Thursday, 10 April 2025

THURSDAY, 10 APRIL 2025

THURSDAY, 10 APRIL 2025

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): Today, the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 6 May. [Interruption] It’s kind of how I feel too—and I suspect all of us. In that week, the House will consider the Racing Industry Amendment Bill, the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill, and the Social Security Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: Are there any comments on that?

Motions

Claire Trevett—Retirement

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate acknowledging Claire Trevett’s service in the parliamentary press gallery.

I move, That this House note with regret the retirement of Ms Claire Trevett, noting her 18 years of service in the press gallery including, most recently, as the New Zealand Herald’s political editor; noting that Ms Trevett is known across this House for her integrity, her tough but fair approach, her acerbic and irreverent wit, and her unerring ability to see politicians as human beings even through the fog of day-to-day politics.

She has observed our foibles and our failings with appropriate irreverence. And, acknowledging that, Ms Trevett will be missed by members present and past from across this House. We wish her well.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 3 to Minister, 2 April 2025

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Point of order. Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer to an oral question.

SPEAKER: This time I will put that. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to make a correction to an answer for oral question No. 3 in the House on Wednesday, 2 April 2025. I inadvertently said that the Ministry of Education report I referred to was 2014. I meant to say 2012.

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

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

SPEAKER: There have been no petitions presented to the Clerk to put before the House. I present the report of the Auditor-General entitled How Public Organisations Are Fulfilling Treaty Settlements, and that paper is published under the authority of the House. Three select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the report of the Controller and Auditor-General Strengthening government procurement: Lessons from our recent work

reports of the Officers of Parliament Committee on the:

alterations to the 2024-25 appropriations for Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the 2025-26 draft budgets for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

inquiry into the appointment of a Controller and Auditor-General.

SPEAKER: The reports are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of three bills.

CLERK:

Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill, introduction

Hon Chris Bishop: Oh, good bill.

CLERK:

Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Restrictions on Issue of Off-Licences and Low and No Alcohol Products) Amendment Bill, introduction

Crown Minerals (Prohibition on Coal Mining) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading. I note one member’s excitement with that life jacket bill—I think he might need something bigger than a child’s life jacket!

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, and we were very proud of the statements yesterday by the Hon Mark Patterson and the Hon Nicola Willis, who are putting New Zealand wool first again. This miracle thread contributed $549 million to our economy in the last financial year, and now it’s being prioritised by 130 Government agencies and departments, who are working on our buildings, recognising the immense benefits of our exporters.

Jamie Arbuckle: Does he stand by the comments of the Minister of Finance that the Government is creating the conditions for a competitive supermarket industry?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, and we stand firmly by this commitment because it was in the coalition agreement between the New Zealand National Party and the New Zealand First Party. It’s long been our position that the duopolistic—I know it’s a multi-vowel - sound word, so a lot of people over there will probably be attracted to it—stranglehold on our grocery sector requires a third entrant. That is why we are replacing the Resource Management Act, the Overseas Investment Act, clamping down on anti-competitive behaviour, and fixing food labelling and import standards to lift competitive products.

Jamie Arbuckle: Does he stand by the comments of the Minister for Rail that the Government is delivering rail ferries and straightforward infrastructure?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, we are compelled to go with the truth. Two new ferries for the next 30 years—both will move 1,500 people and 2.4 kilometres of lanes for cars, trucks, and rail wagons each movement. That’s more than the current fleet. We are pleased to confirm to the House that the Ferry Holdings board has invited six commercial shipyards to compete on price and quality. We don’t, of course, talk about who they are so that we keep a commercial advantage as the buyer.

Jamie Arbuckle: Does he stand by the comments of the Minister of Police that the Government will not defund the police?

Francisco Hernandez: You’ve already done it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: “Dun-ette”—what’s “dun-ette”? Your policy? Ladies and gentlemen, can I just say that people feel much happier with cops on the beat—even 48 percent of the Green vote felt that way. How many people felt that they’d be safer in a dark alley with a gang member? Well, less than 8 percent felt that way, and the Greens were all a part of them as well. Now, we’re going to get cops back on the beat. We are now well on track to be getting our extra 500 people. The intake is the largest it’s ever been, and so we’re flat out doing it—and do you know something? I think we had sometimes 7,000 applicants to be in the police at the very beginning. So the interest is starting to pick up big time.

Question No. 2—Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti

2. Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) to the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti: Have Māori-Crown relations improved since the coalition Government took office?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): The honourable member will know that Crown-Māori relations are not static—they are tested, they have their ups and downs, and they evolve. There have been challenges over the last 18 months, and successes too, like Minister Jones’ Regional Infrastructure Fund supporting investments in Rātana, Waitangi, and Parihaka; like Treaty settlements led by Minister Goldsmith; the Ō-Rākau bill that transferred the ownership of Ō-Rākau back to Ngā Ahi e Toru, housing; and various fast-track projects—24 of which are either led by, or co-invested with, Māori organisations. We cannot break Crown-Māori relations. The Crown and iwi and Māori are inextricably tied through the Treaty and obligations and responsibilities that go with kāwanatanga, rangatiratanga, and, most importantly, kotahitanga.

Hon Willie Jackson: If his Government is focusing on unifying this country, as Christopher Luxon claimed, how does undermining te reo, destroying the Māori Health Authority, and dismissing tikanga achieve that?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: There are a number of steps that this Government is absolutely focused on—for example, getting the economy back on track, and that includes Māori and all New Zealanders delivering better public services, including folks who live in Hamilton that are Māori, Pasifika, Asian, or New Zealanders trying to get to the hospital and get proper patient health outcomes; and, of course, the law and order mahi that Minister Mark Mitchell is undertaking.

Hon Willie Jackson: What is the Minister most proud of: cutting Māori voices from councils, rolling back efforts to narrow the eight-year life expectancy gap between Māori and non-Māori, or allowing Te Tiriti to be used as a bargaining chip in coalition negotiations?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I am very proud of maintaining a very respectful and dignified posture in this House and out in the electorate that I serve.

Hon Willie Jackson: How could the Minister enable and vote for the first reading of a bill that the Waitangi Tribunal says “would unsettle the constitutional foundation of Aotearoa”, just to cling to three years of fragile power, when the damage to his mana and legacy will live on for ever?

SPEAKER: You can’t use a question to make a personal reflection like that. Have another go or give it up.

Hon Willie Jackson: OK. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Can the Minister look at tamariki Māori, including his own children, in the eye and say his Government honours Te Tiriti?

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Well, I have it in hand. That’s equally offensive, so one more time.

Hon Willie Jackson: OK, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. How can Māori respect the legacy of a Minister for Māori Crown Relations who claims he’s too far down the food chain to protect Te Tiriti?

SPEAKER: Marginal.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I’m actually very proud of the work that this Government has undertaken to progress a number of Treaty-related matters, including the mahi that Minister Goldsmith and I attended, one week ago, in Taumarunui with the Ngāti Hauā deed of settlement, including a number of matters that have advanced Māori economic development, including last week’s announcement around work that we are doing to assure that the Tōnui Māori framework—how Government can support Māori economic development—can move forward. I’m very proud of that focus on localism and devolution. What I would not be proud of, as the last Government showed, is monopolising Māori development and thinking that we know everything about Māori development. We don’t.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister: if he was to lose six Māori colleagues as a result of his work, would he regard that as a failure?

SPEAKER: No, that call is an attack.

Hon Willie Jackson: Will the Minister take a stand if the coalition seeks to harm Crown-Māori relations even more, including the removal of Treaty principles from the Government’s Resource Management Act reforms, or will he continue to merely stand back and wring his hands?

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order. Standing Order 390: that question cannot stand, because it’s not a statement of fact. The Treaty of Waitangi principles have not been removed from that public document, the proposed statute.

SPEAKER: And more than that, the end of the question most certainly had a personal reflection in it. Last chance to get a question that’s in order.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. For someone to break the rules once is a mistake, twice is stupid, but three times is trifling with you. Why don’t you just end this question?

SPEAKER: I thank the member for offering that advice and I would certainly point out to him that if I were to apply that in all cases to the most literal interpretation of answers to questions, very little would be answered in this House. Last chance, Mr Jackson.

Hon Willie Jackson: Thank you very much. Can I ask the Minister: what is the point of having a Minister for Māori Crown Relations who only considers the interests of the Crown?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Certainly, I’m very privileged and honoured to be the Minister responsible for Crown and Māori relations and someone who is working in a team, not just talking about things and handing out money like Al Bundy.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: As a matter of future work, when was the last time he heard from the Minister who set up the ministry of Māori-Crown relations?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Kua roa te wā. [It’s been a long time.]

Question No. 3—Finance

3. KATIE NIMON (National—Napier) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the fiscal policy response to economic shocks?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): This morning, Treasury released a draft long-term insights briefing for public consultation. The paper is about the appropriate role of fiscal policy—that is, Government decisions about spending and revenue—through economic shocks and business cycles. Part of the motivation for the paper was a reflection on COVID times and how fiscal policy was used both during and after the pandemic. Looking ahead, it is relevant when thinking about the fiscal response to future shocks and significant global events such as the world is experiencing at present.

Katie Nimon: What does the draft long-term insights briefing say about the relative roles of fiscal and monetary policy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The paper confirms that in all but exceptional cases, macroeconomic stabilisation should be left to monetary policy run by the independent Reserve Bank. However, there is a case for using fiscal policy to stimulate the economy when the official cash rate is so low that reducing it further is not practical or effective. The paper is sceptical of using large-scale infrastructure investment as a form of stimulus, as it typically involves lengthy planning, design, and construction processes. Otherwise, discretionary fiscal policy should focus on the medium-term goals of debt sustainability and effective delivery of public services.

Katie Nimon: How are these findings relevant to the current global turmoil?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, they confirm that in the first place, monetary policy is the way to deal with any immediate impact on the New Zealand economy. With the official cash rate at 3.5 percent, the Reserve Bank has plenty of room to reduce interest rates, if it needs to. In terms of fiscal policy, the current turmoil makes it even more important to get New Zealand’s fiscal position back on an even keel so that we retain market confidence and can react, if necessary. The operating balance has been in deficit for many years. We are now on a path back to surplus. Debt has risen very sharply since 2019. We are now on track to see that debt curve bend then start to decline—that is the crucial role fiscal policy is playing.

Katie Nimon: What alternative approaches to fiscal policy has she seen?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I have seen one commentator saying that there may need to be more spending in the Budget to stimulate the economy and that “I think there’d certainly be a justified case for that”. The commentator also said, “if it’s investment spending, rather than short term spending, there is absolutely a case for that at the moment”. Since these statements suggest an entirely different approach from that which Treasury is advising in its draft long-term insights briefing, I would encourage Chris Hipkins to take up the Treasury’s invitation and make a submission.

Question No. 4—Education

4. Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister of Education: Is she committed to the purpose of the Education and Training Act 2020 that establishes and regulates an education system that “honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and supports Māori-Crown relationships”; if so, how?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Yes. Honouring the Treaty in education means raising achievement and closing the equity gap by addressing the disproportionate representation of Māori students in the lower quartiles of educational achievement. That’s why, at the start of term 2, every kaiako teaching in Māori medium and kura kaupapa will have received their detailed pāngarau lesson plans, student workbooks, activities, and classroom-ready resources for their tamariki—the first roll-out of high-quality, curriculum-aligned math resources in te reo Māori, delivered by this Government.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Does she have confidence in Elizabeth Rata’s contribution to the curriculum, given she told the Justice Committee that New Zealand “is under serious threat from those who would replace liberal democracy with tribal sovereignty, and by doing so will create a racialised society—apartheid.”?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, Elizabeth Rata was one of many writers of the English curriculum, one of 20, in fact. Actually, when the Ministry of Education are looking to contract writers for the curriculum, they look for experts in curriculum design and in English. What they don’t do is trawl back through people’s histories, because we are interested in the content of the curriculum. If the member was really interested in raising Māori achievement, she would be asking questions about the detail of the curriculum, but she’s not. She’s asking questions about what the people who wrote the curriculum believe. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just wait for silence.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Does she agree with Elizabeth Rata, who told the select committee that there was a risk “of cultural posturing, intimidation, perhaps even violence” from opponents of the Treaty principles bill?

Hon Chris Bishop: Point of order. The Minister is not responsible for the statements of Dr Rata, made at select committee.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: My question was: does she agree with them?

SPEAKER: And that is a legitimate question.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I didn’t listen to Elizabeth Rata’s contribution to that select committee—it was not to do with education.

Hon David Seymour: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: One more over here.

Hon Willie Jackson: Another stupid one, no doubt.

SPEAKER: That’ll be goodbye shortly.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Can she reassure the thousands of educators associated with the 13 peak educational bodies that the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education is safe, given that she is downgrading consideration of Te Tiriti o Waitangi through legislation?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: In answer to that question, we’re not downgrading it at all. The very first part of replacement section 127 in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2), which is currently being introduced to the House, is about making sure that educational achievement is the paramount objective.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Where was Te Tiriti?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: And I said in my very first answer to the question—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Where was Te Tiriti?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: —that if we’re going to honour the Treaty, we need to make sure that our tamariki Māori are achieving in our education system—that has to be the paramount objective.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: So not Te Tiriti as well.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: And one of the most essential qualifying objectives to that is making sure we all honour the Treaty, and it says that in section 127.

Hon David Seymour: Supplementary.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. During the answer to that question, the person who put the question interrupted with three other questions at the same time. Now, either she’s serious about getting an answer or she’s just posing here and showing off what she doesn’t know. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: And there is—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No—supplementary question, the Hon David Seymour.

Hon David Seymour: Does the Minister believe it’s the Government’s policy to hire people on their expertise in the relevant area, or to discriminate on their political beliefs; in other words, is the Government committed to following the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act, or do we just ignore those and let our prejudices run rampant?

SPEAKER: In so much as any of those points relates to the Minister’s portfolio, a very brief answer could be given.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I know that the ministry, when they were appointing writers, were looking for curriculum experts and English experts.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How is proposing to cut Māori resource teachers (RTs), who work most closely with tamariki Māori needing the most learning support, being committed to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: We’ve traversed this in question time many times. The model of delivery is not working for tamariki Māori. We’ve already said that there are numerous RTs of Māori based in areas where there are a very low proportion of kura kaupapa—where, in Northland, for example, we have many kura kaupapa and only two RTs of Māori. The way that we deliver the service is not equitable; it is not optimised. We are going to make sure we take that funding and put it back into Māori education so it is more equitable and it is more optimised so we see benefits in the classroom for tamariki Māori.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why will she not meet with the resource teachers of Māori and accept their letter signed by over 6,000 supporters calling on her to retain funding for resource teachers of Māori?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: There has been a process of consultation—that has closed, and now we will look at those answers that are being given back and take those into consideration when we make our decisions.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table the letter from the National Association of Resource Teachers Advisory Māori, who would have liked to have given this letter to the Minister personally, but she would not meet with them.

SPEAKER: You don’t need to say the last part. Who is in possession of that letter already?

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Just me, because they handed it to me at my meeting prior to this.

Hon Nicola Willis: They haven’t sent it to her yet.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: No, they wanted to meet—

SPEAKER: Now, hang on—hang on. No explanations. Leave is sought. Is there any objection?

Hon Members: Yes. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Supplementary. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: I tell you what, I know it’s Thursday and we’re about to go into a long recess, but just hold and check a little bit. Willow-Jean Prime.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How can she seriously claim to be committed to a system that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi when she reduces the importance of considering Te Tiriti o Waitangi on school boards, cuts Māori resource teachers, and appoints fringe anti-Māori thinkers to her advisory groups?

SPEAKER: No, sorry, that’s not a reasonable question.

Question No. 5—Transport

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Transport. Does he accept evidence that a person struck by a vehicle travelling at 30 km/h—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just a minute, Ms Julie Anne Genter. Could you, please, start your question again. The House needs to be listening to what you’re saying.

5. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) to the Minister of Transport: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does he accept evidence that a person struck by a vehicle travelling at 30 km/h has a 90 percent chance of surviving, dropping to only 20 percent if hit at 50 km/h; if so, will he listen to the pleas from school principals, aged care residents, and communities who want to keep safer speeds of 30 km/h?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): I’m advised there’s a large body of research on the risk of a pedestrian being killed after being hit by a motor vehicle travelling at different speeds. While the chance of survival is greatest at lower speeds, I’m advised that crash outcomes are influenced by a range of factors. It’s not quite as simple as the member is indicating. The Government is committed to improving road safety, and we’re focused on targeting the highest contributing factors to fatal road crashes, such as alcohol and drugs, distracted drivers, and building and maintaining our road network to a higher standard. As to the second part of the question, the Government has taken steps to improve safety outside schools by requiring variable speed limits to be implemented outside schools by 1 July 2026. This includes variable limits of 30 km/h outside schools in predominantly urban areas. Furthermore, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has been listening to community concerns. Following strong local feedback to proposed speed changes in some parts of the country, such as Rākaia, in Canterbury, and Marybank, in Nelson, NZTA has announced new consultation on these speed changes to make sure they’re getting it right.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Why is he claiming that the variable speed limits around schools are an improvement to safety when 85 percent of deaths and serious injuries within 400 metres of a school gate happen outside school drop-off and pick-up times; and the rule, as drafted, is going to force councils to increase the speed limit around hundreds of schools in Auckland, and in Wellington, a primary school, an intermediate school, two aged-care facilities, a hospital, and two early childhood centres?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, the Government has taken the pragmatic view that speed limits should be lower around school pick-up and drop-off times, because that’s when kids are there, but driving past a school at midnight should not require someone to drive at 30 km/h. As to the second part of the member’s supplementary, councils, as Road Controlling Authorities, have the ability to consult on lowering speed limits after 1 July, and some have already started doing that.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What does he say to the Point Chevalier School principal, who said, “I attended the funeral of a young man, about 10 years old. He was hit by a car … in a 50 km/h area. That could have been different if it was 30 km/h around that school.”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I’d say to him that all deaths on our roads are tragedies, and I’d encourage him, if he feels strongly, as he clearly does, around the particular speed limit near that particular school, which I’m not familiar with, to talk to the relevant road controlling authority to express those concerns.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What does he say to Freemans Bay School principal Cindy Walsh, who, last year, was witness to a student being struck by a car outside of the school, outside of drop-off and pick-up times—“The car was travelling 30 km/h, as required. The student was taken to a hospital with moderate injuries and shock and was discharged the day after. If the car was travelling at 50 km/h, he would have received a serious injury or death.”?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’d say exactly the same thing I said to the person the member was referring to in the question before.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Will he amend the 2024 speed limit rule to allow local authorities and NZTA to retain safer speed limits of 30 km/h where there is strong community support, especially around schools and aged-care facilities, where people are crossing the road all during the day; if not, why not?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The rule allows for that. After 1 July, road controlling authorities can consult local communities on what the speed should be on the roads that they control. Hamilton City Council has already started it. I know that the member is particularly concerned about Wellington City Council. She should go and talk to the city council.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Is he saying that councils don’t have to reverse the speed limits between now and 1 July?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No.

