature of those submissions, they were well-thought-through; they were very representative; and, actually, it really demonstrates the power of the submissions process. I know the select committee report identified one particular submitter that focused on one issue, which comes to working-day times in terms of appeals and the legal process that has initiated the change as a result of that. I’ll tease it out a little bit when we get to the next stage of the committee, with the Minister; I’m sure he’ll be looking forward to that.

But this is a bill that is important to protect the high-value access that we have in markets when it comes to seafood. It is one that looks to provide a little bit more scoping around those three specific issues of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. And, in that context, I certainly support this bill.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the last call in this reading of the illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing bill. Look, I think it makes perfect sense. I can sense bipartisan support across the House for this bill, which is good. The bill essentially requires permits for all fishing by New Zealand vessels outside New Zealand waters, which closes the gap that was there previously. We have to do our bit for sustainability and to look after our fisheries and those of our neighbouring nations. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

Part 1 Amendments to Fisheries Act 1996

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We come first to the debate on Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 3 to 61, “Amendments to Fisheries Act 1996”, and the Schedule. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I shall take a short call for what should be a relatively uneventful set of exchanges in the committee. This bill is on an area that I’ve sought to distinguish myself in—that is consensus, shared interests, and finding common ground in the area of natural resources and fisheries. It’s important that we acknowledge that this is part of an international effort, and, indeed, recently, I was in Honiara on behalf of our Government. A great deal of interest was directed towards New Zealand as to when we would actually pass this legislation to enable us to stand with a bunch of other nations.

We need to be mindful, as the legislation is implemented, that future leaders in the bureaucracy maintain a sense of balance, because the fishing industry, as you well know, is a wildlife industry, and from time to time certain lapses do take place, but, by and large, I think all members of the committee realise that our reputation as a fishing nation, our reputation internationally, is second to none, and I see very little reason as to why our committee stage should be protracted. Thank you very much.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, for those introductory remarks about working towards consensus. I’m very pleased to hear that. My first question is relating to the changes from the Primary Production Committee. I note that there are no Amendment Papers on this bill, so we can look at the tracked-change version of the bill in front of us.

The first change is at clause 29. This is regarding new section 113HA, “Criteria that must be met before international fishing permit is issued”. The vessel must be registered, and then there is a change from the select committee that the applicant vessel must be authorised by a relevant foreign country. It says, “For an international fishing permit … the applicant vessel must be authorised by the relevant foreign country to fish within that country’s national fisheries jurisdiction.” I take that to mean that if New Zealand was looking at issuing a permit, say, just for example, to a Norwegian vessel, that Norwegian vessel has to be authorised to fish in Norway. I’d just like confirmation that that is the Minister’s expectation as well, and if he would like to comment at all on the discussion that the select committee had on that issue.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a number of questions for the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries. I’m going to start with clause 5. This is seeking to amend Part 4, specifically section 32. Now, this relates to “Criteria of eligibility to receive provisional catch history for quota management stock”. One of the interesting things that seems to flow through the bill is a change in the descriptor when it comes to, largely, the chief executive being authorised to make certain decisions, so I’d like to point the Minister to what is a proposed new subsection (2A) and specifically paragraph (b), subparagraph (ii). This is talking about the ability for the chief executive to basically take an action or make a decision, and it refers to “what in the judgement of the chief executive was a valid authority to take the stock using a New Zealand ship”, and it flows on from there.

My question to the Minister is: is the use of the word “judgement” appropriate because, throughout this bill, there are actually different descriptors that that are used? If we look at clause 7, it’s talking about “in the chief executive’s opinion”. I think elsewhere it’s talking about “in the consideration of the chief executive”. So this is about consistency of language and whether or not there is a specific reason as to why there is a difference in utilising the word “judgement” when it comes to clause 5, “consideration” elsewhere in the legislation or in the bill, and “chief executive’s opinion” in clause 7. So I’m wanting to know about the inconsistent approach and then the rationale behind that.

The other part of that is, in some parts of the bill but not in clause 5, there is, effectively, if not a list, a sense of direction provided as to how the chief executive would go about—or things that they would need to consider in exercising consideration, opinion, or judgment. And so my follow-on question to the Minister is: what’s provided in the bill to drive the decision-making process that the chief executive would undertake when engaging in things, particularly when it comes to judgment? I don’t know. It might be that the use of the word “judgement” is consistent elsewhere in the bill or in other legislation, but I’d be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on that.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): If I can refer first to the question from the former Minister the Hon Rachel Brooking, I am assured by the officials that before any vessel goes wandering off fishing in international waters—or, indeed, in other nations’ waters—our officials will need to establish that they have a legal entitlement to actually fish; perish the thought it should be in Norway, but in more proximate nations.

On the question of Mr Utikere’s question, which, really, poses the question, possibly of trust or confidence, about the judgment that will be exercised by the bureaucracy in the future, I think the bill clearly states that it’s within the ambit of his or her decision-making power that they take account of actual fishing history. As I said, from time to time, fishing boats do find themselves in a situation where enforcement action might be taken against them. But, by and large, these are relatively insignificant matters, and the director-general needs to balance such blemishes against the ongoing need for New Zealand to have a flourishing and robust industry. I have every confidence that our bureaucracy will not be swayed by faddish ideology.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chairman. Greetings to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Shane Jones, who, amongst other things, used to be the chief executive of Te Ohu Kaimoana and also an ambassador for New Zealand in respect of the Pacific territories under McCully, when Murray McCully was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

My question arises from clause 42, and thereabouts, of the bill. The underlying ill that has attempted to be remedied by this bill is illegal, unreported fishing in the Pacific area in particular. We don’t have much of a problem with this in New Zealand, because we’re well able to police our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in a way that Pacific Islands find difficult.

Illegal activity both within other countries’ EEZs and on the high seas is something that worries New Zealand. I am sure that the Minister in the chair has seen the control room—I forget which Pacific nation houses it—but it takes data from American sources and other sources, including New Zealand, and monitors the place of fishing fleets in the Pacific. It relies in part upon transponders that are on each of those fishing vessels throughout the region. That information is beamed up to satellites, comes into the control centre, and then there is an ability for those monitoring fishing in the region to see where vessels are. But occasionally, the vessels go dark. They turn off their transponders and they stop transmitting data. That is an indicator, sometimes, of illegal activity, where the fishing boats are turning off their transponders so as not to be visible to the countries in whose EEZs they might be about to move into, and, as a consequence, this facilitates, or is part of, the illegal and unreported fishing that we have in the region. I had hoped the Minister might pay attention to the question.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I was just going to say, if you could just hold up, I’ll stop the clock, and we’ll just wait while—the Minister’s obviously taking advice, so—

Hon Shane Jones: Yes, I am following, Mr Parker.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you, and I’m sure the Minister knows more about these issues than I do. So we have this problem in the Pacific, where the most important financial resource, not just a food source but a financial resource, in the Pacific Islands is often their fishing resource. The revenue they make from fishing is sometimes their highest source of revenue to Government, and one of the highest sources of income to the countries. So the protection of that resource, both in a sustainability sense but also in terms of maximising the economic reward that can be returned to the Pacific countries, is absolutely one of the most important things that happens in the Pacific.