Question No. 6—Disability Issues

6. Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Disability Issues: Does she stand by her statement, “That is why we are prioritising disabled people, their families, and carers”; if so, is she confident that all Government agencies are acting in the best interests of disabled people?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Disability Issues): Yes. Prioritising disabled people, their families, and carers is a priority for this Government, and that is why we have provided a record $1.1 billion funding boost to Disability Support Services in last year’s Budget. The state of affairs left by the last Government needed immediate action to stabilise the disability support system. The disability strategy refresh is a key piece of work to improve the lives of disabled people, and I have recently announced the membership of key working groups. These groups will meet for the first time tomorrow and include the disabled community experts from across Government and business. Our Government is focused on improving the lives of disabled New Zealanders.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Does she agree with the immigration Minister’s decision to exclude some disabled children of temporary migrants from being able to get a student or visitor visa?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Yes, I’m very confident in the Minister of Immigration’s decisions.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How does she justify the exclusion of disabled migrant children from student and visitor visas, given New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, it might interest the member that, actually, that was a decision that was also agreed by the previous Government. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Wait!

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Was she aware of these immigration changes prior to the announcement; if so, did she advocate on behalf of migrant children with intellectual disabilities?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Look, while I accept that it’s challenging for the family involved, New Zealand, like every other country in the world, has immigration policies that take into account the needs of New Zealanders.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What does she say to the parents of the six-year-old child with Down syndrome in Waikato who faces deportation because of her Government’s decision to deny him a visa?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, that member would well know that the House is not a place to discuss individual immigration cases, but, as I said, for any family with a child with a disability, it’s incredibly challenging, and I accept that.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Will she advocate to the immigration Minister to intervene and allow migrant children with Down syndrome to stay in New Zealand; if not, what message is her Government sending about the value and potential of people with Down syndrome?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I’ve answered the question. I have confidence in the Minister of Immigration. In terms of the decisions our Government has made, they are in the interests of New Zealanders. While I accept that it’s challenging for the individual family involved, I would remind that member of her Government’s previous position around the United Nations’ rights of the child that didn’t propose any change.

Question No. 7—Oceans and Fisheries

7. TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tonga) to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: What assurances can he provide, if any, that his proposed fisheries reforms will not diminish Māori customary gathering rights or the ability of New Zealanders to gather kai moana to feed their whānau?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I can confirm to the House that the proposed changes that are currently going through the process of consultation will not diminish the mātaitai food-gathering rights of tangata whenua, a feature of the 1992 settlement. Similarly, nothing that is proposed is going to undermine the interests of garden-variety Kiwis, because sustainability will be uppermost in the officials’ minds as they develop proposals.

Tākuta Ferris: Does he agree that under the quota management system (QMS), many taonga species such as tipa—scallops—and koura—crayfish—have become functionally extinct in many areas, leading to the closure of their commercial fisheries and rendering the fisheries settlement assets granted to hapū and iwi in 1992 absolutely worthless; if not, why not?

Hon SHANE JONES: Point of order. Can I direct the Speaker of the House to educate the member that there are a plethora of Speakers’ rulings—196, 197—that rule that question out of order.

SPEAKER: Well, thank you for your advice. But one thing you cannot do is direct the Speaker of the House. If you want to answer the question, by all means. If you don’t want to answer it, then say so—“It’s not in the public interest” would be the only reason for that not being answered.

Hon SHANE JONES: I cannot respond to a question that’s riddled with factual inaccuracies.

Tākuta Ferris: Will he propose compensation to hapū and iwi for the gross devaluation of their fisheries settlement assets and loss of income as a result of a failure of the QMS to ensure the sustainability of those fish stocks; if not, why not?

SPEAKER: I think Standing Order 372 is the one I quote that relates to the content that can be in questions. That question had a number of assertions, suppositions, and, effectively, positions put that may be contestable. Is there another way you could ask the question that might meet the Standing Orders?

Tākuta Ferris: Given the current state—

SPEAKER: No. We tend not to start a question with “given” because that’s requiring that there’s already information about the question that should be information that’s being sought. So just start with a question wording.

Tākuta Ferris: The current state of many species renders fisheries settlements that iwi received in 1992 value-less—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Mr Speaker, that questioner has had enough time to frame his question, and up till now, after this lengthy discourse, he is making a statement. Surely he’s been here long enough to learn what the lessons of this House are.

SPEAKER: Yeah, look, we’ll have one more go. Just start with a question. I think it should be relatively easy to get a question out of that. I’m being very lenient. It’s a Thursday and it’s a particularly interesting Thursday, so have one more go.

Tākuta Ferris: OK. Will he propose compensation for loss of value of fisheries settlements to iwi?

Hon SHANE JONES: The fisheries settlement, otherwise colloquially known as the “Sealord settlement”, was settled in 1992. The full and final settlement enabled Māori to receive quota and participate under a general set of rules governing the conduct of commercial fishing. There is nothing especially distinctive about the quota under the law that the member avers. All quota owners are bound by general legal decisions, a decision that was negotiated by others including Sir Tipene O’Regan; supported by the former All Black, a former member of Southern Māori, Tutekawa Wyllie, when they had a reputable representative.

Tākuta Ferris: Does he believe that allowing fishing companies to carry over uncaught quota from one fishing year to the next fishing year will help improve the sustainability of local fish stocks; if so, how?

Hon SHANE JONES: Obviously, the member has galloped further than both experience and expertise—those decisions have not been signed off permanently. At this stage, we are still in consultation. So ko tāku ki te mema, tāria te wā. Makere mai koe i tō hōiho. E hoki ki te kōhanga. [I say to the member, wait. Get off your horse. Go back to kindergarten.]

Tākuta Ferris: Over 300,000 tonnes of fish is commercially harvested from Aotearoa’s oceans every year, and exported at rock-bottom prices—Minister, do you think the bulk harvesting of kahawai, the people’s fish, and exporting them for less than $2 a kilo qualifies as a good economic and social value return for New Zealand’s natural resources?

Hon SHANE JONES: I’m sure that I speak on behalf of a host of the members of the House who love fishing and realise that we need to enhance the value of this valuable stock. But we are not running a Soviet empire here, where politicians dictate what the market should pay.

Tākuta Ferris: Minister, the commercial fishing industry illegally discards, or just throws overboard, 10,000 tonnes of unwanted fish per year—double that of the recreational patch of the entire country. You are proposing legalising the dumping of fishing at sea—

SPEAKER: No, sorry. Look, you’ve got to ask questions. The Standing Orders are very clear—390—you cannot make assertions; you cannot put assumptions that you’re making to the Minister without the context of a question.

Tākuta Ferris: Ka pai. Are you proposing legalising the dumping of fish at sea, and will this have a negative or positive impact on fish stock sustainability; if so, how?

Hon SHANE JONES: The access to the commercial fisheries in 1986 was largely privatised, and there are a host of views as to whether or not that system will hold well into the future. At the moment, the proposal that is out for consultation does not contemplate the dismemberment of the quota system—and consultation is still actually under way. But I have to say, as a warning to that member: please do not bring questions that bear a remarkable resemblance as to what LegaSea said to me last Friday.

Question No. 8—Housing

8. TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Housing: Can he guarantee that cutting a net 673 roles at Kāinga Ora will not impact any front-line services, including those working with the Ministry of Social Development to place people in public housing?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): No Minister can guarantee anything, particularly with regard to operational matters for the Chief Executive of Kāinga Ora, but I have stressed to Kāinga Ora that I expect front-line service delivery to not be affected by the change proposal they are undertaking.

TAMATHA PAUL: Will his cuts impact staff who work on community engagement and provide support for tenants, including building trust with tenants?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I don’t have the details as to the specific impact on community engagement. You’d need to put that down in writing; I can provide that. As I’ve said, I don’t expect there to be an impact on front-line service delivery for Kāinga Ora.

Tamatha Paul: Why did Cabinet decide to remove the operating principles from the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Act, including the requirement for Kāinga Ora to be a fair and reasonable landlord?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Cabinet has agreed to make some amendments to the Kāinga Ora legislation, but the precise details of that will be worked through as part of our general reorganisation of the housing system. So it’s subject to further decisions. Generally, the Act is complicated and confusing, and our view is that the Act can be simplified.

Tamatha Paul: What are his expectations of Kāinga Ora to ensure tenants are treated with dignity and supported to sustain their tenancies?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: My expectation is that Kāinga Ora follows the law.

Tamatha Paul: Does he stand by his statement that making changes to the way Kāinga Ora operates is “in line with a back-to-basics approach”; if so, does he not think that requirements for Kāinga Ora to provide warm, dry, and healthy housing and support tenants to lead lives with dignity are basics?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’m very proud of the work that Kāinga Ora has undertaken so far as part of the—

Hon Ginny Andersen: Shameful—absolutely shameful.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, if the member wants to listen, I’ll explain why. There is a challenging change proposal under way for staff at Kāinga Ora. There has been a reduction in staff working in Kāinga Ora so far, but despite that, as part of the reset plan, satisfaction with repairs and maintenance has increased from 74 percent in March last year to 83 percent at December 2024, and satisfaction, with MyKāingaOra, which is a metric that Kāinga Ora measures, has gone from 71 percent in March 2024 to 79 percent in December 2024. This proves that it is not necessarily about how much money you spend or how many staff you hire; it is actually about efficiency and focusing on the front line.

Tamatha Paul: Are staff at Kāinga Ora responding positively to his continuous restructures and cuts, and, if so, does he think this will impact the quality of services provided to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: They’re not my restructures; they’re the operational responsibility of the chief executive, and so they are undertaking that. Of course, there will be challenging situations for any staff affected by change proposals in any organisation but, as I’ve just pointed out to the House, it is possible to achieve better service delivery for vulnerable tenants—indeed, all tenants in Kāinga Ora properties—at the same time as focusing on efficiency, and the numbers I’ve just pointed out to the House demonstrate that point very neatly.

Hon Shane Jones: Is it accurate to say to the Minister that the rationalisation of Kāinga Ora is likely to lead to the delivery of housing proposals and options which are a lot more affordable?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, indeed, that is the case. It’s early days in the turnaround plan, but the numbers I’ve seen suggest that Kāinga Ora is doing an excellent job in focusing on a back-to-basics approach, in terms of building. They are delivering units at a greater cost-efficiency compared to the past. As I say, it’s early days, but there are very encouraging signs so far, and I encourage them well on that journey.

Question No. 9—Housing

9. Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) to the Minister of Housing: What reports has he seen on the housing market?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): I’ve seen many reports, but yesterday I saw the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s rental bond data that shows the median rent for new tenancies is sitting at $600 per week; when this Government took office, the figure was $600 per week. For every month since, except for a minor blip in January, this has remained at $600. In both the Bay of Plenty and Canterbury, rents for new tenancies have actually fallen around 6 percent year on year to February. By way of comparison—just to pick two random dates—from October 2017 to December 2023, median rents for new tenancies across New Zealand rose by $200 per week.

Dr Carlos Cheung: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: Just when the House settles itself.

Dr Carlos Cheung: What reports has he seen on the social housing register and emergency housing?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: As of 31 March this year, there were around 19,000 households on the register; this is 6,000 fewer than when this Government took office, and 1,000 less than last quarter. Housing register numbers are continuing to drop because more applicants are being housed and because Ministry of Social Development front-line staff are more actively following up on whether or not people on the register are in housing need. As for emergency housing, households living in emergency housing motels have reduced by 85 percent under this Government, from over 3,000 in December 2023, to 459 at the end of March.

Dr Carlos Cheung: What steps has the Government taken to support community housing providers (CHPs)?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It was a big day last month when we announced two measures to reduce the debt-financing barriers for community housing providers. This is something that the sector has long called for—it is complicated, but we have established lending facilities of up to $150 million for the Community Housing Funding Agency to unlock lower-cost finance for CHPs by pooling their financing requirements. This lays the foundation for the agency to borrow billions of dollars and lend at even lower rates for CHPs, supporting not just social housing but also broader affordable housing portfolios. We’re also engaging with banks on a loan guarantee scheme by way of the Minister of Finance. There is quite a lot of appetite for this. This will allow banks to pass on meaningfully reduced interest rates to community housing providers, creating neutrality between Kāinga Ora (KO) and the community housing sector. This Government backs both Kāinga Ora and the community housing sector to house vulnerable New Zealanders.

Hon Nicola Willis: Would the Minister seek to encourage commercial banks to take part in this lending scheme, and would that be seen as a good contribution by those banks to assisting with our housing affordability challenges in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, indeed I would. One of the problems that the community housing sector has faced as they seek to grow over the last 10 years or so, since the modern inception of the system, has been the high cost of finance offered by commercial banks. The Crown can borrow at Crown borrowing rates—or Kāinga Ora can borrow, essentially, at Crown borrowing rates, once we got rid of the Bloomberg terminals and stopped them borrowing on the private financial markets—but the community housing sector has had a very high cost of borrowing. We are sorting that situation out, and I encourage the banks to play their part on this journey to create more affordable housing for New Zealanders.

Hon Shane Jones: Is the Minister confident we will no longer see reports that KO building costs will explode again to $6,500 per square metre to deliver bog-standard housing solutions?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’m very confident that, with the turn-around plan endorsed by Cabinet, and the new management team and governance in place at Kāinga Ora, we are getting that agency back on track.

Question No. 10—Education

10. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What evidence, if any, does the Minister have that supports the removal of the relationship and sexuality education guidelines from schools?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): The Education Review Office’s recent evaluation found that, and I quote, “While there was widespread support from students and parents for RSE being taught in schools, there is an inconsistency in the RSE teaching and learning that students experience throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. What students are taught, if they are taught it, and when they are taught it can depend on where they go to school.” The Education Review Office (ERO) found that schools find consulting difficult and divisive, and found the optional guidelines like those produced under the previous Government have left too much to chance. This Government is resourcing the sector with a knowledge-rich, year-by-year curriculum that clearly outlines what’s being taught and when, giving teachers certainty and parents clarity on what their children are learning so they can make informed choices about their education.

Shanan Halbert: Was there anything at all in the Education Review Office’s report that recommended the removal of the relationship and sexuality education guidelines from schools?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I already outlined, in my previous answer, the findings of ERO that said that there was huge inconsistency around New Zealand and what students were learning and that many students were missing out on things. It was then my recommendation that we get rid of the RSE curriculum guidelines—also, can I say, in acknowledgment of our agreement with the New Zealand First Party in our coalition agreement to remove those RSE guidelines.

Shanan Halbert: How does she reconcile her recommendation to remove the relationship and sexuality education guidelines, given her own Education Review Office report found that those very guidelines were supported by 87 percents of parents and whānau?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I’ve already made it very clear, in many answers in this House, including just the other night, that the RSE guidelines are not a curriculum. They are causing confusion. They are meaning that some students are learning some things and some are not. What we do need is a year-by-year, knowledge-rich curriculum document that is required to be taught by schools, which gives clarity to teachers and the ability for parents to pull their children out if they should wish to.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister as to whether or not the mass majority of parents in this country want their children to go to primary school, in particular, to learn the “three Rs”—all the basics—and get those serious steps organised, and not to learn Shanan Halbert’s values on RSE or whatever he stands for?

SPEAKER: The question was going well until the last bit. Does the Minister want to respond?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Oh, look, as the country well knows by now, this Government has a focus on reading, writing, and mathematics to make sure that we are teaching the basics brilliantly so children can go on to live the life that they want. In the instance where parents may not be teaching their children some of the basics in the health and physical education curriculum, the State is creating a curriculum that is clear, that is year by year, that is knowledge-rich and detailed that parents will be able to withdraw their children out of if they should wish to teach these issues themselves at home. [Interruption]

Shanan Halbert: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: Just wait—all right.

Shanan Halbert: Does she agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, who said the guidelines are “woke”, “out of touch”, and “indoctrinate our children”; if so, how does she reconcile these views with the actual evidence that she, as the Minister, was presented with?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I always agree with the Deputy Prime Minister. In this case, it was very clear: the RSE guidelines are not a curriculum; they are a guideline. They are not year by year, they are not knowledge-rich, and they were leaving far too much to chance—as outlined in ERO’s report. We are now replacing those guidelines with a knowledge-rich curriculum that details every single year what will be taught and when to give teachers confidence and parents the knowledge of what their children will be learning if they choose to remove them from those lessons.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister of the view that long has it been that Governments have been driven by the victim of in loco parentis, which means “in the shoes of the parents”, and that the teachers have responsibility to the parents and not people like Shanan Halbert?

SPEAKER: Yeah, look, you can’t use a Government question to attack the Opposition, which that was. So I’ve been very fair to others; if you want to reword the question, that would be—no. OK, we’ll move on. Shanan Halbert—supplementary. [Interruption] Mr Halbert, just wait till the House gives you the respect of listening.

Shanan Halbert: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Was the reason she chose not to meet with rainbow youth organisation Inside Out because she knows that the removal of the relationship and sexuality education guidelines will put rainbow youth at greater risk of harm?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: No, because we are creating, as I’ve already said so many times, a detailed year-by-year, knowledge-rich curriculum which covers all of those topics that parents will know what their children are being taught and when, leaving nothing to chance, unlike the RSE guidelines, which were vague and waffly, were not year by year, and were causing confusion, as outlined in ERO’s report.

Shanan Halbert: Supplementary? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: All right, but I think if you’re going to ask a question, your colleagues should at least allow the House to hear what the answer is so that you can get the answer you’re after.

Shanan Halbert: Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Was putting politics before our kids by caving to New Zealand First in the exchange for power worth it—

SPEAKER: No, you can’t do that. No, sit down—[Interruption]—sit down!

Question No. 11—Transport

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Associate Minister of Transport. What recent announcements has he made about the Ashburton Bridge?

SPEAKER: Just a moment. Why was there so much talking during that question? What was so important that the House had to be interrupted and disrupted by people having conversations while a question is being asked? Please ask the question again.

11. MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) to the Associate Minister of Transport: Thank you. What recent announcements has he made about the Ashburton Bridge?

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Last week, the Government was very pleased to announce a major milestone that will be great news for locals and for freight in the South Island: the second Ashburton Bridge is ready to move ahead at pace. The business case has been approved, geotechnical investigations will begin soon, and next week, we go to market for technical and design support. This is a fantastic development for Cantabrians, a fantastic development for South Islanders, and for State Highway 1 resilience. As our Government focuses on “Going for Growth”, our work remains on getting essential infrastructure in place so that people can get where they want, when they want, safely and conveniently.

Miles Anderson: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Just wait. All right.

Miles Anderson: What benefits will the second Ashburton Bridge bring?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: The benefits of the second Ashburton Bridge are numerous. The 24,000 vehicles using the bridge every day to commute, transport freight, and go about their lives will enjoy reduced congestion, improved road safety, reduced delays, improved reliability in the case of potential closures. It will also accommodate future growth.

Miles Anderson: How is the second Ashburton Bridge important for supporting future growth?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: I was pleased to see that in ASB’s recent Quarterly Regional Scoreboard, Otago, Canterbury, Tasman, and Southland were the four strongest-growing regions, all in the South Island. There is so much potential across the South Island, and infrastructure projects—like the second Ashburton Bridge—will be vital to connecting those regions together, and for transporting our goods to market. As we work to double our exports over the next 10 years in places like mining and coal, and see our tourism bounce back, projects like the second Ashburton Bridge are vital to ensuring that New Zealand continues to punch above its weight.

Miles Anderson: How does the second Ashburton Bridge tie in with other transport work in Canterbury?

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Upgrades will also be made on the adjacent roads beside the bridge, but beyond that, we are focused on progressing delivery on our roads of national significance and our roads of regional significance. That includes State Highway 1 Belfast to Pegasus and the Woodend Bypass, Mr Doocey; State Highway 76 Brougham Street upgrades, for the members in Christchurch; State Highway 75 Halswell Road improvements, Megan Woods; and State Highway 1 Rolleston access improvements. We are also looking into further improvements for State highways south of Christchurch, including around capacity, resilience, and bridge replacements between the Lyttelton port and Timaru port, along with the role of rail and the potential four-laning of that corridor.

Question No. 12—Children

12. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT) to the Minister for Children: What recent announcements has she made regarding a safety-first approach for Oranga Tamariki?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): On Tuesday, I announced that I have asked Oranga Tamariki to undertake a full scoping review of all existing appropriation measures to ensure that they are focused on the things that matter most to our most vulnerable children and young people. I was concerned that Oranga Tamariki is currently required to report on and meet targets that take them away from their core purpose, which is the care and protection of children and young people. These children and young people deserve the best possible care and protection system we can provide, and I’m committed to removing any barriers or distractions that prevent them from achieving this.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Why is it important that Oranga Tamariki takes a safety-first approach?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Since becoming Minister, I’ve made it very clear to Oranga Tamariki that they must always put the safety and wellbeing of children at the forefront of their decision making. This is what I and this Government have consistently reinforced, including just last week, with the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. By reviewing all existing measures and targets, we can make sure that Oranga Tamariki is focused on what is most important, which is the safety of children.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What are some of the measures and targets Oranga Tamariki currently have?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Currently, Oranga Tamariki are assessed against a performance measure which states that the percentage of children in out-of-home placement for more than three months who are placed with family or whānau will be at least 58 percent. Of course, if a child or young person is not able to be safe at home, then wider whānau or family should be considered as a potential placement option. However, I’m concerned that having this sort of target as a performance measure for Oranga Tamariki sends a message that the safety of the child does not come first.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Are there any other current targets or measures which are not focused on children’s safety?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Yes. Oranga Tamariki currently has a performance measure that the percentage of all service contract funding contracted with iwi and Māori organisations will be greater than 23 percent. These organisations should not just be seen as some sort of quota or tick-box exercise. What should determine the funding is the outcomes for our children. I want to make clear that there are a number of excellent iwi and Māori organisations doing great work within the community. I meet with them all the time in both my portfolios. This is a Government that believes in principles: principles, like focusing on outcomes, not outputs; principles, like safety, should always come first when it comes to our children and young people.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Is she aware that section 4 already puts the child’s safety and welfare above all else when making decisions—and so does not need to remove these targets?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Yes. Section 4A does require that, but we also need to make sure that the internal priorities of Oranga Tamariki are clear that the focus is safety first.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: How is cutting funding to front-line community providers for early intervention and prevention a safety-first approach?

Hon KAREN CHHOUR: That member constantly asks this question and talks about cuts. There were no cuts. The money was reprioritised—like we’ve been talking about—to where the money gets the best outcomes for our children.

SPEAKER: Good—excellent. That concludes oral questions. Some members will need to leave the House for other duties; we’ll take 30 seconds before I call the next Government order. Can I just say to the gallery: please keep the noise right down to nothing.

Bills

Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill

Second Reading

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill be now read a second time.

Members of this House can still change their minds, and—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Stop—hold it. [A disturbance occurred in the gallery and a member of the public was removed on the instruction of the Speaker] Now, let me make it very clear that if anyone else in here thinks that’s an acceptable intervention in the activities of this Parliament, they will be treated harshly by the officers of the law, who are here. It’s completely unacceptable. We live in a democracy. This is the place where opinions are given, not from the gallery.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Members of this House can still change their minds and send this bill onwards to a referendum of the people, and I ask that members listen carefully to understand the choice they’ll be denying the New Zealand people if they oppose this bill.

Five decades ago, this House passed the Treaty of Waitangi Act, saying that the Treaty had principles but failing to say what they were, and those principles, as a concept, are not going away. The National Party and New Zealand First commitment to review the principles will not get rid of them, the review will not touch the Treaty of Waitangi Act itself, and it will only review other bills with the help of Te Puni Kōkiri.

With the unelected Parliament silent on the principles for 50 years, the unelected judges, the Waitangi Tribunal, and the public servants have defined them instead. They say the Treaty is a “partnership between races”. They say that one race has a special place in New Zealand. The effects of these principles have become more and more obvious lately. We’ve seen a separate Māori Health Authority—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just stop. We’re going to hear the balance of this speech and all others in silence. It’s not a matter to be excited about; it’s a parliamentary process. Everyone has the right to speak and be heard, and they will be today.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: We’ve seen a separate Māori Health Authority. We’ve seen resource management decisions held up for years awaiting cultural impact assessments due to Treaty principles in the Resource Management Act. We’ve seen half the seats governing three waters infrastructure reserved for one-sixth of the population. We’ve seen public entities appoint two chief executives to represent each side of this so-called partnership between races, and we’ve seen a history curriculum teach children to believe history is a simple story of victims and villains divided by their ancestry.

Some will say that a Government can change these policies case by case, and, indeed, I’m proud to be part of a Government that is doing that. The problem is, though, that another Government can just as easily bring them back if the bad ideas behind these policies are not confronted, and that’s why we see professional bodies, universities, the Public Service, and schools nurturing the divisive idea that the Treaty is a partnership, hoping it will grow again at some future time.

The partnership principle tells us that Kiwis should be ranked by the arrival of their ancestors. We’ve seen it in recent weeks. Just one disgraceful example was the attack on my colleague Parmjeet Parmar by the dean of a law school for being a migrant who proudly chose this country. She faced no consequences for that, and it shows how low our country has sunk.

The idea that your race matters is a version of a bigger problem. It’s part of that bigger idea that our lives are determined—

Rawiri Waititi: The Treaty doesn’t mention anything by race.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —by things out of our control, and I hear the leader of Te Pāti Māori saying, “Oh, it’s not about race.” He named his party after a race. Of course you have a problem with race in this country under our current policies. They may have occurred, these problems, these ideas that determine our future—these events may have occurred before we were even born. We face a denial that we can make a difference in our own lives and that we have a right to do so by this old-fashioned, primitive determinism that should have no place in a country that is founded and lived in by pioneers.

We are all thinking—we are all valuing beings. We should all have “ngā tikanga katoa rite tahi”—the same rights and duties—just as the third article of Te Tiriti itself says, and that’s why the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill would finally define the principles in line with the Treaty itself, giving all Kiwis equal rights. Let me read those proposed principles, because if anyone wants to vote against this bill in this House today, then let them explain specifically why they oppose the words in the bill.

It says, “Principle 1: The Executive Government of New Zealand has full power to govern, and the Parliament of New Zealand has full power to make laws, … Principle 2: (1) The Crown recognises, and will respect and protect, the rights that hapū and iwi Māori had under the Treaty of Waitangi … at the time they signed it.”, so long as those rights are extended to everyone who lives here or are set out in a Treaty settlement, and “Principle 3: (1) Everyone is equal before the law. (2) Everyone is entitled, without discrimination, to—(a) the equal protection and equal benefit of the law; and (b) the equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights.” People who oppose this bill should ask themselves what is the best argument they have against these principles and are they prepared to say that argument out loud, and, if not, perhaps they should support the bill so the people of New Zealand can have a say at referendum.

I now turn to the submissions from the Justice Committee, and I’d like to thank the chair and most of the members of the committee. They heard 80 hours of submissions, which was nearly a record. However, submissions are not a referendum. If MPs believe that the bill should be passed depending on public opinion, they should front up, vote for the bill, and send it to an actual referendum, which is what the bill does. There are many bills that have attracted large numbers of opposing submissions, and yet been very popular with the general public. The end of life choice and abortion law reform both had 90 percent of submissions against them at select committee, but proved overwhelmingly popular with the public, and so it is with the principles I’ve just read out that, on average, enjoy support from the public by two to one when all New Zealanders are asked on an equal basis.

Select committees, while they may not tell us about numbers, can, though, tell us about ideas, and I believe that this submission process has actually been very useful. Some argued against the bill’s first principle that this Parliament has the full power to make laws. They said that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty when they signed the Treaty; what they cannot explain is how a society is supposed to work without clear laws that apply equally to all. The answer is that it does not and cannot work. People who believe, for example, that an American county or an Indian band in Canada having limited jurisdiction in a limited territory is the same as shared sovereignty are not taking the issue seriously. Still others argue that maybe Parliament can make laws, but not this law. What they’re really saying is that our constitutional future can be decided by the unelected, but not the elected, and certainly not the people in a referendum. Those are the fundamentally undemocratic propositions anyone opposing this bill is really signing up to. They do not trust the New Zealand people to determine their constitutional future, and I’m so proud to stand for the one party in this House that most certainly does.

There were two objections that cancelled each other out. One said that the bill isn’t needed because Māori don’t actually have special rights in New Zealand; other objections said that the bill is an abomination because it denies Māori equal rights. Which one is it? It can’t be both. Well, the truth is that we are all equal deep down, but too many of our policies aim to treat people differently based on their ancestry. This is why we have to remove that idea that New Zealanders have different rights and are ranked by the arrival of their ancestors.

A more interesting objective is that Māori have group rights to such things as language and culture. Some Māori have been told that this bill will take away the mana of their reo and their tikanga, but that is simply untrue. This bill supports all people to cherish their taonga. If we’re going to have Diwali, Lunar New Year, and the Highland games, of course we should have kapa haka. We have media in many languages. There’s no reason not to have te reo Māori. The bill provides for that; we just don’t need to divide the country in a “partnership between races” to do it.

Other critics say that the bill must be wrong because the bureaucracy said so. Of course they do—if the bureaucrats got it right, we wouldn’t need the bill in Parliament. But the problem is what the bureaucracy has invented in the last 40 years is contrary to equal rights in liberal democracy.

Finally, some critics say that the debate is divisive. Well, I say it has revealed the division. I say it’s revealed a sizeable minority of New Zealanders who oppose equal rights, liberal democracy, and treating each person with the same basic dignity.

I want to end my speech with a quote from a Jewish man who wrote a book in Christchurch while he was hiding from Nazis in World War II. The book is The Open Society and its Enemies. It’s been described as the most important book ever written in New Zealand. His name was Sir Karl Popper, and he said, “The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticised gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, we must go the whole way. We must return to the beast. But if we wish to remain human, there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain, and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.”

Members of the House and the public of New Zealand, a free society takes hard work and uneasy conversations. I’m proud that my party has had the bravery, the clarity, and the patriotism to raise uneasy topics, and I challenge other parties to find those qualities in themselves and support this bill. We will continue to fight on for the truth that all Kiwis are equal. Āke, ake, ake. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition): Tihei mauri ora! Te Whare e tū nei, te papa e takoto nei, tātou katoa te hunga ora, tēnā koutou katoa.

[The breath of life! The House that stands here, the land that lies here, all of us, the living, greetings to you all.]

Normally when I rise in this House to speak on a bill, I say it’s a great privilege to speak on the bill. That is not the case today. This is a grubby little bill, born of a grubby little deal. It has had a colossal—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Excuse me. I’ll make it clear just once: the gallery do not interfere in the activities of Parliament. Another outburst like that and we’ll clear the galleries—everyone will be going.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It has had a colossal impact on the fabric of our nation, and this bill will for ever be a stain on our country. But what I do take pride in is the way New Zealanders have come together over the last six months to say, loud and clear, that this is not us—this is not Aotearoa New Zealand.

For 185 years, Māori and non-Māori have worked together to make progress. We honour those who have come before. We stand on their shoulders today, and when I say “we”, I mean those on this side of the House: Labour, Te Pāti Māori, and the Green Party—united in our determination throughout this debate to defeat this bill, to end the division that it has created, and to bring this country together.

Today, National and New Zealand First join the opposition to this bill, but they can claim no victory, no virtue, and no principle. They get no credit for finally starting to fight the fire they helped to ignite. Today, their votes will fall on the right side of the ledger, but they will for ever be on the wrong side of history when it comes to this bill. Not one National MP should walk out of this debating chamber today with their head held high, because when it comes to this debate, they led nothing, they stopped nothing, and they stood for nothing, unlike the 300,000 New Zealanders who stood up to be counted when it comes to this bill. All those who marched in the streets together—Māori, non-Māori, ethnic communities, young, and old—were saying that this is not New Zealand and this will not define who we are as a country, because this is a bill based on a mythology, a mythology that is far too easily turned into outright lies: the myth of Māori special privilege.

Having a life expectancy seven years lower than for other New Zealanders is not special privilege. Being twice as likely to die from cancer as others is not special privilege. Having a higher rate of childhood hospitalisation, 40 percent of Māori living in the highest areas of deprivation compared to just 10 percent of Europeans—these are not signs of privilege. But too often these statistics are twisted to suggest that Māori are wanting the Crown to save them. I’ve been up and down the country in recent years speaking to Māori all over New Zealand, and that could not be further from the truth. How ignorant, how blind, and how wrong those statements are.

Māori have been very clear that what they’re asking for is partnership: for the Crown to walk alongside them and to embrace by Māori, for Māori solutions. Māori want to do the mahi themselves and they want the Crown to stop acting as an impediment to that. I say it’s time we listened and it’s time we acted on that.

When it comes to Māori politics and politicians, I’ve found that there are two approaches in common, and I spoke about these before the last election. One approach is playing the race card, spreading the myth of Māori special privilege, talking about one law for all, and playing on people’s fears, but on the other side is the middle ground, keeping quiet, and, too often, watering down policy so as not to be seen as being too pro-Māori. I said before the election, and I will say it again today: I reject both of those approaches, because when Māori thrive in New Zealand, all of us benefit, all of us will thrive, and non-Māori have nothing to fear from Māori getting ahead here in New Zealand.

Once again, I say to the members opposite in the National Party where are the voices like Christopher Finlayson, Doug Graham, Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley, John Key, and Bill English, who were proud of the Treaty partnership and who embraced concepts like co-governance—and they didn’t call it divisive? Our work in Government—which has been the subject of much debate on that side of the House—actually built on the foundations that were set by successive Governments, both Labour and National. It is that history of progress that today’s National Party have turned their backs against.

In my lifetime, we have changed as a nation for the better, from one that punished kids for speaking te reo Māori to one that embraces te reo Māori in all of our classrooms, from one that ignored our history to one that teaches all of our kids in all of our schools Aotearoa New Zealand’s history, and from one that turned a blind eye to the wrongs of the past to one that makes amends and commits to not repeating the same mistakes again—until today, that is. Christopher Luxon called Te Tiriti o Waitangi “a little experiment”. Winston Peters claims that Māori are not indigenous to Aotearoa.

In fact, as I was rereading my notes from before the election, I was reminded of a quote by a New Zealand First candidate in this most recent election campaign, which I’m going to quote directly from: “Cry if you want to, we don’t care. You pushed it too far. We are the party with the cultural mandate and the courage to cut out your disease and bury you permanently.” That was a New Zealand First candidate speaking about Māori in New Zealand. It made me sick to my stomach then, and it still does now, because Te Tiriti is not a little experiment; it is a bold promise and a bold vision. It is not a source of division; it is what binds us together, and, yes, it is a partnership, a structure—something to work towards and a promise to uphold, because, as I’ve said, when Māori thrive, all of Aotearoa New Zealand thrives.

Over 185 years, we’ve worked together to fulfil the promise of Te Tiriti—the good and the bad—and there has been far too much bad in that work. We have discussed, debated, and argued about the meaning of Te Tiriti. We’ve argued about what the visionary rangatira who signed it had intended.

That 185 years of history, of debate, of discussion, of argument, and of progress informs how we interpret Te Tiriti today, and no member of this House simply gets to wipe all of that 185 years of history away to suit their own purposes, because Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not just history. It’s not just ink on paper; it’s a living promise. Today, on this side of the House, we honour that promise. We commit to continuing to strive to do better, to bring people together, and to move our nation forward. Me mahi tahi tātou mō te oranga o te katoa—we must work together for the wellbeing of all, work together in partnership.

Coming together does not mean being the same. It does not mean thinking the same. It does not mean acting the same. It means embracing our differences, but working together to find common ground so that we can all move forward together.

So let’s finally consign this grubby little bill to the scrap heap of history, where it can take its place alongside the other darker acts of this House that have also been consigned to our history, and let’s instead move forward together. Let’s find a positive, lighter path where we can bring the country together, where we cannot play on prejudice but seek to reconcile our differences, and where we can celebrate our history—the positives of it—and recognise the ugly parts for what they were, and commit to doing better.