I’m supportive of this legislation, but my questions for the Minister are, firstly: is he concerned about vessels going dark and illegal activity in the Pacific? I can recount a discussion that I had, when I was Minister of fisheries, with Talley’s. I asked them why Talley’s had stopped participating in fishing day schemes in the Pacific—that’s a scheme under which a company bids for a number of rights to fish on a certain number of days, which is a proxy for a control on volume—and I was told by the senior people within that organisation that they can only fish for 24 hours in a day, which was, effectively, them saying that there is fraud in the Pacific Island fishing schemes, with some people pushing the boundaries of the rules and fishing when they’re not.

We’ve got dark vessels, we’ve got other vessels that are fishing with fishing day permits in different countries, but they’re not abiding by the terms of those. Those are my first two questions about the Minister’s concerns about that, but if I could have an answer to that, and then I have a follow-up question.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I’d like a few minutes to explain this. The Goldilocks zone in Pacific fisheries is 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below the Equator. Coming south from 10 degrees is a large fishery. It’s often the albacore fishery, and the small Mosquito boats are continually working in international waters. A response from New Zealand and the Pacific nations was to require such vessels to unload their catch in ports, thus enabling investigators or officers to board and check. This is an ongoing challenge to our neck of the woods because not all nations abide by that. The conditions upon the Mosquito fleet, if I can speak figuratively, are such that very few New Zealanders would survive on those vessels.

Now, coming back to the largest pelagic fishery in the entire world, which is managed in the following way: the nations belonging to the Nauru agreement have bound together, including Tokelau and, as an associate, the Cook Islands. They run a scheme that you purchase days and you can catch as much fish as you like within that day. If, however, you catch nothing, then you’ve paid for an infertile day. They have also now—and Micronesia is leading the pack—created a situation that they will not sell entitlements to any fishing nation who does not bring the vessel back to a port and disgorge from the actual vessel that’s caught the fish on to a larger mother ship, for want of a better expression. They are also moving towards a situation that they will not sell days to nations that focus exclusively on taking fish from the high seas. This piece of legislation is enabling us to join with other nations to board and inspect those nations that are taking fish from the high seas, which is administered under the United Nations. The Primary Production Committee, of its own volition, created this body of work, and one of the outcomes that we are addressing and passing today does enable New Zealand to achieve some of the outcomes contemplated by the various working parties of the United Nations.

We do have a problem with various nations turning off their transponders and trying to avoid detection. And the money that’s recently been spent through our Air Force does enable New Zealand to participate in initiatives called Operation Kurukuru and other such things, where the French, the Aussies, the Americans, and the Kiwis from time to time work together. We do spend over $8 million to $9 million in Honiara at the FFA, the Forum Fisheries Agency, as an adjunct organisation of the broader Pacific Islands Forum. We have been the leading nation in that regard. Each year, we are endeavouring to boost our institutional investment in the island nation States. I don’t want in this Parliament to cast aspersion upon any particular island nation State, but I’d encourage those of us who are interested in geopolitics in the Pacific to follow it assiduously.

On the question of what practically is likely to happen now we have these powers—we’re giving, essentially, to the Ministry for Primary Industries these powers—we will now increase our ability to surveil our own fleet, which I must say is modest in size, although Sealord, for a long period of time, has had the wheel watch, catching alfonsino, catching orange roughy, out of Mauritius and out of Cape Town, in that part of the Indian Ocean. But that vessel is not registered in New Zealand; it’s registered in the Cook Islands. So although we have a modest fleet, there is a huge expectation that Kiwis—a fishing nation; clean pair of hands—will continually lift the bar.

Flourishes aside, I genuinely believe, Mr Parker, that the efforts of the select committee do help us achieve a higher level of compliance and a higher level of acceptability and legitimisation when dealing with the vessels on the high seas.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for that explanation and for reminding me that it’s Honiara where this monitoring activity takes place. When I was in Honiara with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, last year, we inspected that facility. In another Pacific country, on more than one occasion, the local politicians, you could see, would have liked more of the fishing effort to have been carried out by their own people so that they could earn a wage from the fishing rather than just take a royalty on the fishing day.

There was recently an article that I read in a newspaper from a long-experienced Australian regulator of fisheries, who’s long lived in the Pacific—I forget her name. It was a very good article which contrasted the position in respect of small Island States compared to those that have the advantage of an association with France. I wasn’t aware of this until recently, but France, through their areas, have been more assiduous about ensuring the economic development benefits that can flow from fishing their own fish—“their” being the Pacific Island territory—through a fishing fleet that is French. I wondered whether the Minister had a view as to whether comparing the effectiveness of changes in this legislation, such as those which were found around section 42 in respect of this monitoring of the international fleet, might actually be better achieved if New Zealand and Australia assisted the Pacific Islands through support to, perhaps, buy a fleet leased to the Pacific Islands that could be used by those Pacific Islands to maximise the value they get from their own fishery.

So my question to the Minister is, first, that general one, and, secondly, because he probably is aware of more of this than I am, how the French do it.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): It is absolutely true: we have a working relationship, obviously, with New Caledonia, and a number of us, from our Māori side, would know there is an incredibly close connection between the origins of the iwis and Taputapuātea, located in French Polynesia. The French Polynesians and the French nation State have zero tolerance for the international exploitation of the pelagic-fisheries resource in their sovereign waters—zero tolerance—and a similar situation subsists in New Caledonia, but there are ongoing debates as to where the maritime boundary is between Vanuatu.

The other thing I’d say is that in some of our Pacific Island nation neighbours, such as the Solomons, in Honiara, they have a thing called the archipelago fishery. Within that fishery, it is part of the sovereign waters, but, at all times, the nation States are seeking ways to boost the returns, because fisheries is now a currency of influence, which is why the Primary Production Committee actually came up with some very useful outcomes, which we’re about to pass today, and it puts more acid on New Zealand to ensure that our own pair of hands are clean.

In relation to upgrading fleets and such matters, then, obviously, we have a substantial budget through foreign affairs and a fair degree of that goes to fisheries. But I’m going to send a warning of caution: unless we are continually investing and doing things that are of practical economic assistance to our Pacific neighbours, do not be surprised if they walk on by the traditional donors and go to the new donor partners. Recently, we had Transform Aqorau, a brilliant academic from the Solomon Islands, who spoke just up the road, and he warned New Zealand: less of the Oxfam approach and more of the practical infrastructure approach.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): My final contribution in response to that is I suggest he reads my speech this morning.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister. I actually really enjoyed the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries’ explanation for some of the contributions made by the Hon David Parker. My question is along a similar vein, having not sat through the select committee stage and not been part of the Primary Production Committee but knowing that this bill originated a little while ago. I wanted to check with the Minister: does the Minister see this bill being consistent with the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, or BBNJ?

Because I’m assuming, when we’re looking at, I guess, in some ways clause 4 of Part 1, which is around the interpretation, predominantly this bill is around illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, I wondered if the Minister has got any advice on checking that the terms of that are consistent with what our general trajectory is under that particular agreement. Particularly, I’m looking at Parts 3 and 4 of that agreement, the BBNJ agreement. So, yeah, I’m just checking with the Minister on whether this legislation largely is in line with that, noting that the bill was introduced before the agreement was signed, but now the agreement has been signed and has gone through some of the review process.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Chair. Like the previous speaker, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, I did find that interplay or the exchange between the Hon David Parker and the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries very interesting, so I have one question about that exchange, and I’ll then move to more sort of boring questions, really. That was an interesting exchange. There were quite a lot of Gothic terms involved, and the Minister was talking about fisheries being a currency of influence. But the select committee has made some helpful changes in that regard, and I was wondering if he could point us to the changes that the select committee has made that he was referring to in that exchange, over a series of questions. That would be helpful.

Then to my two more precise questions, which are still on clause 29, and there’s a change that the select committee has made to new section 113HB, at the start. It’s that “The chief executive may, but is not required to, issue an international fishing permit, taking into account—”, and then there are some things listed and there’s what looks like rewording in the rest of that section. I was just wondering if the Minister can confirm that that’s his interpretation, as well—those changes to new section 113HB—that it’s just supposed to be a clarification that the chief executive may, but is not required to, take into account the non-compliance—

Hon Shane Jones: What section is she talking about?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —and that the rest of the wording is just a rewording. So that’s on page 19 of the bill, in section 113HB.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Section 113HB—yes.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Yes. So that’s one more precise question, and then another more precise question is going to page 24 of the bill—so clause 42 inserts a new section. This is one that the select committee has made a change to, again, and this is what I am focusing on. It changes new section 113UA, “Investigation of serious violations: power to detain vessel at port”—we were discussing that earlier—and in subsection (5), it says that the chief executive may direct the release of the vessel. Now, this is where my question comes in, at paragraph (a), because it says that they may detain “if they believe on reasonable grounds that the serious violation took place on the high seas, on request of the vessel’s flag State;”. This is a picky question, but is it that the vessel’s flag State has requested the vessel to do the serious violation, or is it that the vessel’s flag State has requested that the vessel doing the serious violation be taken into the port? So it’s really a question of grammar, and I think it would be useful to have the answer to that on the Hansard.

It may be that an amendment is needed on that point. I’m always disturbed that we are in urgency, at the moment, in committee stage and running right on to a third reading, and can I recommend against doing that, because sometimes there are little changes that may need to be made. I’m not saying that this is the one that needs a change, but it is good practice to have a couple of days whereby any small amendments can be made, if they need to be made.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Chair. I just have two other questions. I would be grateful if the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries was able to respond to the earlier issue that I’d asked around the use of judgment, consideration, and opinion of the chief executive and the need or otherwise for perhaps consistency and, if not, then the rationale behind that.

The first of my other questions actually follows on from what the Hon Rachel Brooking has just alluded to. It’s just the next section down, new section 113UB, in clause 42. I think what’s really important is that the powers that are given for the purposes of search on a vessel whilst at port are alongside the Search and Surveillance Act, but they also are as permissive as they could be in the context of making sure that that liberty and the like is protected.

So I’d like to take the Minister to new section 113UB(3)(b). This is where a high-seas fishery inspector may “do 1 or more”—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Can you give us the page number?

TANGI UTIKERE: This is on page 24 of the commentary from the select committee. So it’s subsection (3)(b), and it’s about taking “any sample of a thing that may be inspected, for forensic or other scientific testing:”. My question to the Minister is: does this provision provide for an item in its entirety to actually be taken? Because it might be that, you know, for the purpose of exercising the search powers, an item may, for example, need to be seized for the purpose of this particular clause, but there’s nothing contained in this section that would allow, as I could see it, for the taking of an item in its entirety. It only talks about a sample of an item which may be inspected, which does not lead to an item in its entirety to be taken.

The other stuff around remote access, that’s not relevant in this particular context, but it’s in terms of taking something in its entirety is really only subsection (3)(d), that relates to “a copy of a record or a document that may be inspected.” So my point is not trying to be limiting but rather being empowering and whether there is provision contained that allows for a specific item in its entirety, which may be a small item, but to be taken for the purposes of that particular section.

The other question that I have is just in relation to page 28 of the select committee report and commentary. This is clause 48. This talks about the “Publication of decisions on administrative penalties”. I like the sense that there is going to be some accountability and transparency around this. There are particular aspects or criteria that the chief executive must do for each provision or each time a penalty is imposed—you know, the location, the amount of the penalty, etc.; no issue with that. But there’s nothing there that guides a particular time frame within which these decisions must actually be, effectively, uploaded to an internet site. Is the intention in drafting this that actually there is not any time frame, that it could be on an annual basis, that it could be—I don’t know. It just seems to be very silent as to a time frame within which these actions must be taken.

I mean, they’ll be taken by the chief executive, but it seems to me the purpose around transparency and accountability is putting them up on the website, but there’s no guidance as to when that would happen.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Despite my best efforts of avoiding protraction, I shall stand again. In relation to the former Minister the Hon Rachel Brooking’s question, I’m advised that, yes, the change clarifies that the chief executive officer may take those matters into account. But I think it’s really important that we’re going to have, from time to time—before I talk about the Southern Ocean—times where people associated without a nation State may play a role and find wrongdoing upon foreign-flag vessels.

For a foreign-flag vessel, the ultimate authority lies with the State that owns the flag. The nation State of New Zealand has no authority to endlessly take possession of, control of, or hold a foreign-flag vessel. We do have, through this legislation, authority to go and inspect, request further information, and help the host nation do the check and undertake the analysis when in port. But it’s important that this rather obscure but very important principle be borne in mind. The two cornerstone pillars pertaining to this type of fishing are the United Nations fishing agreement but also the law of the sea, and Kiwis were involved in constructing the legislation or the principles that passed into international law in the law of the sea.

In respect of the matter pertaining to biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, the trajectory is an open question, and it is yet to enter into force for New Zealand to ratify and we may need new implementation legislation.

Now, I want to talk about where this is likely to bite. We have vessels, along with a host of other vessels, in the Southern Ocean. We don’t have any vessels any longer operating out of New Zealand in the broader pelagic fishery. We do have a vessel from time to time in the trans-Tasman waters, but this is more focused on those vessels extracting resource out of the high seas or, indeed, helping host nations. But in relation to the Southern Ocean, I’d remind ourselves that we have a lucrative fishery down there called the Patagonian toothfish. It does bring people out in boils sometimes but I love eating this stuff and I’ve had numerous fillets over the years.

There have been ongoing calls for greater surveillance of our Kiwi vessels down there, and, indeed, the navy goes down there and assists, along with Australia, to check the quality of the conduct. You may recall, several years ago, a vessel was chased all the way to Cape Town by the Australian navy—six, seven, or eight years ago. And it’s to the extent that we would have been in that position that these powers today give our Government officials considerably more—less influence but more authority to chase those offenders. If the offender has been flagged by another nation State such as Russia, the ultimate authority over the vessel lies with Russia.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Yes, thank you. Look, I thank the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for his comments and it’s useful commentary—thank you. My question was one about grammar on page 24, not so much about chasing ships around. And it’s just the way that sentence reads. So this is at the top of page 24, clause 42, new section 113UA(5)(a), and it’s a change made by the Primary Production Committee. So it’s “if they believe on reasonable grounds that the serious violation took place on the high seas, on request of the vessel’s flag State”. So it’s just whether that could be interpreted as meaning that the vessel’s flag State wanted the serious violation to take place, as opposed to the vessel’s flag State requesting the release of the vessel or the detention of the vessel. That’s all I was asking about.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Look, several years ago, the New Zealand Navy was involved in an incident during the time that Murray McCully was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, so we have had experience in this. Indeed, at this very point in time, there’s a stand-off between some of the Latin American States and fleets coming from Asia. At the end of the day, the ability, and I quote—I’m going to go right to where the Hon Rachel Brooking is referring to, paragraphs (5)(a) and (b) of new section 113UA, inserted by clause 42. The limits of our director-general’s authority is driven by the overarching significance of the law of the sea, where the ultimate authority does lie with the flag-State nation.