This debate has not been helpful for the fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand. It is well and truly time for it to be over.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The people have spoken and, like them, the Green Party opposes this Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill.

I have never felt so much FOMO than when I was unable to be working and was mostly confined to my home and felt the kaha, the wairua, and the beautiful energy of the hīkoi all around the country and the hīkoi to this place, te Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou e te whānau. Tēnā tēnā tātou katoa. I was so inspired by your beautiful kotahitanga energy that I ran and found my tino rangatiratanga flag and took a photo in my backyard of me trying to grab any contribution to feel like I could be a part of the movement that the people so brilliantly created off the back of this miserable little piece of bill. That backyard photo went a little bit viral, but nowhere near as viral as the haka that happened in this place. Nei rā taku mihi ki a koe, e te rangatira Hana Rāwhiti.

[This is my salute to you, distinguished Hana Rāwhiti.]

It is perhaps ironic then that this is the first and only chance that I get to speak to this bill, but I will be using my space today mostly to amplify the voices of the submitters—after all, that is what a second reading speech will most normally do. This House will and should hear repeatedly today that 90 percent of the submissions opposed—and that’s from 307,000 submissions; record-breaking submissions to the Justice Committee—this bill. Also, a record-breaking 80 percent of the oral submissions also opposed this bill, and that is also from 529 oral submissions. The people spoke and there was one clear message: “Toitū Te Tiriti.”

Part of the reason why the people were not fooled at all by this bill is because we now have generations of understanding that Te Tiriti was always a dream from my and your ancestors—the promise of peoples to take the best possible care of each other. That is an iconic kōrero from Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, which actually needs to be the understanding of where we are going to.

We can take even further the voice of one of the submitters Dayle Takitimu, who said, “We assert that Te Tiriti is a core agreement that affirms the place to belong and a place to stand for everyone in Aotearoa”. We can also look at the incredible poetry of another submitter Karlo Mila, who outlined perfectly the vision for Aotearoa, for our mokopuna to come. Karlo said, “The answer is te Tiriti, not separatist exclusion. It’s the fair terms of inclusion, an ancestral strategy for harmony, a covenant of cooperation. It’s how we live ethically on land that was never ceded.”

The Green Party is proud to have always affirmed the mana motuhake, the tino rangatiratanga, the self-determination of iwi and hapū guaranteed by Te Tiriti. We had a dig around. We did a bit of research and what we found—which I know that the pushers of this bill did not anticipate—was that there has not been another bill with a record-breaking number of submissions to select committee that was met with such overwhelming power of opposition, and I am so proud once again to highlight that the people have spoken and they have spoken clearly and strongly. The people are not fooled by the ACT Party trying to ignore the injustice and inequity that has seen, for example, that Māori are three times more likely to be arrested and convicted of a cannabis-related crime than non-Māori are—but let us be clear—for doing the same thing. So this is what we need to point out: Māori are three times more likely to be arrested and convicted for doing the same thing.

The ACT Party—I challenge them to release their myth of special Māori treatment and find their equity bone, to find their equity analysis, and to ignore their myth of Māori privilege and find their equity analysis deep within their bones. I implore them to, so that they do not bring any more embarrassing bills like this to the House.

Te Tiriti is for ever, and that’s what we have heard and that’s what I will say again and again. But what we know is that this Crown has not yet actually upheld its promise—its side—of taking care of each other. Again, we can go to the words of Karlo Mila. In the second part of her passage that I read out earlier, she said, “But we watch political parties sow seeds of disunity using disingenuous history. Harnessing hate speech, and the haka of destiny. Scapegoating vulnerable enemies, sharing just a joke fantasies of blowing up ministries targeting ethnic minorities.”

This was an incredible opportunity for the Prime Minister, who is not even here receiving the harm—

Hon Member: Point of order.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: I take that back.

SPEAKER: Withdraw and apologise.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: I withdraw and apologise. It would have been a fantastic opportunity to see the leaders across all of our parties be here—

SPEAKER: No, I’m sorry, that’s the same line. Just move on.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: OK, I’ll move on. Where are our leaders listening to us today—

SPEAKER: No, no, you can’t do that. The member’s speech will be terminated if it doesn’t come back to point.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Speakers’ Rulings make it very clear that there’s a convention not to mention a member’s absence. But there is an exception to that where it is a particularly important moment, and this is a particularly important moment, where hundreds of thousands of people have made a submission and one member in particular has chosen not to be here.

SPEAKER: Actually, Dr Webb, you’ve just exacerbated the problem, and I’d advise you not to push that too much further. Marama Davidson, return to the basis of your speech without reference to anybody else in this House.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: I no longer need to—thank you, Mr Speaker.

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the movement and I will also take this time—I think it’s appropriate—to acknowledge the incredible Hinewhare Harawira, who lies right at this time at Whakapara. As her whānau says, she was an unstoppable force in the drive for tino rangatiratanga. I think it is really appropriate that we acknowledge her particular presence and passing in this House today, and Hinewhare and so many others were just part of generational work that has amounted to the huge uprising from a diverse range of people from diverse communities who have said very, very clearly, “We’re not falling for what this bill is trying to do.”

We have now got generations of examples of us working together and upholding Te Tiriti, seeing the value and the benefits and the beauty in the vision of taking good care of each other, working together at the grassroots level, and understanding they knew what this bill was trying to do. They could sniff the division a mile away, and they came to the select committee, they marched the streets, they signed petitions, they wrote postcards, and they said, very clearly, “Toitū Te Tiriti. Te Tiriti is for ever, and we are not fooled by the attempt to divide us.”

In fact, there was a particular moment in the select committee submissions where we even had an ACT MP attempt to drive a migrant away from centring Te Tiriti, where the Muslim community leader Anjum Rahman was asked by that ACT MP if she was comfortable with new migrants potentially being left with different rights to Māori. She said, “I reject your framing. I reject your question. This is a way to try and sow division between communities and we see you.” That is what she said. She said, “When you go to ethnic minority communities and try and promote division between our community and theirs, we hear you when you say, ‘Oh, your community suffers racism too, and [they get] special treatment.’ ”, and she said in her submission that Māori did not get special treatment and they did not get privileges, but “They are getting the rights that were promised to them, and the help that should have been upheld in a very minuscule way.”

I am so pleased that the people came and spoke. We are proud to stand here today to oppose the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. Toitū Te Tiriti.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The outcome of the vote today has been known since the Treaty principles bill was introduced. National has consistently said that we’ll not support it into law, fundamentally because we regard the bill—which seeks to impose a particular interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi by simple majority and referendum—as a crude way to handle a very sensitive topic. National believes in equal citizenship and equal opportunity for all New Zealanders, and we hold that there are better ways to defend those principles than through this bill.

It was clear from the beginning that the Treaty principles bill was not going to pass, and yet it still generated 300,000 submissions. Of those, more than 16,000 New Zealanders wanted to come and talk to the Justice Committee, and more than 500 actually did. In the meantime, some 40,000 people marched to Parliament to oppose it, and it’s dominated two summers. So what are we to make of this?

Clearly, it shows that many people feel passionately about the topic, and I want to acknowledge the effort that so many people put in to expressing their views. Some of the submissions were truly remarkable. It’s equally true that the bill has provided a convenient vehicle for political campaigns on all sides, and that is politics. We’ll hear all sorts of hyperbole today—as we already have from the Leader of the Opposition—about how terrible it is for National to allow this bill to even be introduced. That is just froth and spray. Coalitions require compromises. National opposed the bill and would have preferred it not to have gone forward, ACT wanted to have the bill passed into law, but none of us got what we wanted. That is life under MMP.

Our country is not so fragile that we can’t withstand a debate about the role of the Treaty, and we certainly won’t take lectures from Labour about division. I’ll never forget seeing Willie Jackson on TV casually declaring that democracy in New Zealand had changed, as his Government was pushing an agenda of co-governance on public servants, and all of us were wondering what on earth he meant, when had we discussed this, and when had the people of New Zealand been asked whether they wanted their democracy changed.

National opposes this bill, but we do not oppose the open and frank discussion about the role of the Treaty of Waitangi in our laws and within the context of a modern democracy. That discussion is alive and well, and it will continue. The critical thing is that we try our best to conduct that conversation with good grace. We live in a turbulent world with examples every day of how societies can tear themselves apart. For all our faults and our disagreements, we hold things together very well in this country, and I have every confidence that we can continue to find a way through.

Parliament first referred to the principles of the Treaty in the 1970s, but it never defined them. The courts stepped into that vacuum, as we know, and over the past 30 years, principles of the Treaty such as the concept of partnership have been given greater weight.

The interpretations of the court are not gospel—they should be debated—but, if enacted, the Treaty principles bill would have short-circuited that debate. Parliament would simply have set down its interpretation of the Treaty, and then sought a majority of the public to confirm that in a referendum. That would have at the stroke of a pen unwound more than 30 years of jurisprudence, and, as I said at the first reading of the bill, there will be a wide variety of views within Māori, just as there are amongst any other group. But those opposed to the changes would likely conclude that fundamental change was being imposed upon them by a majority if it were to pass, and that would risk stoking an already keen sense of grievance.

That’s why National hasn’t supported this bill. We continue to believe there are better ways to address the many legitimate questions about the role of the Treaty in our democracy today, and it is to progress with the numerous specific changes that we’re making, case by case, issue by issue.

The guiding principle is that in our efforts to honour Treaty of Waitangi commitments and Treaty settlements and to acknowledge tangata whenua, we should never lose sight of the basic expectations of people living in a modern, democratic society, such as equal voting rights, equality before the law, and, broadly speaking, an equal say in matters affecting their lives and in the world around them. There can be a tension between those two things: between honouring commitments to Māori flowing from the Treaty and the basic expectations of equality in a modern democracy. This is a tension that we can’t just gloss over and ignore. Our proposition is that, as a nation, we should be serious in our commitment to the first, but, in doing so, we should be careful never to lose sight of or drift too far from the second.

People, ultimately, have choices where to live and where to invest. For our country to continue to succeed, those basic expectations of equality before the law must remain. This is not a topic, I don’t think, that lends itself to neat, tidy, single solutions. It has to be worked through issue by issue. That’s why we’ve reasserted the principle that healthcare should be delivered on the basis of need alone. That’s why we’re pushing back against the previous Government’s move against equal voting rights in local government. It’s why we’ve unwound co-governance arrangements in core public services, and a separate Māori health authority. It’s why we’ve also taken the unusual step of introducing legislation to overturn the marine and coastal area Act—a decision in the Court of Appeal—and we’re now considering following the Supreme Court’s decision in terms of what next steps are necessary, if any.

That’s why we’re embarking on the challenging task of reviewing the Treaty references in existing legislation to ensure that they’re clearer about what Parliament does and doesn’t mean, or to remove the Treaty references if there is no clear reason for having them—none of this is easy—and, at the same time, we’re committed to continuing and completing the Treaty settlements process that was begun in the 1990s. Around two-thirds of the settlements have been completed, with many under previous National Governments. It has been a bipartisan effort across many decades and has involved thousands of Māori up and down the country studying history, negotiating, and forming new structures to manage settlements. Successfully, we have re-established strong financial bases, confidence, and ambition.

The settlements have never been an exercise in achieving perfection. Many Māori complainants will rightly point out that the settlement payments reflect only a fraction of what was lost, and that’s true. Equally, the process requires today’s iwis to spend sums running to the billions and to agree to bespoke arrangements in specific places, often because of events going back as far as 180 years or earlier. So Treaty settlements require grace on both sides, as well.

Treaty settlements and the continued substantial investments in preserving te reo and Māori culture, and expanding their reach, alongside investment in a great variety of Māori solutions to the challenges we face, are all part of the effort we make as a country to address the injustices of the past, to recognise our unique history and blended culture, and to build a better future. We’re proud of those efforts, and this Government will never lose sight of the reality that the things that most Māori want are the same as what most other New Zealanders want. They want a strong economy that will deliver jobs and incomes that will sustain our standard of living, they want decent housing, they want to feel safe in their communities and for their kids to have access to a great education that will set them up to succeed in the modern world, and they want to have access to quality healthcare when they get sick. The reality is that in each of those areas, Māori, on average, currently have worse outcomes than the average New Zealander, and we want to work together with Māori New Zealanders to change that.

The work we’re doing to fast track consents for infrastructure and new industries across the country are designed to raise income for Māori and all New Zealanders alike, and that’s why Māori businesses are keen to be part of it. The effort to restore law and order and to deal with truancy will help Māori most because they are more likely to be victims of crime and to not attend school regularly. The amazing progress we’ve made to reduce smoking rates and to increase immunisation rates will help Māori most. When we think of a referendum in 2026—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Sorry, that member can take herself out of the House, if that continues.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When we think of a referendum in 2026, our preference is for the election to be a referendum on this Government’s success or otherwise in making progress on those massive challenges, and I have every confidence that we, together, will make genuine progress in these areas. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. I acknowledge that our leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, is wanting to be here, but, unfortunately, is boarding a plane as we speak.

I’m honoured to be able to give this contribution, and I want to reflect on what it is we are here to debate. Despite the absence of any judge or academic being able to clearly define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the ACT Party believed that it could. Despite what has been suggested in the purpose of the bill, legislation would have taken us back into the courts, which is the last thing this country needs. To put this issue before the courts is exactly what we needed to avoid, and, alarmingly, it appears that in the political posturing this bill has brought to this House, no thought was given to the turmoil should a referendum fail. We saw the “car-koi” when it was clearly known that the bill would not pass, and the political noise and upset that it created around communities—all this posturing and political point-scoring that distracted us from the real work we need to do as a nation.

We have heard that in the forming of a coalition Government, there are compromises. There have been compromises, and New Zealand First knows that because we have been part of those coalition agreements on many occasions. We know that we can agree to disagree on many aspects. Even if we agreed, which we don’t, and even if it were to pass—and it won’t—a subsequent Parliament could change the definitions, and so the cycle would continue.

The unintended consequence of this legislation, something that does not need legislation—and what would the courts do with this legislation? It is plain wrong to take the responsibility of determining the role of Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the highest court in the land, to the judiciary, which would have been the outcome of this bill. Even Sir Kenneth Keith, the lawyer’s lawyer, pointed out that it is undesirable for constitutional issues to get settled by courts. If we look back to our history, Sir Apirana Ngata was a strong advocate—

Rawiri Waititi: Oh, here we go again.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: —for protecting the Treaty from being ratified by Parliament—and I find it abhorrent that the mention of Sir Apirana Ngata’s name is treated with such contempt in this House. Let us do what is right—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: All right, the balance of this speech will be heard in silence. There are members down there who have been pushing it pretty hard who won’t be staying for the balance of the debate if they keep on interfering.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Let us do what is right for us as a nation. When I last spoke on this bill at its first reading, I talked of the dignity of this House. I talked of the obligation we all have in this House to ensure that this esteemed debating chamber is not censored. There is nothing to fear from challenging ideas and presenting different positions. This House is strong enough to withstand fractious debate, as long as we protect the duty we have to honour the rules that guide us and respect the decisions that are made.

New Zealand First may not support this bill being brought to this House, but we support our democracy and we know that we can challenge the status quo and debate something contentious. That is the democracy we must protect. The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill is one such contentious debate. It seeks to legislatively define the principles, with the premise being that this bill will fill a silence on who we are as a nation, it would deliver unity, and it would resolve the debate in perpetuity. As I’ve said, perhaps that is not what we would achieve.

New Zealand First has the longest uninterrupted position on the place the Treaty of Waitangi has in our collective identity as a nation. It is in the signing of this Treaty that our nation was formed. It started our journey and forged our identity. It is through the forming of our nation that we came together as a people over time; not instantaneously on 6 February 1840. We had much to resolve; we still do. Our iwi at the time did not consider themselves unified as one people, and in ceding sovereignty, no impact was immediately felt. In fact, very little changed, as our history will attest, immediately after the Treaty was signed, but we did change. This Parliament was established; laws were passed, and our great country flourished. One nation, one flag, one people—that is who we are.

New Zealand First has been challenged. I have been challenged as to why this bill is not supported. Our message is simple: the foundation of our country was the Treaty that brought us together, not principles that were loosely fashioned in an effort to expedite settlement processes and divisive interactions between Māori and the Crown.

Defining principles is not a debate that takes us forward or brings us together. To take us forward, we needed to understand in each piece of legislation what the obligation is that we owe to each other as citizens to give effect to the intentions of each law, and, in particular, how democratic Governments respond to issues raised by Māori—not the courts or tribunals, but by Māori—to their elected representatives. What will deliver the outcomes needed to benefit our communities? That is what New Zealand First has committed to delivering—not entrenching a reinvention of the Treaty and what it means to New Zealand, but providing a clear path forward to a better nation. We will deliver a pathway to economic prosperity for iwi to allow them to be unshackled from a narrative of grievance.

I have spent years defending our rights as New Zealanders to be treated respectfully and equally before the law. Whatever journey brought us to this nation, we are owed the same rights in this House as a duty to ensure that that is what our laws provide. We do not need new legislation in this space; we need to clarify, simplify, and verify our existing laws. To do this, we need to recognise and respect an honest account of our history. Importantly, an honest account of our history will make sure we are not oppressed by the racism of low expectations. When we can look to our tūpuna for what they achieved, we can silence the narrative that we are a nation of two peoples. When we look to our tūpuna, we can understand what personal responsibility means, what honour and dignity means, what sacrifice and hard work means, and we can be aspirational, not divisive. This is the legacy that is to be honoured.

I have spoken at the first reading of this bill about the reverence of New Zealand First leader and Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, in speaking about our great Māori leaders who forged the path for a better New Zealand. Sir Apirana Ngata, Sir Peter Buck, Sir Māui Pōmare, and Sir James Carroll all shared the position that there were no principles to the Treaty, and this remains New Zealand First’s position. It is under the shared knowledge and understanding of our history that New Zealand First has remained committed to the purpose of the Treaty. As Dame Whina Cooper said, we signed the Treaty to become one people. We cannot allow the Treaty to be weaponised and we cannot allow it to take a place that will for ever position us, as New Zealanders, in conflict with each other as a result. That is the very antithesis of what was intended by the bill.

This Parliament must hold fast to our democracy and retain supremacy over the direction we take as a country. New Zealand First knows this means clarifying our existing legislation. New legislation that entrenches a definition of the principles is not the solution for our country. It is not an end position. It would be a launching platform for those who gain political relevance by driving a narrative of victimhood in the absence of doing the hard work to improve outcomes.

New Zealand First is the party of practical action. We know what New Zealanders are calling for, and it is not more noise, but a pathway to First World wages, top-class education, a warm, dry home, and access to healthcare when they need it. We talk much in the House about what divides us: our quantum of Māori, whether we have a vanilla lens, or who is qualified to speak for who. That is what oppresses us. That is what deprives our future generations of achieving their potential.

It is time to put this bill to rest. We have work to be done and serious decisions to be made. New Zealand First is up for the challenges that are ahead. We know we need to work effectively together and we know how important it is that Parliament is respected. If New Zealand First believed this bill had merit, we would have supported it. We do not. New Zealand First does not commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke—a split call.

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

E Rangi e, whakataka te hau ki Taupiri.

[O Rangi, the wind falls on Taupiri.]

Tangihia ngā mate nō ngā hau e whā o te motu. Kua hinga ngā tōtara nō te wao nui a Tāne.

[Grieve for our dearly departed from the four winds of the nation. The great tōtara of the great forest of Tāne have fallen.]

Some of our greatest trees fell on this journey. From the West, te pā whakawairua o Te Pāti Māori [the spiritual leader of Te Pāti Māori], Tariana Turia. To the East, te māreikura o Te Kōhanga Reo, Iritana Tawhiwhirangi. Ki te mōrehu whakamutunga o te Rua Tekau Mā Waru [To the last survivor of the 28th Māori Battalion], Sir Bom Gillies, and, recently, the fearless fighter from the Far North, Hinewhare Harawira. Hoki mai ki te ika nui, te whare ariki [Returning to the esteemed deceased, the royal family], Kiingi Tuheitia, who left a message of unity to the four winds.

Kei taku ariki nui, Kuini Nga wai hono i te po e noho nei i runga i te torōna, rire rire hau, pai mārire.

[To my great leader, Queen Nga wai hono i te po, who sits upon the throne, peace and goodwill.]

This speech has been the most daunting speech I’ve ever had to write, and I’ve said, oh no, what am I going to say now? How are we supposed to voice the 270,000 written submissions, the 13,600 oral submissions, the 300,000 signatures on the petition, and the biggest hikoi, with 100,000 footsteps, marching to Parliament? How do we piece this all together in a five-minute speech? Here’s how: we’re not going to talk about the Treaty principles bill today. This bill was an undebatable and a non-negotiable debate, and the whole world knows our view on it.

The real issue is not this bill, nor is it doing a haka or practising our indigenous customs in Parliament. The real problem is that this institution—this House—has only ever recognised one partner, one culture, and one language from one Treaty. When will the rules of this House acknowledge the laws of this land: tikanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi? That is the real question of privilege here.

At our darkest hour, we could have chosen to fight this, but we chose to survive this. This bill hasn’t been stopped; this bill has been absolutely annihilated.

Aotearoa New Zealand made it clear to our country that it does not support this bill. We are not divided, but united, with 90 percent of our country’s submissions saying no. Why would we even entertain the 8 percent divisive rhetoric that this bill tries to achieve, and waste $6 million worth of taxpayers’ money when that could have been given and spent on proper food for our tamariki?

It was the voices from Times Square in New York to Kaikohe, and from the streets of Oxford to Ngāruawāhia; the Waitangi Tribunal; the art on kākahu; the anonymous person who sponsored thousands of Te Tiriti books; the hundreds of submissions from Whatawhata to Whangārei; and the call for unity with hui-ā-motu across the country. We could write hundreds of books on the oral submissions and their gems spoken from people like Tā Timoti Kāretu, Dr Kalo Mila, Maia Te Hira, and more, and on the rangatahi from Te Aupōuri who carried the banner all the way from Te Rerenga Wairua to the forecourt. This ignited an emotion that echoed with all walks of life, all races, all ages, and all genders across the world. Just remember, it was their voices—their powerful voices—that engaged to drown out this bill.

So where to next? These past two years have been completely about survival. This next chapter needs to be about steps to thriving, and our road map to our next destination has never been so clear. For us to thrive, our job over the next few months will be to create bills, policies, and legislation to remove significant barriers that disallow Māori from accessing their basic rights—not privileges.

Aotearoa hou isn’t a fantasy. It’s a place where there is unity, and the road map has no roadworks on it and it doesn’t stop us from accessing our basic rights, like proper healthcare without a two-week wait. It’s not having to decide whether to learn our language with student debt. It’s being able to come home to build without having to wait three years for the Māori Land Court. It’s Māori owning the first ever supermarket to break down the supermarket duopoly. It’s being able to swim in your tupuna awa, not chemical quarries. It’s 14 Māori seats in Parliament. It’s not having a five-year waiting list to enrol your tamariki in kōhanga. It’s a place of having 4,507 Māori tamariki coming out of State care. It’s having Maunga Kahurānaki back for its uri.

This is tino rangatiratanga—control over our daily decisions that we make. Brick by brick, we will move from surviving to thriving. Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora! Ka mate te pire! Ka ora te iwi Māori! We had two choices: to live or to die. We chose to live. Ka ora tonu tātou āke ake ake!

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Te iwi Māori, tangata Tiriti—that’ll teach him. This treaty principles bill has been an emotional rollercoaster. I know that for many of the people who made their voices heard, they didn’t have the time or the money or the energy to give, and yet they showed up in droves. The whole process was so difficult because at every juncture in this journey, we gave those members an opportunity to change their minds. We battled in the select committee at every single meeting and said, “OK, New Zealand First and National Party, let’s get rid of the bill, then, if you don’t support it so much.”, and those opportunities were turned down.

It was a privilege to absorb all the knowledge and the wisdom from all the people who came to talk to us, from Ani Mikaere to Vincent O’Malley and the Hon Chris Finlayson. I felt so much shame and so much sadness in many of those submissions. As we had iwi come and talk to us, some so angry they were shaking, they couldn’t even articulate the trauma that this whole process has rehashed, and this was an example of Parliament sticking the knife in again and again and again.

I was fighting for my life in the Justice Committee. I remember very tense conversations, even amongst Opposition parties, because there is more than one way to skin a cat and there is more than one way to kill a bill, and we all had different ideas, but we all knew that this needed to go in the bin. So I want to acknowledge Duncan Webb, Tracey McLellan, Ginny Andersen, and Tākuta Ferris for all of the mahi that we did in representing the kotahitanga that our people wanted to see and that they deserve, and it was behind closed doors—hard, methodical, genuine mahi behind closed doors—as well.

As satisfying as it would be to say a massive “Shame!”, I will leave it with a whakataukī that Te Tahinga-o-te-rā, one of my tūpuna from Ngāti Awa, said. “Waiho mā te whakamā e patu”—“Let shame be their punishment”.

I want to give a special mihi to all of my colleagues who have put in the mahi. We collected 13,000 signatures, we collected 640 postcards, we went into schools, we went to touch tournaments, we went to community hui, and we also went into the clubs and collected submissions.

I also want to acknowledge my friend and colleague Steve Abel for being my tag team partner in all of the submissions. Steve represents a generation of people who were not lucky enough to be taught about Te Tiriti in schools, but whose earnest dedication to learning and to fighting beside iwi to stop the ransacking of our coastline, our forests, and our whenua is what made him realise that our interests—tangata Tiriti and te iwi Māori—are not different. They are the same. So to every tangata Tiriti who made their voices heard and said that that little man does not represent your views, kia ora to you.

I would like to acknowledge Eru Kapa-Kingi, Riana Te Ngahue, and Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown for bringing the kōrero to TikTok and bringing it to the new generation to understand what the conversation meant and that their voices were important. I want to thank the Zanes, the Bloody Samoans, the Kassies, the Rawhitiroas, and the Shamias for bringing this conversation to the people and making it accessible.

E te iwi, the fight is not over, despite their crocodile tears. We still have a Government that is willing to use our mana as a cheap bargaining tool. Despite what the New Zealand First member has just told us, they are the ones who want to remove 28 general Treaty clauses across legislation. That is disgraceful. They are the ones who want to introduce the fast-track bill, which will ride roughshod over important Treaty rights for our whenua.

Attacks on indigenous people everywhere are happening right now. This was not unique to Aotearoa; this was part of a coordinated plan to undermine indigenous people everywhere. But I say to my first-nation brothers and sisters in Australia, as I do to the Palestinians—who are having bombs dropped over their heads in Gaza right now—that we stand together. They will not win. They may have deep pockets, but we have the people power and we will not be quiet, and this is a valuable lesson to leave our Tiriti alone.

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the now former chair of the hard-working Justice Committee, I wanted to focus my contribution today on the process that the committee went through in considering this bill. As I do so, I would like to acknowledge the work of the clerks—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Good, OK—just hold it there. Some of the conversations that are going on now need to stop.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: I’d like to acknowledge the work of the clerks and the Select Committee Services team on this bill. It was an interesting test case, juggling three different clerks throughout this process and the number of staff that we had helping us, but at all points they were up front, they were clear in their work, and they provided consistent advice, sometimes in the face of quite significant severe personal reflections from members of the committee. So I wanted to acknowledge the work of the clerks and team on this bill.

In doing so, can I also acknowledge the work of the committee, and MPs on the committee, who generally worked collegially and collectively in this work. It’s helpful, I think, to point to Appendix B in the select committee report for the record of decisions made by the committee, and I think that the public should look at that appendix and should analyse it for the consistency and the amount of unanimity that actually existed in the committee. Most of the decisions in the committee, if not all of them, bar a few, were made unanimously on things like the length of submissions, the number of hours of submissions we would hear, how to treat form and template submissions, and how we would set criteria for what submissions would be heard. They were all decisions that were agreed to unanimously by the committee, and it showed the collegiality and what can happen when members of the committee work together well.

I did want to provide the public with some reassurances after the past few weeks and some of the information that’s been going around there. I want to reassure the public that every submission that has been made to the committee has been read by someone. It has been read by an official in the ministry and the themes from those submissions have been integrated into the departmental report, and I would encourage anyone out there who is interested in this process to read the departmental report. It is rich in information, it is rich in content, and it reflects the incredibly hard work done by the ministry officials in reading over 300,000 submissions and synthesising them into that document.

Every submission that has been made to the committee has been available to all members of Parliament, and not just those on the committee, at all times. I wanted to clear that up. There has been some misinformation out there that members have not had access to those submissions. Again, if you go through the record, you can see that we agreed to the process of accessing submissions from the clerks’ team. All members agreed to that, and it is very disappointing to see suggestions that suggest otherwise out there. Every submission that has been made to the committee that meets the criteria set by the committee will be published and tabled and released publicly for everybody to see so that they can see for themselves the content of those 300,000 submissions.

Again, the committee has reported the bill back because there is no further work to do. There were some suggestions that this has been outrageously rushed back into the House, but following the end of 80 hours of submissions and over 529 people making oral submissions, at the end, all of the work programme has been completed. Members all agreed unanimously that no changes to the bill needed to be made. They all agreed that the Parliamentary Counsel Office did not need to draft a revision-tracked version. They all agreed that the report back would come soon. They all had three chances to consider the draft select committee report, and, at the end, every single member on that committee voted for it to be reported back to the House. So that needs to be placed on the record for the reassurance of the public.

There is a lot to go through when it comes to considering what we went through on this bill. I wanted to touch on a few things—a few lessons maybe learnt by the Parliament—if this was to ever happen again. In early January, the select committee was called back somewhat early from some people’s holidays to deal with the issue of the parliamentary website crashing. Now, I want to provide some reassurances to the public that at no time has there been any suggestion of foreign interference or scurrilous behaviour in that process. It is simply a matter of what we all did throughout our careers and throughout university and school of leaving it to the last minute and of the website not being able to handle the volume that came through on the very last day—that is it. No conspiracies, no interference—that’s what happened.

I think we learnt a lesson there in terms of setting the time for responding to submissions. Generally, submissions are set to be due by 11.59 p.m. at night, and that of course meant that any issues with the process were unable to be answered by the select committee team and by the parliamentary team. So, moving forward, I think that on bills of significance, we should consider setting those deadlines to be in the middle of the day so that people have a chance to deal with any of those issues.

Questions remain throughout the public about how easy or how hard it was to make a submission. There were complaints sent through to my email and to our office about the fact that it is a very straightforward process to make a submission, and I think there are questions to the House about whether or not there are restrictions put in place. I actually think it’s a good thing that it is as simple as possible for the public to make submissions to the select committee. All you need to do is go to the Parliament website, enter your submission, and it is done, or, alternatively, write it in and write it in hard copy.

There are questions around whether or not you need to provide ID and whether or not you can do them on behalf of other people, and I will put a thought out there: if you are wanting to make a submission to the Parliament as an individual or as an organisation, do that on your own steam. Do not rely on third-party organisations or third-party activists or political parties who go out there and want to collect your data and harvest your data and who purport to provide your submission on your behalf. If you want to make a submission to this Parliament, use the process that is made available. It is easy, it is straightforward, it makes the clerk’s job incredibly straightforward and easy, and it means we do not run into issues of people having their submissions counted or not counted in terms of them being form submissions.

I wanted to touch on the purpose of the select committee process because members today and throughout the process have talked about the numbers and talked about it being a record-breaking achievement. The purpose of the select committee process is not a poll. It is not a petition. It is not a referendum. It is not a platform for advocacy. It is a process to allow legislators in this House the opportunity to scrutinise legislation, to offer improvements, and to make amendments. That is what it is for. It is not an advocacy platform. It is not a performance piece, and members across the hall can laugh all they want, but if you are a parliamentarian and you are committed to the process of scrutinising legislation put forward by the executive—by the Government—you will take that process seriously. It is not a popularity contest, it is not a numbers game, and comments like it is “record-breaking” are very unhelpful to that process.

In the time remaining available, I want to clarify some remaining pieces of misinformation that may be sitting out there in the public, and this is primarily a message for parliamentarians and how they conduct themselves within select committees. Partial disclosure of incomplete information that is designed for political gain and that results in confusion and anger in the public is deeply unhelpful for our democratic process. We have had to spend a significant amount of time and resource, including in the Clerk’s Office, to deal with that misinformation being spread by members of Parliament deliberately for political purposes.

So let me state once and for all, for the record, that the appendix in the select committee report outlines every decision made by the select committee up until the deliberation phase. There is only one side which has been consistent in our desire to ensure that people have had their say and their voices are heard throughout the entire process—and Tamatha Paul is correct that they did try at every opportunity to stop people from having their say. We voted the bill through the select committee as per the coalition agreement; we did not oppose the open discussion. We called for public submissions and allowed the public to have their say; the Opposition voted for the bill to be reported back on the same day it was introduced to the select committee. We were the ones that called for oral submissions to be held; the Opposition called for only written submissions and to prevent every single oral submission from being held. That is part of the record.

We were the ones that instructed the ministry to prepare a departmental report; the Opposition voted for no departmental report to be written and, therefore, no analysis of submissions and no opportunity for members of the public to have their submissions read and synthesised into the report. We were the ones that invited the Minister in charge of the bill to present and make his case to the select committee; the Opposition opposed that opportunity. Finally, I need to make it clear that the committee unanimously wrote to the Business Committee to seek the agreement to make sure that every single submission was counted while the outstanding ones were processed for consistency with the Standing Orders, and it was the Opposition which opposed that process.

I have tried my best to set the record straight on some of those issues and to provide some reassurances for the public out there. But I do finish my contribution by extending my gratitude to the hundreds of people who did take the time to present to us in person in select committee and who did so with grace, with a sense of measure and with composure, and with a level of respect and manners that I don’t think was always afforded to them by members of our committee, and that is a great shame. For those individuals who were treated disrespectfully by members of Parliament when they gave their submission, I want to apologise to them.

I want to thank all of those who have sent kind words to the committee for the hard work undertaken in terms of considering this bill, whether they supported it or not. I’m glad that we are bringing this piece of legislation to a conclusion this afternoon. I’m glad that we can look forward to the task of rebuilding our economy and building a brighter, more prosperous future for all New Zealanders. The members opposite may laugh, but that is what we are focused on here. In saying that, we do not support this bill passing and I’ll conclude my contribution by saying that we do not commend this bill to the House.

Hon Member: A total waste of time.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Well, that’s the “Prime Minister”!

SPEAKER: That is the last outburst that that member is to contribute to the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): I wanted to acknowledge the Harawira whānau, firstly, because this week they lost one of their matriarchs and one of their leaders—Hinewhare Harawira—and my marae hosted the tangi for a day and a night. I mention her because she was one of the biggest fighters against this bill, and I mention her also because Te Pāti Māori turned up. They were there a little earlier than me, and they gave a copy of the bill to put in the hole with Hinewhare tomorrow. So e mihi ana ki a kōrua mō ā kōrua mahi ātaahua.

[Thanks to the both of you for your beautiful work.]

But we remember her well and her fight for Māori rights. So we mihi to that whānau today, to Hone Harawira and the whānau, and they’ll be burying her tomorrow.

I want to also thank today the Justice Committee, particularly Duncan Webb, our leader over here, and Ginny Andersen over here, who did a fabulous job. I also congratulate the chair, although I wasn’t too happy with his speech today. But without doubt, he’s the next leader of the National Party—and probably the first Māori Prime Minister—when the coup takes place in National over the next few months.

The Treaty principles bill has highlighted the very worst of our democracy and, at the same time, the very best of our democracy. This race-baiting political stunt has been a right-wing obscenity masquerading as equality. You should be ashamed on that side of the House—they should all be ashamed for allowing this hate into Parliament. What is most offensive is the way that the ACT Party and the political right have twisted the narrative to fit in a racist agenda.

The Treaty, as people have said, is not about racial privilege or racial superiority. It is and always has been about legal rights that Māori have in their contract with the Crown.

Once and for all, for the benefit of David Seymour and his supporters, Treaty rights are not special privileges, or even extra rights, as he likes to paint them. They are rights that were in place before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. The Treaty simply reaffirms those rights. The rights acknowledge language, culture, identity, and property rights, and it’s ironic, isn’t it, that the great advocates of property rights—the ACT Party—are so opposed to this. We get it now: property rights only count if you’re Pākehā. But if you’re Māori—if you’re Māori—forget about them.