Now, in the event that we want to give ourselves more authority if we felt that was a rogue nation ruining the sustainability of the fishery or interfering in a nefarious way with our relationships in the Pacific, I dare say that that solution doesn’t lie in this Parliament; that solution lies in upgrading the agreements that all nations are a party to.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): There’s one issue that I would like to follow up with the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries arising from his recent comments from the chair. He, I thought wisely, said to the House that the future of the demilitarised nature of the South Pacific is linked to the prosperity and success of Pacific Island nations, and that those Pacific Island nations will look to other nations that might seek to influence them—that was a relevant document, Minister—in respect of associations that might lead to the future militarisation of the Pacific and a Pacific that is different to that which we currently experience. The Minister, I thought, was referring in part to the necessary development assistance that comes into the Pacific Islands from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, the European Union, China, and various other countries. The Minister will be aware that most USA aid programmes have now been cancelled—funding withdrawn from them—and I know that his own leader, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has quite a proud record of increasing development assistance into the Pacific under Labour-led administrations, was unsuccessful, in current straitened times, even in maintaining foreign aid at current levels into the Pacific.

I raise to the Minister an idea I have floated, because I know the Minister of Defence, who was here very recently listening to this debate, has also had difficulty getting the money that she thinks is necessary to increase spending into hard power. So there is probably a need going forward to increase both hard- and soft-power spending, and both are hard to get. So I refer the Minister to an idea in the document that he has now before him that maybe the way to leverage both is to agree that, as a principle, we need to lift both and tie lifts in, one to the other. I think that would improve both the politics and the outcomes if we could, across this House, work together to lift expenditures in both of those areas. I know that there are disagreements across the House politically, but there’s actually no disagreement, really, in respect of what we should be doing in the Pacific. The Rt Hon Chris Hipkins is also on record as saying we need to replace the frigates, which implies an increase in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

So the question that I would ask the Minister is: has he given consideration as to whether, in addition to these sorts of illegal fishing measures, really, the key to sustainable use of the fisheries is an increase in development assistance into the Pacific to help them fund the capital fleet, and maybe the idea that I’ve just put before him that you leverage one off the other so that you have, as a principle, that every increase in hard-power expenditure is matched by an increase in soft-power expenditure and diplomacy and overseas development assistance into the Pacific?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you to the honourable member, and it’s difficult to disagree. I just want to remind everyone: we, generally, are going to see these powers played out, in the Pacific region, when our military assets, such as they are, are deployed as a part of a collective effort. Recently, those efforts were called Kurukuru, which means, in Māori, “to strike”. That’s the French, Kiwis, Aussies, and Americans, and it’s beyond cavil that we need to do as much as possible.

But there is a larger debate: how will we fund more surveillance and interventions? And that goes to the aid question—to ensure that when we dress up aid, under whatever title you want to call it, it’s done in such a way that it’s boosting the resilience of our friends and the Governments of the Pacific, because they have options. If they feel that what they’re being offered is not actually enabling them to enjoy other resilience—this is not the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s and 1990s; we are regarded as a traditional donor. Other nations seeking to expand their influence in the Pacific are regarded as the new donors. The new donors are proving to be inordinately more pragmatic than the traditional donors, such as New Zealand.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for responding to my previous question around the agreement on marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction as well—much appreciated. I’m going to move on to a new clause. I guess, apologies to the Minister in advance, because I’m actually really enjoying hearing the Minister’s responses and also the experience the Minister has in this area.

To start with, I’m looking at clause 29, so that’s section 113H replaced, which is around the issuing of the high-seas fishing permit. Forgive my ignorance—feel free to direct me to additional readings or answer succinctly—but I wondered: when we are issuing a high-seas fishing permit, is there a quota attached to that? Do you get quotas when you are fishing in the high seas? It’s an area I genuinely don’t know.

I’m also curious because I see that one of the reasons that we are changing this particular section from high-seas fishing permit to international fishing permit is because we are now including national fishery jurisdictions of a foreign country on top of just simply high seas. I want to check with the Minister whether that’s an indication of something we might potentially see in either future trade agreements as sort of built into a trade agreement of being the eligibility or the authority by the relevant foreign countries or trade partners to fish within their national jurisdiction, or, alternatively, we’re going to be seeing agreements on the line of the US Tuna Treaty Amendments to Annex II most recently, where we’re going to be seeing some of these sorts of agreements coming up.

Just on the subject of a quota, I also wanted to check in terms of—sorry, going back just a little bit—clause 7, which is section 35 amended, we’re talking about the quota management system. I want to check whether now the new definition of commercial fisher and the quota—is quota still transferrable under the new definition? Because one of the things we heard yesterday, for example, when we were debating the dairy bill, was that quotas aren’t transferrable. So you can’t on-sell the quota. So I want to just check with the Minister for clarity that quotas in the case of the quota management system in the context of fishing quota are still transferable.

So those are my sort of three questions around whether there is a quota involved when we’re looking at high-seas fishing permits, whether we are going to be seeing more interactions or more inclusions of being able to fish in another country’s national jurisdiction as part of this amendment, and also whether quotas are still transferrable under the new definition.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Right, New Zealand belongs to a host of regional fishing management organisations. Indeed, one of them, set up in 2009-10, deals with a range of fisheries throughout the Pacific, including the mackerel off the coast of Chile, right through to the residual opportunities for boats to fish in the trans-Tasman waters.

When a nation is entitled to extract a fraction of a defined fishery resource, their fraction, their quota, is under the auspices of what we call regional fishing management organisations (RFMOs). Yes, there is the ability for transferability of quota. That explains why, if I’m not mistaken, it’s Chile who’s ended up with an inordinately large degree of mackerel fishery beyond their sovereign entitlement, because it’s being transferred from other nations who are highly unlikely ever to use it. For those reasons, recently, New Zealand had the opportunity to catch quota allocated to Australia. So that’s the reference, but it does not take place under any other regime other than our participation in what are called RFMOs.

On the question of international water fisheries, I want people to bear in mind something like the Ross Sea. That is where our Kiwi vessels are active. These powers, in the statute flowing from the select committee inquiry, give sharper authority and more certainty to the ambit of how our fisheries officials are able to police our own vessels and have a go at other vessels in the Ross Sea who undoubtedly are flouting regulations. However, at the end of the day, the capacity of Wellington to control that vessel depends on the flag State, and if the flag State—it has happened, in the days of Murray McCully—flips the bird, then our options lie at a higher court than this Parliament.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): 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.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Consequential amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clauses 62 to 78, “Consequential amendments”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I understand that, in Part 2, we’re looking at some of the consequential amendments, and I think the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries covered some parts of that in terms of the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, in terms of the “Schedule amended”.

Now, I know that there are certain parts of Part 1 that talk about the operational elements of this, but I guess I’m curious to hear from the Minister—and, again, this is coming from a position, broadly, of ignorance in terms of this area—when we are looking at inspections etc., what sort of ability is there for a vessel to appeal when they feel like they are being searched inappropriately. For example, I know that, in certain parts of Part 1, it talks about certain areas that shouldn’t be searched. We are seeing under the “Schedule amended”—this is clause 63—that there are certain sections that are exempted in terms of searching. But, yeah, I want to know: is there a possibility for an appeal process? Is there a possibility for a review process as a part of that general search? Thank you.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): A very quick response. Members of the committee, I want you to contemplate how rugged the conditions are on a number of these vessels that may or may not attract the attention of our officials. You are literally thousands of kilometres, in some cases, away from the nearest port. One of our new aircraft may have found something, as a consequence of electronic monitoring, that requires further investigation. They fly over. They then report this. It may come to pass that there’s a naval vessel not too far away, or a Kiwi-authorised person on another vessel operating out in the Pacific Islands.