Those indigenous rights didn’t suddenly disappear when Māori signed the Treaty or when Mr Seymour dreamt up his Treaty principles bill. To therefore twist Treaty rights into some claim of apartheid is not only disingenuous; it is bad faith, and those two words sum up this whole disgraceful episode—that is, “bad faith”. ACT never wanted a genuine debate on the Treaty, because this was never about a real engagement of ideas. This was always about whipping up racist hysteria and calling that a debate.

We heard David Seymour today. He compares his end of life bill referendum with this political stunt and tries to claim that they’re similar. No, they are not, Mr Seymour. The end of life bill referendum was a conscience issue, whereas rewriting the Treaty and forcing it upon the indigenous people by using the tyranny of the majority is an outright assault on our history and on our rights. You cannot compare the end of life bill referendum with an attempt to erase Māori legal rights. On a philosophical level, the end of life is an individual right. Rewriting the Treaty is not an individual right; it is a property right that has enormous impacts that go well beyond the individual.

Finally on referendums, Mr Seymour, they’re not always the solution that you make out they are. Sometimes—believe it or not—the majority get it wrong. Your Government is an example of that.

Let’s look at referendums. Let’s ask the Aboriginal people of Australia what they think of referendums when they were, sadly, defeated in their vote to recognise their indigenous rights last year. Or maybe the rainbow community—do we really think that homosexual law reform would have been passed in the 1980s? Give it a break—no chance. Or perhaps when my Auntie Hemara Jackson, the nanny of young Hana over here—when she presented the Māori language petition over 50 years ago, talking about rights for te reo Māori and talking about te reo being an official language, do you think the public would have supported that? Do you think that she and Ngā Tamatoa and all of our Māori language advocates would have been successful if this was the subject of a referendum? Not at all. Not a chance—not a chance.

Here’s the real question for all the brilliant lot in ACT: rather than test the legitimacy of the Treaty by a simple referendum, why not respect the decades of Treaty jurisprudence that’s been developed by both Māori and the Crown and, more particularly, the leading legal minds of this country? But, no—“I’m Always Right Seymour” refuses to do this. It’s an absolute disgrace how he refuses to accept the words of our greatest legal minds, politicians, academics, and, of course, Māori. Very similar, I might add, are people who believe that the world is still flat and not round, and that sums up him and his nutjob supporters.

While ACT and their band of appalling supporters are the very worst of our democracy, the way people have responded in rejecting this is our democracy at its best. Of the over 300,000 submissions, 90 percent spoke against this lie. Over 100,000 people around the country—100,000 were marching to call the stunt out for what it was. The massive cross-section of civil society—our young people, our Pasifika whānau, our Pākehā allies, tangata Tiriti, the disabled community, the rainbow community, unions, churches, and academics all combined as one to cry out that the Treaty is our shared identity. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Can you just cut out the conversation down here.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The Treaty is our hope and it is our shared unique feature that defines us.

There are vastly more of us who see the Treaty as a positive, rather than a weapon to divide us. ACT’s hate has been defeated here today. Let us not forget that all of this divisiveness, all this naked racism, and all this spite and malice has been whipped up by them in a redneck agenda that, sadly, in our view, was allowed because the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not stand up against David Seymour.

But, wait a minute, he didn’t even have to stand up—he didn’t even have to stand up. As we found out, this wasn’t even a bottom line in negotiations. So much for the great negotiator Christopher Luxon! It defies belief that we’re talking about the Treaty principles today, given that we now know the full story behind the coalition agreements. Shame on the Prime Minister.

Our nation required leadership on race issues, but Christopher Luxon wanted to be the Prime Minister at all costs. He was blinded to ACT’s demands—well, they weren’t even demands in the end—and instead of resisting them, he caved in to them. And where is the Prime Minister now? That’s the question.

Let it be known that history is watching this day, and the people will not forget who turned up and who didn’t, and who led and who didn’t. Our leader turned up. What a fabulous kōrero from him today. It was fabulous. His kōrero about coming together and celebrating our differences is resonating with our communities, and his acknowledgment that Māori did not concede tino rangatiratanga, or sovereignty, is the first time that any leader of a mainstream party has admitted that in Aotearoa. Why? Because he knows that 80,000 Māori are not going to give up rangatiratanga, or their whole lives, to 2,000 settlers. So well done to our leader, who shows courage, which is, sadly, lacking from the Government at the moment.

I said in the first reading that David Seymour was talking falsehoods, ignorance, and nonsense. I’ve had time to reflect on my speech, and it may come as a surprise, but my views haven’t changed with regard to Mr Seymour. But I want to say again how proud I was of the select committee. I want to honour that committee today, so in my final words in terms of my kōrero today, I have to say to David Seymour—and say it to you straight—oh, he’s left the building.

Hon Member: No, he’s over there.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: He’s over there. Well, I’ll say to you, wherever you are—oh, there you are, David Seymour. You’re a disgrace to this House, and when it comes to the Treaty of Waitangi, you will always be a liar. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member will withdraw and apologise for that statement. Mr Jackson, you need to withdraw and apologise for making that statement.

Hon Willie Jackson: Well, Mr Speaker, if I was to withdraw and apologise, it would be an insult to 270,000 select committee submitters who all think that Mr Seymour is a liar also, so—

SPEAKER: Good. That is your opinion. Leave the House.

Hon Willie Jackson: —I can’t do that.

SPEAKER: Leave the House.

Hon Willie Jackson: Do you want me to leave the House?

SPEAKER: Leave the House.

Hon Willie Jackson: Again?

SPEAKER: Yep.

Hon Willie Jackson withdrew from the Chamber.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t think he was talking about his character. Actually, David Seymour was lying on the ground over there.

SPEAKER: Rima Nakhle—and we will go back to listening to speeches in silence.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Ahiahi mārie to everyone who has tuned in, and haere mai to all gathered in our parliamentary Whare, particularly my quasi-niece, Ripora, who has travelled all the way from South Auckland to witness this kaupapa. Welcome, habibti.

I rise to convey my whakaaro on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill in its second reading. I believe I’ve exercised my duty on the Justice Committee as a member as best I could, and I want to thank the former chair the Hon James Meager, who sits beside me, and my colleagues across the committee for the work and for the passion that they put into this kaupapa. It was often very testing and quite emotionally taxing, but I felt privileged throughout the process to see, firsthand, New Zealand’s dialogue and history unfolding.

I often share my National Party values where appropriate, and here, if I may, I would like to share one of our values that’s been around for a long time: equal citizenship and equal opportunity for all New Zealanders. The challenges of the Treaty are complex. They’re complex and, as I’ve said, they’re challenging, and for over 185 years, we have grappled with these challenges together and, together, we will continue to do so. This model has served New Zealand relatively well, and I truly believe that we are a more open-minded and tolerant country because of our Treaty discussions.

As we’ve heard earlier and throughout this whole conversation, the National Party strongly asserts that a referendum on the Treaty would be a simplistic approach to a very extremely complex and challenging issue, and so today, we are voting to ensure it will go no further. I say this respectfully to our coalition partners, but this is our strong view.

As I look around the gallery, I see it filled with beautiful faces, many of whom I am in the blessed position to know. There are friends sitting above from both sides of today’s kōrero, friends whom I have sat down with in my home as we’ve shared Lebanese kai that I’ve cooked and we have discussed these challenging and complex issues that our country faces. We’ve disagreed and we’ve agreed and we’ve disagreed again, but all from a place of honesty because we are in this together, and that is what I hope we can take from today.

I hope that we will continue approaching our relations on a measured, case by case basis because that’s what our profound history deserves. Let’s underpin our conversations, not with our desire for political points, but rather with honest intentions for our collective future. Mātātoa, going forward—active, courageous, and valiant. I do not commend this bill to the House.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā ko taku mihi tuatahi ki te wāhi ngaro, rātou kua wehe atu. Kāre au e tū i roto i tōku kotahi. Nā reira kei te mihi atu au ki a koutou kua tae ā-kanohi ki te whakatinana i ngā wawata o te tini me te mano, kia takatakahia tēnei pire koretake rawa atu ki raro.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, indeed my first acknowledgment is to the unseen place, those who have departed. I do not stand on my own. And so I acknowledge you who have come here in person to embody the aspirations of the many and the multitudes, to trample down this absolutely useless bill.]

Hearing speeches of vindication from that side of the House is very hard to swallow, because it has been this National-led Government that has allowed this ugly monster to rear its head in the light of day. The individual whose name this bill is in and his party have suggested the Treaty gives Māori different rights and privileges, and, by God, do I stand here privileged. I am the privileged product of generations of people who have persevered in the face of breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I am privileged to live on my whenua and I’m privileged to speak tāku reo Māori, te reo ōku tīpuna—rights and privileges denied to too many Māori. Rights and privileges that through perseverance we have managed to maintain and that this bill sought to undermine and failed.

Aotearoa and, indeed, iwi taketake from around the world stood united against this backward-looking, divisive bill, and, let’s not forget, it was resource-wasting. He moumou moni.

[It’s a waste of money.]

Three-hundred thousand of you presented your opposition to this bill, and behind you was a nation united. The Aotearoa New Zealand we believe in organised and marched. Some of you, Aotearoa, simply changed your world view, adding momentum to this kaupapa. Mana Māori was never threatened by this bill.

Kāre e taea e te Kāwanatanga te karo i tō mātou mana tuku iho [The Government cannot deny our inherited mana] and throughout this ordeal, people across Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and, indeed, Aotearoa have held fast to your vision for our future. You’re ready to get back to business. Back to the business of ensuring an Aotearoa where our tamariki and mokopuna thrive in our ao Māori me te ao whānui; an Aotearoa where our whenua is nurtured and developed, and whānau have a roof over their heads and our hauora is a priority; and an Aotearoa where you can earn a good living. Back to the business of expanding the thriving Māori economy—and we’re all about it.

So, to get back to that business, e hoa mā, you need a Government that enables your moemoeā, and that ain’t it. I said in the first reading of this koretake bill that we do not need to change the Treaty; we need to change this Government. Toitū Te Tiriti! Part one: tick. Let’s get on with part two. They asked for the election to be a referendum. Let’s deliver. Me rēhita pea, me pōti pea kia panaia tēnei Kāwanatanga, ngā pāti katoa o tēnei Kāwanatanga ki waho o tēnei Whare.

[Perhaps we should register, perhaps we should vote so that this Government, all the parties of this Government, are pushed out of this House.]

I stand once more with pride and privilege to condemn this bill, and I repeat: this Government must not be vindicated. It is this Government that allowed this bill to cause the divisive conversations throughout Aotearoa.

Kei te tū anō awau, me taku pāti, me tēnei taha o te Whare ki te whakahē rawa atu i tēnei pire takahi mana, hoki whakamuri.

Heoi anō rā, Aotearoa whānui, tēnā rawa atu tātou katoa.

[I stand again, along with my party and this side of the House, to strongly oppose this bill that desecrates mana, and takes us backwards.

However, to all of Aotearoa, greetings to us all.]

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I had an opportunity to participate in the first reading of this bill, and that debate was a momentous debate in terms of how this House views this legislation that’s proposed before us. At that time, I made it clear that in my view, over successive decades, New Zealand has grappled with how to deal with the Treaty. It’s been a long, continuous, and ongoing debate, and that will be the case after this bill has been put to rest. That debate will continue, that discussion will continue, and, indeed, it will continue long after all of us have left this place.

While we don’t necessarily always agree, successive National Governments have always worked well with Māori on Treaty issues, and we’ve always ensured that there are equal citizenship rights and equal opportunity for all New Zealanders. The challenges that we confront as a nation around the Treaty are complex, and it’s just not realistic to suggest that nearly 200 years of debate, discussion, protest—sometimes—informed debate, education, and input from so many New Zealanders over all those years should be settled just with the stroke of one legislative pen. It’s too blunt, it’s too simplistic, and it risks, in reality, actually stoking grievance and driving division. I don’t think that’s good for our nation. I don’t think that that helps us achieve the goals and aspirations that we all seek to achieve by coming to this place.

National takes, always, the more difficult and realistic practical approach when it comes to working together, and we do so by working through issues in relation to the Treaty on a case by case basis, such as, for instance, the reversal of a number of divisive co-governance policies from the previous Government that would have, in fact, contributed to worse economic and social regulatory outcomes—for instance, three waters and the Māori Health Authority. We’ve also instructed Government agencies in the term of this Government to deliver public services based on needs and to work with iwi and other providers where specific needs exist amongst Māori and other communities, and we are continuing to establish and progress Treaty settlements to address the historical wrongdoings. In another example, we are restoring the rights of communities to determine whether to introduce Māori wards after the previous Government denied local constituents the opportunity to do so. That’s another example of a case by case approach to how we address those issues.

Having participated in the first reading debate and having watched closely the work of the Justice Committee chaired by my friend and colleague the Hon James Meager, ultimately, I want to reiterate in my closing moments of my contribution in this debate that this National Party, which I am proud to be a member of—our focus and the focus of this coalition Government remains firmly and steadfastly on improving outcomes for Māori and non-Māori. We do that by rebuilding our economy, by restoring law and order, and by delivering better public services for all New Zealand. This bill achieves none of that.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Well, here we are, finally getting rid of this divisive and wasteful bill.

Now, unlike James Meager, I’m not going to spend 10 minutes whining about process, but I will say two things. Firstly, there are 105,000 submissions that aren’t on the parliamentary record today, and to suggest that that’s all OK is false. There was a room down in the corner with 24 boxes of handwritten and typed submissions—hard-copy submissions—that you had to go in and rifle through if you wanted to find something, and if you wanted to find a particular submission, you had to name it. You had to name the submitter, and I’m sorry, but I don’t know 307,000 people, and, what’s more, whilst that process was still ongoing, the chairman of the Justice Committee moved the motion to report the bill back to the House 40 days before it was due—whilst we were still working through the submissions and putting them on the record.

That is shabby—that is shabby process. But it is not as shabby as what the Government has done and what the Prime Minister has done in letting this bill come to the House. This is a bill that the Prime Minister had the gall to stand up and say that it’s not going to pass, and to then bring it to this House is disrespectful to this Chamber, because this Chamber’s time is valuable and there should be put before this House laws which are seriously being considered, not the flying up the flagpole of some divisive bill.

But I do want to pay tribute to those submitters—all of those people—and I must say it was humbling, not only to see the people who came in person from across the community but also to read some of those written submissions, as well. I want to pay respect to the diversity of the views. The people came and gave their whakapapa and told their stories and expressed their vehement opposition to the bill, not in a way that David Seymour would understand, but in a way that came from a long history. It was not an academic tradition that I’m familiar with, but I engaged with it and I learnt from it. There were the new immigrants who came and said, “I’m proud to be here and to participate in this country, and I understand the Treaty helps me understand my place in this community.”, and I see that David Seymour is already on Twitter, saying that he still doesn’t have a good reason for why this bill is being turned around.

Hon David Seymour: Try giving us one.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, I’ll give you one. I’ll give you one: it’s a lie. The bill is a lie because it says one thing and the truth is another. It says that these are the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, but they’re not, and, as Chris Finlayson said, you can’t legislate to make the world flat. The fact is you cannot legislate the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi out of existence—they might be constitutional truisms or they might be undermining the customary position of iwi in our country, but they’re not the Treaty principles. You can’t make up the underlying fabric of the Treaty. So it’s absolutely fatuous to suggest that this bill reflected in any way the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

I want to address head-on two other fallacies which underpin this bill. The first is that his stooges would front up to the select committee and say, “This is about living in a liberal democracy.”, and their concept of a liberal democracy was shallow and impoverished because all it meant was one person, one vote. What it didn’t mean was a respect for human rights and a recognition of indigenous people in the place where they belong. What it didn’t recognise was the rights of minorities. So what we had was an argument which was about a hundred years out of date, and that’s about where they are.

The irony is this: all of the advice that was received, not just submissions but the thoughtful advice, pointed this out, and even the Cabinet Manual, a document which isn’t a political document, makes it really clear that there is a balance to be struck between the rights of the majority—majority power in a place like this—and minority rights. It’s the protection of fundamental social and constitutional values, but the ACT Party is not interested in that. They’re interested in a radical individualism which doesn’t recognise that there are communities of interest, that there are differences between people, and that in a modern liberal democracy—as Bronwyn Hayward so thoughtfully put it—there is a duty to protect those people who are vulnerable, to respect indigenous rights, and to ensure that the majority does not oppress the minority. That’s what a modern, functioning, liberal democracy is.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: They don’t want that.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: They don’t want that, Kieran McAnulty; they want the opposite. They want to go back a hundred years and live in a radical, libertarian world.

The other argument they want—and, again, I want to go head-on here. The ACT member on the committee would constantly put to submitters the following question: “Does the Treaty of Waitangi give different rights based on ancestry?”—this absolute trope of inequality. Now, the lie in that and the falsehood underlying that statement is that difference is inequality, but it’s not. Now, there are all kinds of ways we can be different. We can have kaupapa Māori health services or schools or social services, and, in fact, anyone who knows the area will know that you don’t even have to be Māori to access them. They’re for everyone.

But to suggest that to deliver services in a particular way to best serve communities is in some way unequal is an absolute fallacy, and time and again, we heard the resource management trope come up. David Seymour himself mentioned it today. Now, we pressed on that, because if there’s something there, we wanted to know. We asked the question: “What is the special advantage that Māori have under the Resource Management Act?” No one could put their finger on it. If it’s a special advantage for mana whenua to be asked about a project that might impact their customary rights, well, that’s a world I want to live in because that’s actually respecting customary rights and property interests—and you should be respecting that, as well. The suggestion that Māori are precluded in some way is just false. The fallacy is that the provision of services should be in a non-Māori way, and what that does is, essentially, exclude the reality that there is more than one way of doing things—that we can do things which are equal and different—and that’s not appropriate.

So what we have here is a situation where 300,000 people have stood up and many people at the select committee spoke up, but over there, they stood by. They stood by and did nothing, and they actually presided over a piece of legislation which has been exceedingly divisive. Now, you can talk about having a conversation and we are prepared for a conversation, and I’m proud to stand with my colleagues—my Māori colleagues who have spoken today here from the Labour Party, from the Greens, and from Te Pāti Māori. But to have an ill-thought-out bill based on premises which are fundamentally racist is not having a constitutional conversation.