This particular legislation gives clear authority to these benighted souls who have taken on this role, to go on these largely Asian-owned vessels and check that their conduct is consistent with the rules and obligations of operating on the high seas. It is a perilous and dangerous job, both for the people condemned to work months on end on these small vessels or, indeed, for our officers. This bill clearly identifies what they are able to do and how intrusive the search can be. But most of the time, these vessels are not Kiwi vessels; they derive their authority through a foreign flag. It may not come as a surprise to you that a lot of the foreign nations may very well resent this intrusiveness, so judgment will be required, but there will be clear authority for our people to undertake these roles.

STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you very much, Minister. Further to that question on the right of officers to inspect, enter living quarters, and conduct remote search—particularly, entering living quarters—there were questions on the committee around New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues, in terms of earlier parts of the bill as well, but also around this. What is your confidence and what gives you certainty that there are no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues with, for example, entering the private quarters of somebody living in—and I concur—at times pretty miserable conditions on some of these vessels at sea? It has been well documented, the slave-like conditions that some fishers are suffering on vessels in the Pacific and other parts of the world, but I wonder what consideration was given by you to the rights impact of fisheries officers being able to enter and board vessels in this manner. Thank you.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): So, folks, for the legions of Kiwis following this fascinating debate, we’re on Part 2, “Consequential amendments”; we’re on clause 63, “Schedule amended”; and we’re referring to items 113UB and 113UC. I direct the member Steve Abel’s attention to the fact that these powers are conferred under the Fisheries Act. The Fisheries Act has a range of provisions already within that statute, originally passed—if I’m not mistaken—in the mid-1990s. I’m confident that there will be no rogue operators exercising these powers, because these powers are now being embedded in a parent statute that already places limits on the capacity of the State to career around and make people’s lives misery. The exercise of these powers is likely to happen when a vessel comes into a port. It can possibly happen on the high seas, but it is likely to be the case when they’re in a port like Majuro, when they’re at port in the Kiribati islands, or possibly when they’re in Honiara itself—this is where we imagine a lot of these checks, after surveillance detects untoward behaviour takes place.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Again, I really appreciate the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries’ responses, and I also appreciate the Minister sharing his expertise on this particular topic.

I want to check, again, on this particular part—and feel free to give me very short answers—does the primary Act in terms of that, when it comes to search and surveillance, also cover, for example, if the official, let’s say in high seas or even potentially in a port, rather than seeing evidence of illegal fishing, sees elements of other potential crimes such as slavery or, even, human trafficking as a part of that search and seizure? How do they then manage this uncovering of some of those kinds of elements? Because, again, we’ve heard instances, and this is particularly rife from South-east Asia when it comes to evidence of modern slavery. Would the Minister be able to elucidate on whether the primary Act also clearly defines that when that search and seizure power does take place, they have to be on very specific areas and other areas that a person does notice will just have to be ignored or they are inadmissible as evidence because they’re not covered under the primary legislation.

I think, further to that, the other question I have is particularly—like the Minister said, I can only imagine the tough and rough situations that people do have when it comes to the high seas. So when something like this does happen in search and surveillance—and tempers do run high—is there any legal protection for any criminal offence that does take place in that regard as part of either this bill or the primary bill?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Yeah, so, obviously, New Zealand is a member to a variety of agreements, because we do stand against examples of international slavery in workplaces. Members may recall, 10 to 15 years ago, there were an egregious set of cases associated with Korean-flag vessels in New Zealand, so I don’t need to recite that history, but it should remind people in this committee that we have had a bit of experience in this regard.

I think it’s important to bear in mind that there is an international tribunal under the law of the sea, and if a foreign nation—or indeed our own nation—found that someone was creating problems, trying to obstruct and being unreasonable to our own flag vessels down there in the Ross Sea, we have the ability, as a nation owning the flag, to protest and to challenge such inspections. It’s inevitable, from time to time—whether it’s New Zealand working with the Pacific, which is obviously very topical—that could be the case. But there is a dispute resolution process, and that’s at the tribunal under the law of the sea.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): 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.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Mr Chair, thank you. Just a very quick question to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries on clause 2, on the commencement date. I’m assuming that the Act is coming into force six months after Royal assent to give time for preparation of some of the transition factors in this, but I just want to check with the Minister that the Minister is confident that six months is sufficient for some of the changes that are proposed in this bill.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I can assure you the bill’s been through the necessary assurance processes with our Ministry for Primary Industries officials. I have no doubt that they have arrived at a professional conclusion reflected in the statute.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): 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.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I present a legislative statement on the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon SHANE JONES: I move, That the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I want to acknowledge that these legislative changes flow from a body of work undertaken by the Primary Production Committee in a regime earlier than this one. They have come up with some sensible innovations and improvements. And why is it important? As I’ve already said, fisheries has turned into a currency of influence in not only the Pacific and other parts of the world, but it’s also been a vector for perfidy, where there have been problems that offend basic human rights. New Zealand has sought over the last 10 to 15 years to upgrade its level of assistance and to work more effectively with our neighbouring Pacific Governments. These are international obligations that relate to illegal and under-reported fishing, and the actual problem that we’re trying to solve is that, throughout our near neighbours, we have the Goldilocks zone of pelagic international fisheries. No group of nations have a more lucrative resource than our Pacific neighbours; sadly, they struggle, year after year, to maximise the dividend or the return from this natural resource.

Historically, it was dominated by the Americans. The Americans had an American tuna treaty, and that was used as a basis to meet the costs of gaining access to the fishery. And then a group of Kiwis—not the least of which is Mr Les Clark from Christchurch, married to a Kiribati woman—got together, several years ago, with the leaders of what’s called the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, and they created a collective of nations that decided to pool their political resource together. That enabled them to introduce a scheme that it is illegal to fish in their sovereign waters unless you purchase days enabling you to fish commercially for a defined range of pelagic sea species. No days; no fishing. That then drove vessels to fish in the adjoining international waters, thus denying the nations of revenue and increasing the prospect of illegal, under-reported fishing and a host of other illegal activities. So that is the problem that we’re trying to solve, largely.

Now it is nations from Asia who dominate that fishery. The Americans have largely withdrawn from the fishery because they could not match the cost of buying a day to fish in sovereign waters of our Pacific neighbours. This is a very lucrative entitlement scheme of catching after you have paid for the days. This scheme has, however, led to a host of challenges—not the least of which is policing what the heck is happening and finding a way to be more intrusive when vessels come to shore, because the concept of transshipment at sea is now illegal in the vast majority of the Pacific nations. By that, I mean that boats come alongside a big mother ship and they supply them with groceries and various other services and goods, and then they put the fish on the large vessel. Now these things have to happen at shore.

The changes that we have made through this legislation give greater powers and helps us play a better role in working with our Pacific neighbours. It also gives authority and greater opportunities to police our own fisheries vessels—very modest in size.

The final thing I’d like to say about this area is that we are in changing, volatile times when we look at our Pacific neighbours and when we look at how we spend the money that we have under our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) budgets, and what are we actually buying? Are we increasing the footprint of our influence? Are we putting conditions on our aid to ensure that the values that define us as New Zealanders are protected, extended, and projected? These are matters of political debate because often it’s said you should just give aid without conditions. I do not believe that. I believe that the taxpayers of New Zealand are spending money in the Pacific. We need to be absolutely confident that the footprint of New Zealand—an open, liberal, transparent democracy—is not sidelined or marginalised. We cannot have a situation where we’re spending money and not advancing the interests of our own nation to ensure that the Pacific remains a peaceful, open, safe, and secure environment. This is the tipping point where we’re at. Gone are the days where we could have a juvenile and naive view that everything we threw up there was going to lead to positive outcomes for New Zealand. We don’t have that any longer.

But these changes do represent an improvement in the legal powers that we have. Obviously, I should acknowledge the members of the Primary Production Committee, the most enjoyable select committee that I ever sat on in my time since 2005. I acknowledge the work of the Parliamentary Counsel Office—they’re extraordinarily busy—the MFAT officials, and the Ministry for Primary Industries officials. On that note, I’d like to thank all who have contributed to the bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Labour Party endorses the comments made by the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries and agrees that the bill is a useful contribution to New Zealand’s help in the Pacific to enable them both to sustainably fish their fisheries, so that the environmental baseline is maintained, and also to maximise the economic value they can achieve within those environmental limits.

Responding to some of the Minister’s comments about the more general propositions he made about aid into the Pacific, we agree that the prosperity and peacefulness of the Pacific Islands is of fundamental importance to New Zealand. It’s important to our economic, our people-to-people, and also our security interests. The withdrawal of US aid does not help. Most of their programmes have been cut, and it does mean that New Zealand and partners, like Australia, are going to have to step up. We need to do practical things, I agree, Minister, like enable affordable banking services, digital telecommunications, renewable electricity, and sustainable resource utilisation, as we are doing here with fisheries, but I think there’s a lot more to be done on that, as I addressed in the committee stage. And, of course, we’ve got to help them with climate adaptation.

Now, I agree that reciprocity is the key. I think we have to be a little bit careful that we’re not completely zero-sum game here, because better educational, health, and civil society outcomes are good for us all, and they have a value that ought not to be too transactional. But, that said, I agree that reciprocity is the key to their prosperity and to our willingness to contribute. Now, we’ve got a couple of ideas out on that at the moment. We think we need a bit of a new framing to work with rising powers in the region, as well as the other Pacific countries, and we’re interested in pursuing a Pacific peace zone, which might enable us to pursue those issues well, in a way that meshes with New Zealand’s traditional role in the Pacific, relating to peace and denuclearisation, or the avoidance of nuclearisation.

We also think it’s clear that the decline in both soft- and hard-power spending in New Zealand has to be reversed, and we are actually still seeing declines in both, or particularly in recent—I don’t want to politicise this too much. There’s a long-term trend that has seen a decline, particularly in hard-power expenditure, and a recent decline in soft-power expenditure as a percentage of GDP, too. Now, the split between hard-power expenditure and military expenditure will always need to be worked through, but we’re out there on the record today saying that we accept that increases to both are needed. We think a good principle, to start with, would be that for every dollar extra we spend in the military, we should be increasing our soft-power spend as well. For the cost of one frigate, you’d just about form a fisheries fleet in the Pacific. There are substantial increases of expenditure needed.

The former Prime Minister the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, our leader, has said that we agree the frigates need to be replaced—that it is fair for our partners to expect that they have military capabilities. And, as the Minister has outlined today, some of the work they do in the Pacific is quite dangerous already in respect of some of these shadow fleets. So we accept that that’s necessary. We accept that cooperation across Governments will be necessary to achieve that. We make the point that the last frigates were purchased by a Labour administration. The upgrades to the P-8s and the Orions were under a Labour coalition, with support from New Zealand First and the Green Party. There is a need, also, to change the way in which we defend ourselves, through the use of drones and things, which I won’t go into, but I think, at the core, this is, in my opinion, a very, very sensible idea. It’s hard to get political buy-in with people on these issues, and maybe we can leverage up both by saying we should link one to the other, because we actually need both, for the reasons that the Hon Shane Jones has already addressed.

Can I end by thanking the Primary Production Committee, because it was the select committee of this House that, essentially, led to this legislation, and the Government officials, as well as members of civil society, who then saw it through. We commend this bill to the House.

STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Of course, it’s a pity that I get the opportunity to acknowledge the excellent work of the officials on this bill after they’ve left the room. But I do want to acknowledge that, because at the Primary Production Committee, when we worked through the bill, there were a number of complexities. It certainly has the effect of strengthening the ability of inspectors and regulators to protect our oceans from the worst and most egregious actions of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. That’s why we’re obviously supporting it. It’s a good bill, and it’s great to have another instance of cross-party support on this. And it’s another instance in the space of two days of the Primary Production Committee having consensus—

Suze Redmayne: Best committee.

STEVE ABEL: —on—best committee—a bill that is for the our collective good as a nation, and indeed the entire environment of the ocean.

The Minister for Oceans and Fisheries spoke about the opportunity for economic benefits to the Pacific from a healthy fishery. I suppose, in a sense, the Green Party comes at it from the other way around, which is to say that when we have a thriving ocean ecology, we also have a thriving fishery that can then feed people and sustain people. And the starting point is that we protect the integrity of that ecology. Those magnificent benthic environments, those seafloor environments where we get these magnificent ancient coral forests, actually are a hub of ecological intensity—this is where the likes of orange roughy feed and exist. Around those environments, you get a diversity of species. It’s sort of like in shallow waters when you have a marine protected area, you get an abundance of fish and it ends up being for the benefit of those areas outside of that marine protected area, where fishing is still permitted. So by protecting, in the first instance, the health of the ecology of our ocean, we also protect the fishery.

It is concerning to us, in the broader scheme of things—that, rightly, we are taking a clear position on illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing that is consistent with our commitment to international obligations in the oceans. We had a very clear message from the officials on this. This is part of the broader principle of being part of the community of nations that take a care to look after the oceans, and we really needed to come up to speed to where other nations were on this challenge—these serious challenges, as the Minister rightly points out, in that wild and vast blue world that we live on. It is very challenging to deal with—he called them the mosquitoes, but the multitude of vessels out there that are doing things out of sight, out of mind.

In that frame, it is hard for us to not refer to our concerns about this Government’s failure to entirely be consistent on that front. I’m thinking of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation—SPRFMO—where New Zealand, under this Government, under this regime and this Minister, has backed out of previous commitments we made to uphold things like protecting those hugely valuable seamounts from destructive fishing. The sort of things that happened on those seamounts are things that are done by illegal vessels. But, often, if we haven’t got very clear jurisdictions that state clearly that that particular benthic environment is out of bounds, then we cannot enforce the idea of illegal fishing because it hasn’t been designated yet as illegal. New Zealand needs to do both ends of the equation. We need to be part of international agreements to make sure that we do protect the integrity of those most valuable ecosystems at sea.