Make the time to talk about how we honour the Treaty in a more fulsome way and about how we live together and address some of the gross inequalities which continue in our society. But to put a bill into the House that we know is never going to be passed so that we can see some of the hateful rhetoric coming out, is simply divisive, wasteful, and wrong.

I’m proud to speak today—proud not of what this House has done, but proud of what New Zealand has done. It has come out in its thousands and hundreds of thousands to say, “We’ll have no part of this.”

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): My colleagues have already said that this law is a simplistic tool that does not address the underlying issues. They have highlighted the steps that the National-led Government has been taking to address the genuine concerns that Kiwis have, so now let me turn to the vision that National has for our country. We want a thriving, united New Zealand where every Kiwi enjoys equal opportunity and equal citizenship and takes pride in our shared future.

Kiwis do best when we are working together in a spirit of unity and mutual respect. At the heart of our nation’s foundation lies the Treaty of Waitangi, the document that sets out the framework for the relationship between Māori and the Crown. It is our duty to ensure the Crown upholds its obligations under the Treaty and to ensure that historical grievances are addressed in a fair and in a just manner. As my colleagues have also said, while we may not agree on every issue, successive National Governments have worked constructively with Māori on Treaty matters, always ensuring equal citizenship and equal opportunity for all New Zealanders. This is a commitment we will continue to uphold, addressing each case and issue on its own merits, always striving for better outcomes for all.

National also has a proud record when it comes to Treaty settlements, having made more progress than any other Governments in resolving historical grievances. More importantly, we are now seeing the benefits of this progress. The Māori economy has seen remarkable growth, with its asset base rising from $69 billion in 2018 to $119 billion in 2023. This is not just a statistic. It represents real, tangible benefits for communities across New Zealand, and particularly in the regions, where Māori are making a significant economic contribution.

The work we’ve undertaken in settling grievances is vital to ensuring and securing a prosperous future. We must continue to build on this foundation, ensuring all Treaty settlements are completed and implemented, with benefits flowing through to iwi, to communities, and to New Zealand as a whole. We must keep moving forward.

In the past year alone, we’ve achieved notable success. Through partnership with Māori health organisations, over 69,000 vaccinations have been delivered to New Zealanders. We’ve seen more than 20 Māori-led or Māori-partnered projects placed on the fast-track list. We’ve also committed over $200 million to Māori housing providers and have helped nearly 2,000 children, many of them Māori, move out of emergency housing.

When Māori succeed, New Zealand succeeds. Our fates are intertwined. Together, we are working towards a better, more prosperous New Zealand for the future and for the future generations of all Kiwis. National does not commend this bill to the House and it will vote against it.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 11

ACT New Zealand 11.

Noes 112

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; New Zealand First 8; Te Pāti Māori 6.

Motion not agreed to.

SPEAKER: Before I announce the vote, following this announcement, a waiata has been agreed to. The Ayes are 11; the Noes are 112. The motion is lost. [Interruption] That’s enough. If there is to be a waiata, now is the time.

Waiata—“Tūtira mai ngā iwi”

[A disturbance occurred in the gallery]

SPEAKER: No, no, no—fella, excuse me. Good boy—on your way. [Interruption] Someone come and help him out.

I just want to say to the whole gallery who is applauding that that sort of outburst does not help us move forward in the tikanga of this House. It’s most unhelpful.

Bills

Medicines Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 8 April.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I support and endorse the words of my colleague the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, who spoke on this bill before it was interrupted, and acknowledging that, for Kiwis right across Aotearoa, the access to medicines is important. The access to the right medicines, however, is the most important thing. Making sure that the process is in order to get the right framework to allow the right decisions for the right medicines to be accessed in this country is hugely important.

What we know, however, though, is we can tinker with some of the legislation. We can put something that seems like such a token gesture, because it means nothing unless the funding is there to purchase those particular medicines. So we stand to make sure that when this bill goes to the committee, and when it’s considered and more submissions are heard on this particular bill, we can make sure that those voices are heard to hold this Government to account on their promise to delivering medicines to New Zealanders. That’s hugely important.

We heard the speeches in the House as this particular bill was introduced, and we want to look closely at what that means with respect to the international standards that other countries place on the access to those medicines, the research to make sure that it’s robust. I wonder, too, just given the nature of world affairs at the moment, what does that actually mean? We can’t deny that. We can’t simply say that “That country does it, so we must do it too.” We must look more broadly at this particular matter. Sometimes that means not always agreeing with those that we’ve usually aligned ourselves with. We can’t look towards international standards without making sure that we continue to hold a truly independent foreign policy, one that says we’ll do what’s right for New Zealanders. We can’t shortcut those matters. This particular bill, while it might look towards greater access, we must make sure that it’s robust enough to show that New Zealanders can continue to make sure that the medicines that it accesses are the right ones and won’t do harm to Kiwis.

Now, we know this particular matter is one of great concern, consternation, and priority for New Zealanders. In fact, in all of my time in Parliament and every election campaign that I’ve entered into, health and access to medicines has been one of those topics that continues to be at the forefront of the debate wherever we go across this country, and rightly so—rightly so. It touches on an emotion that every member of this House and every New Zealander and that communities around this country feel passionate about, because it affects them. It affects their families. It affects their loved ones. It affects their friends and their wider community. That is why when we look towards this particular bill, we must make sure that in supporting it—as Labour does, at least for more consideration—we continue to look at the system in its entirety, not to cut corners while trying to build a house. That’s the point we want to make on this side of the House as we look towards those regulations and making sure that Kiwis can access the medicine that they need to access.

A good man by the name of Mr Malcom Mulholland, who regularly contacts members from right across the House—I acknowledge the journey and the fight that he and so many others have had with our legislation, with members of this House, with Governments of all views, to make sure that Kiwis get that access. One of the challenges with that is when I think of Mr Mulholland, I think of his wife, Wikitori. It makes me sad when I think of her and so many others that, often, when we come to this House, we hope to do more, we hope to do good things for people, and sometimes legislation or other barriers, political barriers, can stand in the way, because the cost is a real cost. It’s a human cost. Access to medicine’s important, and I’ll reiterate the point that access to the right medicines is even more important.

My colleague Dr Verrall, who has a particular interest and knowledge in this space, made clear in her contribution in the House how she looks and the Labour Party will look towards monitoring the submissions and continuing to monitor this Government on what they’re promising with this particular bill, because it’s easy to get caught up in rhetoric. We saw that in the reading of the last bill and we know that—in particular, from the member who led that, the Hon David Seymour, whose name was on that last bill and who’s the Minister that’s promoting this bill—rhetoric is actually exactly that: just rhetoric. It’s got to have substance. It’s got to be something that makes sure that it isn’t just an empty promise to New Zealanders to build their hopes up, because we saw it from this Government during the campaign. They promised all these medicines. First Budget came and they realised, “Oops, it’s actually quite an important thing to deliver on those promises.” U-turn—U-turn. That’s what happened. It was a U-turn. This bill continues to make sure that those Kiwis get what they deserve, can deliver on promises that have been made throughout election campaigns.

I don’t want to go on too much longer because Dr Verrall, in her contribution when this bill was interrupted, spoke to the specifics around some of those medicines, some of the research, and some of the licences that they’ve received from other countries and the challenges that those particular medicines had through that process. She was very clear in her critique about whether or not that suits us and whether or not we should simply just give it the green light to enter into our market and for supply here in New Zealand.

But just a final reminder for the House—and which is why, particularly in health matters, it’s one of those things where if we could remove the politics, focus on the substance here to make sure that Kiwis get what they deserve and get what they need when they need it, and the quality that they deserve in these matters, then of course we will support that. We do support it to the next process of the bill, but we will continue to interrogate it, and we encourage all of those who I know have already reached out, and the many others who want to have their say on this bill will have their voice heard.

I was mentioning to my colleague here, in the reading of the last bill, about how not only did that activate on that bill but it’s activated New Zealanders right across to just submit, to actually engage in the democratic process. I know all of us who sit on select committees are wondering, “Oh my gosh”. On what seems like a rather benign bill or bill of little interest, Kiwis are coming out in their droves to make sure their voice is heard. That’s the strength of the democratic institution, and that’s making sure that the people whose lives these decisions that we make in this House impact the most have their voice heard.

So, with caution, we support this bill and we will make sure we interrogate this throughout the entirety of the process, and, of course, with that, hold the caveat that if we don’t agree, we will continue to challenge and even potentially withdraw. But for now, we support it.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): This Government is committed to delivering timely and quality healthcare for all New Zealanders. This bill will increase access to medicines for New Zealanders by introducing a streamlined verification pathway for medicines. Faster access to medicines leads to better patient outcomes. For that, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): It’s hard to take the Government seriously when they claim that they are focused on healthcare of New Zealanders, when in the context of delivering this bill, the entire health system in this country remains underfunded. We have stories on a regular basis where people cannot get on to a waiting list, let alone through to see a specialist, and we have a situation like we have in Wairarapa where they have literally stolen money that was going to be used for our hospital because they can’t make their bills add up. They have such a hole in the Budget because of their cuts that they have to take money from other hospitals to pay their bills, and then we have Government members standing up and encouraging the House to support this bill, and they last for 30 seconds. How can New Zealanders take this Government seriously when they talk about health?

My colleague Peeni Henare summed up our position well. It might be that this bill will deliver benefits to New Zealanders, but, in the very typical fashion of this Government, they haven’t given us substance or given us confidence that this bill will do what it says on the tin. It’s possible that this might work, but it’s also possible that it might not. It’s valid to pose the question: is it possible to use the assessment processes of other countries and apply it here to streamline the approval of medication? Fair enough. But are the assessment criteria in other countries suitable for here? Are they as good as our processes here? We mustn’t forget the role that the likes of Medsafe played during the pandemic. They were able, under extremely urgent circumstances, to approve vaccines very quickly, given how important it was that they were able to provide the certainty that people needed to be able to have the COVID vaccine. We have stringent and effective processes that people trust in this country, and it is a valid question to pose. Are the processes overseas as good as ours and is automatically taking theirs, if there’s two of them, to apply here good enough?

We want to explore that further, and that’s why we’re voting it to select committee, but that’s all we’re committing to, because if the Government doesn’t front up and show us the substance that we need and the assurance that we need and actually provide more of a contribution than we’ve seen from members so far—perhaps, even better, the Government would demonstrate at the upcoming Budget that they are going to properly fund health, that they are going to reverse the decisions that they've made that are directly linked to this bill.

Let’s not forget they got rid of free prescriptions, and here they stand up and they talk about improving access to medicines. Their comments on this bill and the way that they have framed this bill need to be looked at in the entire context of this Government’s attitude to health. People that need access to healthcare can’t get it. People that can only get their prescriptions if they were free now can’t. This is the legacy so far of this Government in health. I still want to know what happened to Wairarapa Hospital’s money. The Minister is refusing to answer my questions. He’s hiding behind a publicinterest test, which, frankly, is appalling. They’ve got a lot to show us for us to trust them on health. Perhaps they’ll do that at the committee stage.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): I rise to support the Medicines Amendment Bill. This is about faster and more efficient access to medicines, and it will support better outcomes for families across Aotearoa New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is, That the Medicines Amendment Bill be considered by the Health Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Health Committee.

Instruction to Health Committee

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Health: I move, That the Medicines Amendment Bill be reported to the House four months and one day after it has received its first reading.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill

First Reading

International Treaty Examinations

NZ-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, And Agreement Between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Promotion and Protection of Investments—Report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) on behalf of the Minister for Trade and Investment: I present a legislative statement on the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill.

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

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON on behalf of the Minister for Trade and Investment: I move, That the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time, and that the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee be noted. I further nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill.

The New Zealand-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement—or CEPA—is a significant achievement. It was New Zealand’s fastest ever free-trade agreement negotiation, concluded in just over four months, from May through till September 2024, and signed in January this year during the Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Investment’s visit to the UAE. Now more than ever, it’s critical that we work to strengthen our trading ties around the world. This free-trade agreement (FTA), our first with a Middle Eastern State, will do so, helping to reinforce our flourishing bilateral relationship and grow our economic ties with the UAE. It’s a dynamic and internationally connected economy that is an important trade and investment partner in its own right, as well as a gateway to the region for New Zealand exporters, and a key global hub. The UAE is New Zealand’s equal-largest export destination in the Middle East, with our goods and service exports up 15 percent in 2024, and a total of NZ$1.2 billion.

The CEPA, once enforced, will improve conditions for Kiwi exporters in the UAE market, with tariffs eliminated on 98.5 percent of our goods exported immediately, growing to 99 percent within three years. With the final 1 percent receiving an immediate tariff reduction, plus a commitment to extend to New Zealand any further liberalisation the UAE may agree to in the future with any other trading partner. This makes the New Zealand-UAE CEPA the best and most liberalising of any of the UAE’s CEPAs to date.

In addition to these high-quality commitments for goods, the agreement features trade-facilitative rules designed to reduce behind-the-border barriers. New Zealand’s services exporters will also benefit from improved commitments and enhanced guaranteed access, with important most favoured nation commitments. That means that Kiwi service exporters in important sectors, like education, professional services, environmental, and health services, will always benefit from the best-available treatment in the UAE market and, of course, vice versa. That will futureproof the agreement and, at the same time—and consistent with New Zealand’s free-trade agreements to date—the agreement preserves the Government’s right to regulate in the public interest and preserves the status of the Treaty of Waitangi.

This Government recognises that trade is a crucial factor to our economic success. We know that one in four New Zealanders’ jobs depend on trade. The UAE is currently the world’s 20th-largest economy, with a GDP of over USD$500 billion. It is also a significant outbound investor, and the CEPA and accompanying bilateral investment treaty will create opportunities for increasing two-way investment flows to support economic growth. In fact, Minister for Trade and Investment Todd McClay, whose active engagement was so instrumental in getting this high-quality agreement concluded in such quick time, has been in the UAE this very week to attend the Annual Investment Meeting Congress, and that will further strengthen strategic ties with the UAE and their investors and will further showcase New Zealand as an attractive investment destination.

In addition, the agreement includes the most comprehensive commitments on inclusive and sustainable trade in any UAE CEPA, including to adopt and maintain internationally recognised labour standards, to promote high levels of environmental protection, and support women’s access to the benefits and opportunities that flow from trade and investment. The CEPA also contains an “Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation” chapter, creating a framework for enhancing Māori trade, investment innovation, cultural exchange, people-to-people links, and, of course, wellbeing. There are a limited number of legislative and regulatory amendments that are required to align New Zealand’s domestic law with our obligations in the CEPA. This bill makes the changes required for New Zealand to implement its obligations under this agreement and to bring it into force.

Both sides on this agreement are working to ratify the New Zealand-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement just as soon as possible, to bring its full effect into force. This agreement, coupled with the recently concluded NZ-Gulf Cooperation Council FTA, will position New Zealand to maximise the opportunities in the dynamic Gulf region, including in pursuit of the Government’s ambitious goal of doubling exports over coming decades. It will further expand the footprint of New Zealand’s network of free-trade agreements, now covering over 70 percent of our exports globally. That provides enhanced commercial certainty and opportunity for New Zealand exporters. This is especially important given the acute challenges the international trading system is experiencing at this time. So it’s my privilege and pleasure to commend the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to and that the House note the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can say that, on behalf of the Labour Opposition, we will be supporting this piece of legislation. It comes at a very important time in international trade, when I think we, more than ever, rely on the rules and the arrangements of trade to give us some security in an otherwise very, very uncertain world.

I’ll just go back. The origins of this deal go back some way, and back in 2007, in fact, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and officials were very busy negotiating two trade deals. One was with China, and that was signed by the Labour Government of the day, and the other one was with the GCC—the Gulf Cooperation Council. We’d actually got close to conclusion there, at the change of Government, and then it was continued on by the incoming Government. But, actually, the GCC decided to halt that, in 2009, and not proceed with any further trade agreements.

That, effectively, was parked right through the period of the National Government. Then, of course, Labour, coming in in 2017, had a few options. We upgraded the China free-trade agreement, looking to the UK, of course, post-Brexit, and then the EU. So there was a lot going on, and the GCC was still, effectively, parked up. The Gulf Cooperation Council came back and said, “Look, we’re interested in restarting negotiations.” There was a limit to the resources within MFAT, but, indeed, that was progressed slowly. The UAE, on the other hand, had been out doing deals with other countries on a bilateral basis—not the preferred option for our country; we always prefer a multilateral. That delivers greater benefits across more countries. But none the less, we saw the value in that, and, indeed, in May 2023, when the UAE’s Minister of State for International Cooperation came to New Zealand, she sought an assurance from us that we would start and engage on the basis of negotiating a free-trade agreement. Indeed, we confirmed that, in September 2023, we would start negotiations, and then I took a trade delegation to the UAE later on in September.

Can I say, though, that the incoming Government did pick that up and ran with it, and I want to acknowledge the efforts of Minister McClay, who got stuck into it and, indeed, as it was said, negotiated very quickly a trade agreement. I think, as always, it is across the borders and the boundaries of this House and the parties of this House that we see the value in progressing trade agreements. It has been a long time coming. We welcome it into the House.

I would like to, on behalf of the UAE, clarify—and after that, of course, the agreement with the GCC—on the world of the Middle East in which we are dealing, it’s quite different from that of 2007, 2009. Of course, the perception that this is a bunch of countries that are, perhaps, not as up to date with their rights for workers, rights for women, advocacy for women, but, actually, the agreement that has been signed here goes a long way to moving down the path to a place, not in the same league as New Zealand and Australia and other like-minded countries, but none the less, from a culture that goes back thousands of years, we have to acknowledge that, actually, the UAE, in this deal, has made significant progress and concessions to meet the expectations that we have, as a country, in negotiating these agreements.

We set standards in the UK and EU trade agreements that held the rights and opportunities for small to medium enterprises, that protected the rights of workers, protected the rights for women, and advocated for them. This is a good deal. It does provide opportunities for our exporters and for the service sector, where they will be able to bid into a procurement for Government services in the UAE—a big, large, dynamic economy. As I say, at a time when New Zealand, as a trading nation, is looking for security around the world, this couldn’t come at a better time. So I acknowledge the Government in progressing this through. Labour, in Opposition, will support the passage of this and the process through to select committee.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to oppose both this bill and the NZ-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. There are several reasons for that. I think I will start with the economic reason. Trading goods, for example, is one of the main advantages of the agreement that has been proposed, and one of the most tangible benefits of this agreement was bringing a reduction of tariffs. As we have seen with some of the latest positioning around tariffs internationally, it is worth mentioning that the tariff that will potentially be removed as a part of this agreement is, at a maximum, worth $42.6 million per annum. There is a suggestion, as we go through the process, that this might increase the demand from the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) perspective on some of these, but that has yet to be proven. It is also worth noting that the majority of Aotearoa’s exports into the UAE currently enter under the unilateral UAE duty-exemption programme. This agreement is also unlikely to have immediate commercial or economic benefit to exporters in Aotearoa, and there’s no evidence that the enforceable Investment Facilitation chapter and the enforceable bilateral investment agreement will increase investment from UAE to Aotearoa as well.

From a service perspective, it’s concerning that the State dispute settlements exist to a large extent, including the enforcement of the problematically open-ended investor protection on minimum standards of treatment and direct and indirect expropriation.

Overall, I think it’s really important for us to note that as we have more and more free-trade agreements (FTAs) and comprehensive economic partnership agreements (CEPAs), proportionally speaking, we have not seen the equal growth in the number of exports in proportion to our GDP through all of these agreements. In fact, the FTAs and CEPAs that we have signed up to have not yielded the kind of return that we are hoping to see.

But that’s not the only reason for this. We continuously, as the Greens, have issues with the Digital Trade chapter, which have serious concerns both from a data sovereignty and a mana raraunga perspective but also, in general, for the allowances they give to big tech.

While it is good, in this particular agreement, that we have seen that there is no provision protecting source code and algorithms from requirement for disclosure, we still have serious concerns in all Digital Trade chapters in our FTAs and CEPAs relating to the location of data and storage. This is particularly in articles 10.13 and 10.14 of this particular agreement. To put it simply, there is no way for us to hold big tech accountable for data breaches and data violations in the way that we currently do it, internationally speaking. Also, from a World Trade Organization perspective, we are just simply not equipped to do that. We have seen that perpetuated since the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—granted, the best example we have is in the EU-NZ FTA.

We must also mention the serious human rights concerns that we have, and the baseline is what values we are able to compromise. I would also like to draw the House’s attention to the ongoing contribution of UAE to the Sudanese civil war, where thousands of people have been killed and also 12 million people have been displaced on the basis of UAE direct involvement in supporting the Rapid Support Forces. In fact, there is currently an application to the International Court of Justice from Sudan against the UAE, and that is also a serious concern we need to mention when we are looking at this agreement, and we just did not get the confidence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as part of the process, that we are able to hold our partners accountable for both human rights violations as well as labour law violations.

Finally, considering that we had the Treaty principles bill second reading today, we must also mention that we have severe Te Tiriti concerns when it comes to this particular agreement. I want to focus on the fact that the non-paper on Māori and indigenous trade that the Crown provided to the UAE purports to explain Te Tiriti o Waitangi but misrepresented Te Tiriti and failed to acknowledge that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown and that Te Tiriti guarantees the continued exercise of tino rangatiratanga.

There is also a lack of genuine accountability in chapters 13 and 15 of this agreement, and I would like to point to article 13.35—for example, it uses terms such as “endeavour” and “may” that give little confidence that such provisions will be implemented. With all of these reasons, we love trade, we want trade to benefit everyone, but we do not see that reflected in this agreement. Thank you.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Biosecurity): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak in support of the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill—and I wish they’d come up with shorter names for these things. I won’t reiterate what the first speaker said. The benefits of this agreement are well and truly laid out there. We know, as opposed to the de-growth Greens, that free trade benefits us. It is huge. We have seen, with the multiple free-trade agreements that this country has entered into, that results have come back to this country. Whether or not it’s a Māori-led dairy company or just another dairy company, it doesn’t matter—the results come back. No matter who owns the farm or the business, they get the benefits. Trade benefits all, so we commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill. We absolutely support this bill. I can’t believe what I’m hearing from the Greens over there not supporting this bill. What planet are they on? What world do they live in? They’re over here day after day, week after week, demanding extra public services when the very things that underpin our Public Service, the very income—words fail me.

We have been given the opportunity through outstanding work by our trade officials and our politicians to have this opportunity to get better access into the world’s 20th-biggest economy—with the 11th-highest GDP per capita, I might say. This is an absolute gift-horse that we’ve been given the opportunity to put through the parliamentary process here. This is a very timely bill. I think Stalin’s quote about “There are decades when nothing happens; and [there are] weeks when decades happen.”—well, we’re in one of those weeks just at the moment, it feels. This is a very tumultuous geopolitical environment. There is a reordering of world trade going on.

With that we as a responsible Government—and, hopefully, with support from the Labour Party, at the very least—have an opportunity in front of us here. We have to do the things that are within our control. One of the things that is within our control right now is to progress this United Arab Emirates free-trade agreement.

The coalition, of course, has been well ahead of the curve here. We’ve had huge international engagement since coming in not 18 months ago. We’re very proud of the work—I know not just in New Zealand First but across the Parliament and actually across the country—that our leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters is doing out there on the world stage, representing us in these tumultuous times. The Prime Minister has absolutely shone on his international engagements. He’s really energised those trade trips. Todd McClay has done a phenomenal job pulling in not only this trade deal, the New Zealand-Gulf Cooperation Council free-trade agreement, and then following on the good work of the Hon Damien O’Connor in tidying up and finishing the UK and EU trade deal. Boy, are those deals going to be important for us at the moment.

Largely this has been bipartisan. I hope the Greens do reconsider, because we just have not got the ability to turn down these sorts of opportunities from sitting in an ivory tower.

So we are a small island nation. We do make our living by trading food and fibre to the world—80 percent of our exports are food and fibre. This opens up a really important opportunity. It will be important for our exporters, for our rural communities, for our primary sector, and for New Zealand as a whole. I might say that I hear it’s pretty hot over there. Wool is very good with its temperature control in indoor environments, so I expect that they’ll be coming over here looking for some of our finest wool products.

But with that, I will absolutely, on behalf of New Zealand First, commend this bill to the House. We are for the gospel of growth. This is part of that plank, and an important part indeed. Thank you.

MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki): Look, I’d like to reinforce the comments that the previous speaker, the Hon Mark Patterson, had. They are absolutely correct, and I agree with him that the Green Party are just out in the cold on this particular bill, and with trade in general. With that, I’d like to commend this bill to the House.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a privilege always to rise in this House to speak, particularly on the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill, and in particular the international treaty examination of this bill by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

There are a number of things which for New Zealand’s sake mean we have low productivity in our country. Some of them have been traversed quite in depth by the IMF, by the Productivity Commission before it was closed, and the Reserve Bank earlier this year set out what those reasons were. Some of those reasons are education, innovation, technology, and one which this bill seeks to address, and that is around our interconnectedness with the rest of the world.

Because we are geographically at the bottom of the world, in order to put things on ships or on planes in order to ship them elsewhere, there is a competitive disadvantage to New Zealand economically. So this bill really speaks to just another tool with which we can help with the productivity of our country in order to be more connected to other parts of the world, particularly in trade.

We’ve heard from a number of speakers today—from the Minister and also from the Hon Damien O’Connor, the former Minister for Trade—about the importance of a trade agreement right now in this space and time of the world. Since last Thursday, it’s been obvious that the US tariff imposition on the rest of the world has caused a lot of shocks, and each day they vary, and we saw that this morning. New Zealanders would have woken up this morning to another announcement in relation to those tariffs. Anybody in the House who follows the equities market can see both the peaks and the troughs, and in particular for a number of Kiwis here who have investments such as KiwiSaver, a lot of them won’t be wanting to look at their KiwiSaver balances—maybe today’s a bit better than yesterday.

The reason why the Labour Party is supporting this bill is because it’s one of those rare times where we do agree with the Government, and then when Governments change over, we usually see this continuation of agreements, particularly when it comes to free trade. As the Hon Damien O’Connor spoke about earlier, the discussions that started on this bill and this agreement happened towards the end of 2023, so we do acknowledge that the Government has picked it up and we’ve come to this point now.

In the actual agreement itself, something that I do want to point out to the House and to members of the public is that there was a recognition by both New Zealand and the UAE around the goal of eliminating all forms of forced or compulsory labour, including child labour, and also the importance of supporting women’s economic empowerment by adopting, maintaining, and implementing laws, regulations, policies, and best practice, as well as the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.

I think that’s a really important goal that we can do both together, particularly for New Zealand, because we all know that when it comes to the economic empowerment for women—particularly as women do take breaks within their career, and I know what that’s like—ensuring that there are regulations and policies to support that both in New Zealand and in the UAE is important, which is why that particular clause in the agreement has my support.

It also speaks to the “Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation” chapter in this particular bill, which seems a little bit ironic given a couple of bills ago, but it’s also important to see that this has support from both sides of the House in relation to that chapter.

Again, this bill is another way that New Zealand stays interconnected with the world, particularly in a very uncertain world. It’s good to see the rules-based agreement, which has been agreed to by both the UAE and New Zealand, come to fruition. So I stand to support this bill and commend it to the House.

CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour): This bill cements our brand new free-trade agreement with the UAE, removing 98.5 percent of export tariffs for Kiwi exporters, making it easy for our businesses to sell products overseas and grow jobs here in New Zealand. So, without hesitation, I commend this to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I remember, some years ago now, Nanaia Mahuta giving a speech called “The Taniwha and the Dragon”, and the theme in it was the need to diversify in the face of global uncertainty. The theme of that speech was perhaps looking to the East rather than the West for that uncertainty, but uncertainty is certainly with us. On the back of good work that the Labour-Green Government did, this is a further step. The negotiations of these agreements have actually built on the work of successive Governments. The apparent speed with which this agreement was negotiated, I think, is largely because there’s now a pretty broad understanding of what a good, comprehensive trade agreement looks like.

I think it’s really important just to set out for the record that it isn’t just lower tariffs across various goods; it’s also making sure that there aren’t inappropriate non-tariff barriers, which can be things like working conditions and environmental conditions, to make sure that both economies are trading on an even footing. Of course, the other thing that this agreement has in it is a Treaty of Waitangi clause, which is somewhat ironic given this Government’s approach to Treaty of Waitangi clauses in our own legislation. But it’s really important to have a Treaty clause, to say that the New Zealand Government can act in respect of trade in a way which is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi—and that is not an illegitimate trade barrier, even if it may have some effect on pricing or market access. That’s a really important part of this agreement.

But I do commend the Government for pressing on with this. I know that they’ve got aspirations elsewhere, and, on this side of the House, we’ll support them in that. I think it’s important that a signal is sent to potential trade partners that this isn’t a matter where the policy of the Government will change with a change in Government; rather, we will stay the course. To that end, I know that there is a practice of taking Opposition members with whoever is in Government on some trade delegations, and I think that’s a really good thing, for two reasons: one, for continuity across bargaining teams, but also for a very powerful signal that New Zealand is unified in being an open-trading nation.

This is in the face of the kind of tariff war that’s going on overseas. This is sending a very powerful signal that, even in the face of that, we back our people to be competitive and not to need protection—that they are as good as any other businesses, farmers, game programmers and developers, aerospace engineers, all the things that we’re great at—that we’re as good or better than anyone in the world and we don’t need false protections to prop up our industries. It’s an approach we’ve taken for many decades and it’s an approach we need to continue with. That’s not to say there’s not going to be some rough water ahead, and we may need some fiscal and monetary strategies around that, but in terms of our approach to trade, it’s a good one. It’s bipartisan and it serves our industry well, and I commend it. Kia ora.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Trade is good, and therefore I commend this bill to the House.

Dr Tracey McLellan: Mr Speaker?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the report—

Dr Tracey McLellan: Te Pāti Māori didn’t take their call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Has the member made an arrangement with Te Pāti Māori to take this call?

Dr Tracey McLellan: Yes.

Hon Members: No!

Dr Tracey McLellan: Did we?

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir. Just for clarity.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Point of order, but the member needs to satisfy the Speaker that they have an arrangement with Te Pāti Māori to take this call on the first reading.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Yes. The understanding is that if the Māori Party don’t take their call, then we’re eligible for that split call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): No, that is not correct. I want to satisfy the speaker that Te Pāti Māori have actually given you the call.

Dr Tracey McLellan: Speaking to the point of order, no, it’s first reading. So you’re correct, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the report be noted.

Motion agreed to.

Report noted.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is, That the United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill be considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Bills

Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)

First Reading

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2).

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 ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2025.

It is crucial that New Zealand has a world-leading education system so our young people can reach their full potential and grow and to lead the life that they want to live. To achieve this, this Government is relentlessly focused on lifting achievement and closing the equity gap so parents can have confidence that their children have the foundations to succeed. This bill makes a range of changes to our education legislation to advance these priorities. They include focusing schools on prioritising student achievement, giving schools and families more time to respond to planned union strike action, and ensuring initial teacher education and teacher discipline and competence processes are fit for purpose. The bill also requires schools to have an attendance management plan, requires universities to protect the freedom of expression of students and staff, and more.

These changes are critical to progressing our student achievement and attendance objectives, developing the workforce of the future, and establishing a knowledge-rich curriculum, grounded in the science of learning. This bill makes a number of changes to school board objectives, including making educational achievement the paramount objective for schools, as it should be. This is in line with the Government’s unrelenting focus on lifting student achievement for every child. It’s crucial that achievement is at the core of what schools prioritise, because, every year, 65,000 young New Zealanders start school, and we must ensure that they’re getting off to the very best possible start and giving parents the confidence that their children are achieving to the best of their abilities. Delivering a world-leading education doesn’t just pave the way for their success; it strengthens our country’s economic and social future too.

The bill also makes several other changes to ensure school board objectives are fit for purpose. We’re introducing new essential supporting objectives for schools. Attendance goes hand in hand with educational achievement, so we’re adding an objective for school boards to take all reasonable steps to ensure students are attending school.

We’re also adding an objective to ensure that schools use good quality assessment to monitor and evaluate students’ progress and achievement, making it more visible to school boards as a clear focus for lifting achievement. Schools need information about how their students are progressing to help identify when to provide support to keep moving in the right direction for those children.

The bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement. The bill also makes the requirement that schools are achieving equitable outcomes for Māori students at the top of the list of how schools are required to meet Te Tiriti o Waitangi objective. All tamariki deserve to attend a school where the primary objective is to ensure that they can achieve to the very best of their ability.

We’re also replacing references in the Act to the term “local curriculum” with “teaching and learning programmes”, ensuring that wherever they are in New Zealand, young people are being taught a knowledge-rich curriculum, grounded in the science of learning.

Alongside the changes we’re making to the school board objectives, the bill removes the ability for the Minister of Education to issue a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities—known as the NELPs—and it repeals the related education and learning objectives.

The school board objectives, alongside curriculum statements and frameworks, provide sufficient strategic direction. Keeping these provisions in the Act just adds a layer of additional priorities that schools need to pay attention to that end up being an unnecessary additional legislative requirement. We don’t want to overburden schools or detract from their focus on educational achievement.

Together, these changes to school board objectives and removing the ability to issue a NELP ensure that we have a more simplified and streamlined set of expectations for schools with educational achievement as their top priority.

Another key change in the bill is extending the amount of notice that unions must provide before striking from three calendar days to no less than seven calendar days. I recognise the right of unions to strike, but we must also prioritise student outcomes. This must remain the central focus of our education legislation.

Three days’ notice is often insufficient for schools, parents and caregivers, and whānau to provide alternative arrangements. This can be particularly problematic if the notice is given on a Friday or a Saturday. Schools need time to determine how to manage the disruption to students and their families, including arranging for additional supervision, should it decide to stay open. Parents and caregivers also need time to make alternative arrangements, should the school decide to close.

By extending the amount of notice that unions must provide from three days to seven days, we allow more time for everyone to make arrangements before the strike happens. This is about minimising the interruption to student learning while upholding unions’ right to strike. More notice for schools can reduce disruptions to achievement and attendance from the loss of valuable learning days. Additional time can also reduce the amount of pressure on parents and caregivers.

Developing the workforce of the future continues to be a priority for this Government. Through this bill, we’re ensuring initial teacher education, teacher discipline, and teacher competence processes are fit for purpose. The quality of the teacher in front of the class is the most important thing for our kids, and I’m committed to ensuring we attract, train, and retain great teachers.

The Teaching Council plays a really important role in initial teacher education. The bill requires the council to consult with the Minister of Education before making changes to standards for ongoing practice and criteria for the issue of practising certificates. It also requires the council to have regard to the Secretary for Education’s advice on changes to standards for qualifications that lead to teacher registration and teacher education programme approvals. Additionally, the bill requires the council to report annually on how it’s giving regard to any relevant statements of Government policy. Together, these changes will increase the transparency and accountability of the Teaching Council and ensure that we have excellent initial teacher education. The Teaching Council also plays a key role in ensuring that we have strong processes related to the conduct and teaching practice of teachers. The bill makes changes to the council’s disciplinary and competence processes to ensure that the council can perform its functions effectively, with more consistency to help achieve timelier resolutions.

This bill also requires all schools to have an attendance management plan which sets out processes and strategies for identifying and responding to student absence. It’s crucial that our young people have every chance of succeeding and that there’s a strong, positive correlation between attendance and literacy and numeracy scores over years 4 to 10, as well as attainment across NCEA levels 1, 2, and 3. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made on attendance, with regular attendance in term 3 2024 up 5.3 percentage points compared to the same term in 2023. We’re committed to building on this momentum to achieve our student attendance target of 80 percent of students being present for more than 90 percent of the time by 2030. School attendance management plans will include strategies and interventions to respond to students’ non-attendance. School responses will be triggered as a student reaches a certain number of days absent over a school term.

In the tertiary education space, this bill requires universities to develop and adopt a statement of freedom of expression and imposes a duty on universities to protect and promote academic freedom and freedom of expression. It also requires universities to publicly report and maintain complaints procedures in relation to those matters. In recent years, some universities seem to have taken a risk-averse approach to discussions about the difficult issues, seeking to protect students and staff from controversial views, but universities should be a place of genuine debate, where diverse opinions can be discussed and challenged.

Finally, the bill makes a number of other changes which help maintain the health of the education regulatory system and ensure that law and practice remain well aligned. The changes in this bill will make a meaningful difference and are part of a wider set of changes that our Government is progressing to improve the education system so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, the skills, and the competencies they need to grow into the New Zealand of the future. I’m excited by the changes this legislation makes. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 6 May 2025. Thank you for your work this week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.