It is also hard, in the context of where we are in time, to not reflect on the recent voyage of Greenpeace out on a ship to have a look at what is going on in the deep. I note, from a recent email, they said, “We saw the beauty of thriving underwater communities, including deep-sea corals that support a myriad of ocean life. We also saw the absolute destruction caused by bottom trawling. After even years of campaigning to protect seamounts and coral, seeing hour after hour of destroyed coral on this scale was a shock.” This is information that’s just been garnered in the last few days, in the last couple of weeks. “Coral is absolutely crucial to ocean health. When bottom trawlers drag heavy nets over the seafloor, they turn coral forests into rubble. We know that what comes up in the nets is just a tiny indication of what has been destroyed on the seafloor, and recently we have had instances of rare and protected coral species being trawled up in New Zealand fishing nets. Seeing both the destruction and the beauty reminded me how important it is to protect seamounts and the coral that live on them.” We couldn’t express support for that statement more strongly.

This legislation before us is part of a very important context in terms of the ocean, and part of where we as a nation need to be stepping more forthrightly and more determinedly to ensure that we do protect that absolutely precious ocean ecology that makes up most of the Earth’s surface.

It is always a pleasure when we are able to sit on a committee and work through an agreement on a piece of legislation like this that does protect the commons, that benefits all of us, not just those of us who are directly associated with it in our exclusive economic zone, but also those international waters that we are all responsible for being the caretakers of because they are, in a sense, something that belongs to no one; they belong to all of us, therefore. So this is an instance of where we have a piece of legislation that allows us, as people, to step up to that greater duty of being caretakers, for our brief time on this planet, of this magnificent ecology that we enjoy, live amongst, and are part of as human beings. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

LAURA McCLURE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill on its third reading. I think, firstly, all of us in this House can acknowledge the abundance that the Pacific offers, and its potential for our very vulnerable Pacific Island nations. The seafood industry is one of their key core assets, and it’s something that they hold very dearly to their heart. This bill, while it enables more powers for us to search vessels, for example, and to search for that illegal fishing, it also offers us a bit of an insight into other things that are happening out in the Pacific.

I think some of the discussion that we’ve been hearing today in the committee of the whole House, and bits and pieces that I’ve been picking up on—it’s quite nice to hear that, actually, some of the Opposition, particularly Labour, have actually come out in support of some of the things that we need to do within the Pacific as far as where we’re putting our financial aid. Are we getting value for money? Are we actually helping our Pacific Island nations with the things that they actually really want and need to thrive, in order for us to make some of our gains back, our political influence that we have lost over the last few years? I think that’s really important.

So it’s also good to hear that they also agree to an increase in GDP spending for defence, and I think this side of the House would be pretty proud and happy to see that. I also think that, for New Zealand as a whole, this signals that, actually, this Government and the Opposition see that our national security is a huge priority for us here, a tiny island nation at the bottom of the planet. We cannot find this more important, to make sure that we shore up our Pacific. So this has been well traversed, and we all know this a really good bill, and I’m really grateful to see everybody is supporting this, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): This bill’s about being a trusted and responsible global trading partner, and it’s about protecting the long-term interests of our vital fishing industry. I am very proud to commend this bill to the House.

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe e te Pīka, tēnā tātou. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero o Te Pāti Māori mō te pire nei me ōna kaupapa atu i te iwi Māori.

[I stand to voice the opinion of the Māori Party about this bill and its issues, that pertain to the Māori people.]

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is obviously something you’ve got to combat, because fish are a finite resource, and we’ve learnt that many times in this country. So we support the bill in that regard. The protection of international waters and international species is a key theme to our local species. They’re never separated. A tuna that swims down from Tonga is just as important as a kahawai caught down at the harbour. These are all lessons that are often lost in these sorts of conversations. So the knock-on effect is key in this discussion.

Here’s a good knock-on effect theme that’s a classic example in New Zealand. This year, we’ve had one of the best yellowfin tuna seasons in this country in 10 to 15 years. There are yellowfin tuna everywhere, from Manawatāwhi / the Three Kings, all the way to the Cook Strait—unprecedented. Where the heck did all those tuna come from? Well, I’ll tell you what happened. They stopped all that tuna wrangling up in the Pacific. So the game fishermen in this country haven’t seen a run of tuna for more than 10 years. So the protection of international waters has a knock-on effect to our local waters, and those two things are as important as each other.

So I’m a bit confused, a bit bemused, at the extreme attention that the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries is paying to protecting and regulating international waters, when he’s happy to deregulate local waters. Those two things are the same thing, so if you’re going to do one in one place, do it in the other one. In terms of our species in fishing, despite all the hoo-ha over the quota management system over the years, I can rattle off 10 species that were deemed so numerous that they would never disappear, that—guess what!—almost disappeared. Here’s one of them, one of the most numerous coastal fish: kahawai. When it was opened up to netters, it nearly vanished—the good old kahawai that everyone can go and catch. So they’re not separate issues, is what I’m saying.

Yet we’ve got two separate approaches—I can’t work that out. Me, I’m a fisherman and a diver; my father was a fisherman and diver; my uncle is a fisherman and diver; my grandfather was a fisherman and diver; and my great-grandfather was a fisherman and diver. We’ve been watching these coasts, fishing them, using the resources for generations and generations. We understand all this stuff. It’s not hard. It gets confusing when people stand around talking about it, or bits and pieces of it—this thing, that thing, the other thing, international, local. It all amounts to nothing if you can’t feed your whānau in your own rohe, moana.

So where is it all heading? It’s got to be heading somewhere, and it needs to be heading to a place where they’re all looked after as a total. You can’t separate them out and say, “Oh, we’re going to regulate over here, but—you know what?—we’re going to let that bottom trawling continue.” It’s ludicrous and our country deserves better. Te iwi Māori deserves better, but our country deserves better.

Also, I will just pick up on Steve Abel’s point. You can’t ignore climate change. The unprecedented run of yellowfin tuna in this country was matched this year by a more unprecedented run of marlin in the Southern Ocean. I’m talking about marlin south of Taranaki—about 10 marlin were caught on the Kāpiti Coast. There has been a string, a massive run, of marlin caught in the South Island, on the West Coast, in Westport, and there have been marlin caught in Kaikōura. This is unprecedented. Never in the history of anyone counting fish has this happened. As I said, I’m a diver. I dive off Kāpiti Island a lot. Last weekend, we saw the first ever blue maomao at Kāpiti Island. I don’t know what to say, really.

I go back to the Minister. How can he expect the international community to take us seriously when he still allows bottom trawling? We are one of seven countries in the world, whānau—one of seven in the world—who allow legal bottom trawling. How can he do that? How can he expect the local people to take him seriously when he goes on national TV and openly says that the Māui dolphin doesn’t exist—

Jenny Marcroft: It doesn’t.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: —and that it’s actually just a small Hector’s? There you go. There’s the dull people over there. If that’s what he believes, perhaps he should immediately lift the ban on set netting currently on the entire West Coast of the North Island because of the Māui dolphin. If indeed it is a ghost dolphin, lift the ban. Kia ora tātou.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to also support the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Like many speakers have mentioned before, this is one of those bills that has the House’s overall unanimous support. Again, thank you to the Primary Production Committee for examining this particular bill and also to the previous Minister, under the Labour Government, for introducing this bill in the first place.

When it comes to this bill, understandably, this is to do with international fishing and it’s specifically around illegal, unreported, and unregulated—IUU—fishing. There are various mechanisms that are in this particular bill that aim to address some of these issues, as well as quality-of-life changes to areas such as, for example, expanding the high-seas fishing permit to a more broadly international fishing permit to include potentially authorised fish in other countries’ national jurisdiction.

So, as part of the committee stage, it was actually incredibly enlightening. I would like to thank the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for being very open in terms of his response, but also in terms of his broader experience in this area.

Other things that we did touch on in terms of the committee stage are around things like surveillance, and I think the Hon David Parker raised the really important questions, and some really important questions around—it’s great that we have some of these, but what happens if a vessel goes dark? You know, what happens if we are unable to see whether there are IUU activities taking place?

But, broadly speaking, I want to kind of address a couple of additional things that other members have spoken on, and I want to first address our broader responsibility, as Aotearoa, in the Pacific region. Now, we have heard in terms of the need for defence spending and all of those, but I think, from a Greens’ perspective, we maintain what is the value of that for our Pacific neighbours, in light of much greater issues in our communities at this stage, and what, honestly, our Pacific neighbours are asking us to do, which is to address climate change. That is one of the top priorities for them, in light of climate change and the issue of climate mitigation but also climate adaptation.

Look, we can’t outshoot the US and we can’t outspend China. So when we are looking at our defence spending going up to 2 percent of our GDP, which equates to $10 billion, exactly what are we actually going to be spending on in a stage where we’re also seeing cuts to the Defence Force and not actually sponsoring the core facilities and infrastructure that we all need such as education and health, etc?

But to bring it back to this bill, one of the other things that we did manage to talk about quite substantively is how this will interact with other potential international instruments and agreements. I really want to use this opportunity to also talk about the fact that we have signed, but are also in the process of eventually ratifying and implementing, the agreement on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction—or BBNJ. This sets, supposedly, the pathway for us to do what the Global Oceans Treaty is meant to do, which is to protect 30 percent of our ocean.

I’m sure that many people agree that although we have these demarcated zones as exclusive economic zones, and this belongs to this country and that belongs to that country, our natural environment and our biodiversity, our marine animals do not see those borders. They do not factor in those borders when they are traveling through our open seas. So the way that Tākuta Ferris has mentioned, in the sense that we have addressed some of these things in international waters but not so much in domestic waters, doesn’t make a lot of sense in this case. Also, just a reminder to the House that New Zealand is actually still the only nation in the Pacific that bottom trawls in the South Pacific high seas, which is an embarrassment for us.

Lastly, I just want to say that in this particular agreement, it also gives acknowledgment of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples. Mātauranga Māori is important for us and we look forward to this.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you. This bill helps us meet our international obligations and, importantly, it actually maintains our international reputation, noting our commitment to being a leader in sustainability of our fisheries and including in international waters. This reputation’s quite critical to maintain our access to our export markets so that that export income can contribute to this Government’s goal of doubling export by value over 10 years so that New Zealanders can benefit with increased job opportunities, enablement of better infrastructure, and ultimately putting more money in the back pockets of all New Zealanders. I commend this bill.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. Labour supports this bill. The reason for that is that we introduced it into the House—so of course we’re going to support it.

This bill is important so that we’re able to enforce and strengthen enforcement in the areas of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and we also do need to align what is very strong and clear international practice in this space, and that’s what this bill does.

It is disappointing, though, that this is being progressed under urgency. The reason why I say that is because we’ve just come hot off the heels of a committee stage where questions were put to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries in committee, and it’s rather disappointing that the Minister didn’t respond to any of the questions that I put to him. On this side of the House, we were not seeking to be obstructive around this—we are supportive of this bill; we want it to pass, but we want it to be good, clear legislation. The questions that were put to the Minister were in an effort to achieve exactly that. So it is disappointing that we are in urgency and that the Minister has decided not to play ball in the sense of giving constructive feedback, or even answering or addressing any of the questions. So that is a concern but I guess that’s what you get from the Government seeking to progress legislation under urgency, noting that this is a bill that has been on the Order Paper, actually, for quite some time. So it is disappointing, in that respect.

Despite that, though, when we step back and look at this bill, it is one that does give a real sense of achievement around reducing the gap between what the existing legislation is and what is good practice in terms of what our responsibilities are as a country. It is a bill that bases itself on the tenets of accountability and scrutiny, and so it is certainly our desire and hope that the bill will deliver on that. I commend this bill to the House.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): This Government is committed to a strong domestic framework against illegal fishing. Illegal fishing in the Southern and Pacific Oceans impacts on our own fishing industry, and we must do all we can to prevent illegal fishing. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Five-minute split call—Glen Bennett.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. As my colleagues the Hon David Parker and Tangi Utikere have already made clear, Labour does support this legislation. The reason we do is because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it was a piece of legislation that Labour, in Government back in 2023, did introduce to this House—so it is appropriate to support it. But it’s also appropriate to support it because if we maintained the status quo, New Zealand would become an outlier in terms of this space, in terms of ensuring that we strengthen our ability to manage the fisheries and to enforce the rules to prevent illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. It’s good for us, it’s good for the Pacific, and I commend this to the House.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Similar to the last presenter from the other side of the House, Glen Bennett, this bill brings New Zealand up to the international expectations to meet our obligations. It focuses on our trading partners, it focuses on our Pacific neighbours, and it helps—most importantly—our ocean environment and our fish stocks. I’m happy to commend the bill to the House.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is good to be speaking on this third reading of a bill that, as I mentioned earlier, was once in my name. I cannot claim to have done an awful amount of work on it when I was the Minister—I was able to have it introduced, but it is the work, as we’ve heard, from many officials over many years, and many people who have been very much involved in seeing the importance of international law around this shared resource, which is our oceans. So I want to commend all of those people who have done that work, and had the foresight to see—

Hon Mark Patterson: Even Shane?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —how international regulations are important—

David MacLeod: Go on, say it!

Jenny Marcroft: You know you want to!

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: There are some heckles coming from the other side of the House that I have to even congratulate the current Minister for Oceans and Fisheries for shepherding this through the House. I do believe that in the committee of the whole House stage, I thanked the Minister a number of times for his comments in the committee stage, and I do think it is good that he has continued with this piece of legislation, and I don’t know if there needed much convincing for the other parties. They’ve all been joining in harmony for support of this bill, so I commend all of them who are doing that.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Nearly—nearly.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I also do want to, though, note that some of our very small, precise questions were not answered in the committee stage, and that is a problem, as is running that committee stage into the third reading, all at the same time in urgency, where people were in the House until 12 midnight last night, were in the select committees at 8 o’clock this morning, and there might be mistakes made. I’m simply talking about good legislative processes, to those members opposite. I can say it is a lot more efficient, if this Government is interested in efficiency, to have a little bit of time to make sure that questions raised do not identify problems that could be easily fixed by going back into the committee stage rather than passing a bill, having it commence, and then having to come back to amend it, if that is indeed the case. Just a bit of good process helps with efficiency.

I’ll try and end on a more cheery note, and that is that it is very excellent that all parties are agreed about the importance of this international law, and the importance of regulating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Just before I call the next speaker, I think it’s very good that members are looking after the ego and self-esteem of their Minister, which clearly needs to be looked after! So I commend them for that.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be the lucky last speaker on this, the third reading of the Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Essentially, this bill, as we’ve heard traversed around the House today, is amending the principal Act, the Fisheries Act 1996, so that Aotearoa New Zealand can better meet its international fishing management obligations in a more efficient way. With that, since we’re so good here on this side of the House with efficiency, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That concludes the business of urgency. Congratulations to all involved. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 12.22 p.m. (Thursday)