Thursday, 21 August 2025
Volume 786
Sitting date: 21 August 2025
THURSDAY, 21 AUGUST 2025
THURSDAY, 21 AUGUST 2025
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Karakia/Prayers
Karakia/Prayers
TEANAU TUIONO (Assistant Speaker): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.
Visitors
Vietnam—National Assembly Committee for National Defence, Security and Foreign Affairs, Chairman and Delegation
SPEAKER: I’m sure that members will wish to welcome Senior Lieutenant General Le Tan Toi, Chairman of the Vietnam National Assembly’s Committee for National Defence, Security and Foreign Affairs, and his accompanying delegation, who are joining us in the gallery.
Business Statement
Business Statement
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): Today, the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 9 September—
Hon Judith Collins: Yay!
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I feel a bit the same. That week, we will have the Estimates debate and the third reading of the main Appropriation bill. Wednesday will be extended into Thursday morning for the first reading of the Kororipo Pā Vesting Bill, and other Government business.
Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills
Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills
SPEAKER: Three petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.
CLERK:
Petition of Yan Wang requesting that the House urge the Government to provide once-a-year blood tests to those over 50 to identify chronic diseases
petition of Kirsten Murfitt requesting that the House urge the Government to publicly release the original contract between Pfizer/BioNTech and the Government for the supply of the COVID-19 vaccines
petition of Fleur Fitzsimons requesting that the House urge the Government to reverse all pay equity claim cancellations, undo the recent changes to the Equal Pay Act, and swiftly deliver settlements to all workers left waiting.
SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered three papers.
CLERK: Statements of performance expectations for the 2025-2026 year for the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand and the Aviation Security Service, Maritime New Zealand, and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission.
SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. No select committee reports have been delivered to the Clerk. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.
CLERK: Te Pire Whakahoki i a Kororipo Pā/Kororipo Pā Vesting Bill, introduction.
Urgent Debates Declined
Government Response—Eves Valley Sawmill Closure
SPEAKER: Members, I’m in receipt of a letter from Rachel Boyack seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the Government’s response to the proposal by Carter Holt Harvey to close the Eves Valley Sawmill. This is a particular case of recent occurrence. However, no Government response has been disclosed in the member’s application. There is no ministerial responsibility for the decisions of a publicly listed company. The application is declined.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Workplace Relations and Safety
1. Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does she stand by her statement, “I am a woman that stands for women in this Parliament”; if so, how many women, if any, will receive increased pay because of her Government’s pay equity changes?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes, I do stand by my statement that I am a woman and I stand for women in this Parliament. To the second part of the member’s question, I’m afraid I cannot answer it, because the outcomes of pay equity bargaining will depend on the merits of the case and negotiations between the bargaining parties.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Why are 180,000 workers—mostly women—being forced to carry the cost of this Government’s poor Budget decisions?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: That’s just not true. They’re not being asked to carry any cost. We are simply ensuring that the pay equity system does what it says it does, which is to stamp out genuine cases of sex-based discrimination.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Why is the Minister pushing Pasifika women further backwards on pay equity when, over a lifetime, Pasifika women earn almost half a million dollars less than a Pākehā man?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: That’s just not true. The pay equity system remains. People can still take a claim for pay equity. Whether or not a claim is found to have merit is not my responsibility as a Minister, and I don’t collectively bargain on behalf of the Government.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How can the Minister justify erasing pay equity gains for women when wāhine Māori are still paid 15 percent less than men?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I may start repeating myself, so I apologise if that’s the case, but the pay equity system remains, and people can take a pay equity claim no matter what race they may be.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Does she agree with Dame Judy McGregor, who says that the Minister’s—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: The member will start the question again. People who might have a comment would do well to refrain from making it.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Does she agree with Dame Judy McGregor, who says that the Minister’s pay equity changes “are the most egregious recent example of disregard for the human rights of women in Aotearoa.”; if not, why not?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: No.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Is Tony McCombs correct to say the only winners from the Government’s pay equity changes “are landlords, lobbyists, and those clinging to power with cold fingers and colder hearts. This coalition Government reeks of privilege and the rot of self-interest.”; if not, why not?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: No.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How can she claim she stands—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just hold on. You may not like a question, but it’s addressed to the Minister and to no one else in the House, and we’re silent while questions are asked.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How can she claim she stands for women when, under this Government, more women are unemployed, 33 pay equity claims have been cancelled, and teachers and nurses are having to strike to get a pay increase that fairly keeps up with the cost of living?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Of course I stand up for women. I would suspect that every woman in this House wants women across New Zealand to do well and succeed and be there to support themselves and their families and their wider community. I would be surprised if anybody disagreed with that. Maybe that member does. I can’t speak for her. However, I do acknowledge that there are people across our economy who are struggling and doing it really tough—from the private sector and the public sector. My job as a Minister is to ensure that we have a flexible labour market that allows for more and better job opportunities for women and for men.
Question No. 2—Māori Development
2. TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tonga) to the Minister for Māori Development: What advice, if any, has he received from officials on the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision that the “beds of navigable rivers form part of the common marine and coastal area as defined in MACA, and recognition orders may extend to them”?
Stuart Smith: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The questioner is wearing a T-shirt with a political slogan on it, which is against Speakers’ rulings, and I believe it may even have a party logo, which, again, you have ruled is not allowed in the House.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Speaking to the point of order, it is not a political slogan—
SPEAKER: Sorry, I was still addressing you.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Oh, I’m sorry.
SPEAKER: Don’t start addressing me until I’ve finished. Now you can.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just to assist the House, it is not a political slogan and it is not a Māori Party slogan. Thank you—just to inform the House.
Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Development): As the Minister for Māori Development, none. But I have received a range of positive advice around the Government’s efforts to support Māori housing through partnering to build affordable homes in iconic and majestic places like Te Kao with Te Aupōuri, or Hopuhopu with Waikato-Tainui, and, of course, Te Kūiti with Ngāti Maniapoto.
Tākuta Ferris: Does he agree with the Supreme Court that Acts of Parliament have not sufficiently or clearly extinguished Māori customary rights or title to navigable riverbeds?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I have not read or heard any advice to that effect, and, as the Minister for Māori Development, I am not responsible for receiving in the first instance the advice in relation to that matter.
Tākuta Ferris: Has he been consulted by the Minister of Justice—there he is—on any potential changes to the marine and coastal area (MACA) bill that would extinguish or limit Māori customary rights to riverbeds in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: Kāre anō au kia kōrero ki te Minita mō ngā Take Ture. Heoi anō kāre e tukua ērā momo kōrero ki tērā Minita. Nei e hāngai ana te mema ki ngā tikanga me ngā ritenga o tēnei Whare ka mōhio hoki a ia ko te tangata tōtika ki te whakautu i tana pātai ngāwari nei kei reira, kei te Minita mō ngā mahi whakataunga kerēme Tiriti.
[I have not yet spoken to the Minister of Justice. However, those types of discourse are not forwarded to that Minister. Now, if the member was familiar with the practices and conventions of this House, he would be aware that the correct person to respond to his simple question is over there, the Minister for Treaty claims settlement actions.]
Hon Chris Bishop: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve let a couple of questions run, but I do just want to draw your attention to Speaker’s ruling 186/6, about opinions being sought that, in effect, are asking for a legal interpretation not being permitted under the Standing Orders. The first supplementary from Mr Ferris, in particular, asked whether or not the Minister agreed with the Supreme Court, which is, essentially, asking for a legal interpretation. I think we’re OK, but I’m just drawing your attention to it, because we don’t want to stray into territory that is dangerous.
SPEAKER: Well, I’m not sure what you were drawing my attention to. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether a Minister has an opinion. That gets asked quite frequently.
Tākuta Ferris: What impact will the Government’s decision to forge on with the marine and coastal area amendment bill have on Māori-Crown relationships when these changes will lead to re-hearings, decision reversals, and millions more being spent on relitigation?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: All those matters are hypothetical at this point in time, and I implore the member opposite asking those questions to put those types of questions to the Minister responsible for the portfolios and that which lies in his bailiwick.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Was the Minister having difficulty answering the question because whatever the Supreme Court was deliberating on, it was not on MACA, but on a piece of legislation not described that way?
SPEAKER: Well, I don’t know that he’s got responsibility for what the Supreme Court was actually meaning.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, you have, and you missed it.
SPEAKER: I beg your pardon?
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker, you and your Clerk have, and you’ve missed it. This question makes no sense because there is no—
SPEAKER: No, hang on—we’ll stop right there. OK, I’m not—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: There was no such decision.
SPEAKER: Look, I’m going to tell the member that I’m sick to death of his trying to rewrite the Standing Orders, trying to rewrite the procedure of the House, and trying to tell me how to do the job. If he doesn’t like it, there’s a remedy for him, and he should use it. In the meantime, the question has been accepted and the question stands. If anybody knows me in this House, they’ll know that I hate acronyms, and the sight of it today has particularly annoyed me.
Tākuta Ferris: Is it fair that whānau and hapū who rely on customary kai gathering for survival should have their unfettered access rights diminished in the midst of a cost of living crisis?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I am not an arbiter of fairness, but what I will say is that in the Hauraki Gulf marine protection bill, we continue to preserve customary fishing independent of the biodiversity objectives that were previously forced upon customary fishing by the previous administration.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he aware that it is the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations that is responsible for the marine and coastal area Act, and the general practice is that, if someone wants to ask questions on a particular portfolio, they should ask it to the right Minister?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I welcome that observation—
SPEAKER: No, I’m sorry, there’s no—sit down. [Interruption] Sit down. That’s a question that is really just inviting disorder. Asking another Minister about his competence is not something that looks good for the Government.
Tākuta Ferris: What is the Minister’s response to hapū and iwi who may find their takutai moana subject to a tourist levy or a Department of Conservation concession for development by overseas investors, such as Ngāti Hei at Cathedral Cove?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I can observe that the collaboration between Te Papa Atawhai Department of Conservation and Ngāti Hei at Te Whanganui-a-Hei Mautohe Cathedral Cove has been ongoing and continuing, and all other matters in relation to the member’s question are purely speculation.
Tākuta Ferris: Does he agree with the Minister of Justice that raising the threshold for Māori customary and marine title restores the original intent of the 2011 takutai moana Act, or does he agree with the author of the 2011 takutai moana Act, who has said that this Government’s amendments undermine that intent?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: Nā te Whare Pāremata i whakarite mai ai tērā ture mō te takutai moana.
[It was the House of Parliament that prepared that legislation concerning the foreshore.]
Stuart Smith: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: It had better be a point of order that’s quite new and not dealt with today.
Stuart Smith: I don’t think it has been dealt with. I want to refer you to Speakers’ rulings 62/3 and 20/4, and I think you could settle the matter by asking the member what is on his T-shirt. I think—
SPEAKER: I’ll tell you where we’re going: this is a time for the Government to account for itself. I’ll certainly look at those Speakers’ rulings, but not immediately.
Question No. 3—Finance
3. NANCY LU (National) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Yesterday, the Reserve Bank released the latest monetary policy statement. As members will be aware, this conveyed the bank’s decision to reduce the official cash rate to 3 percent and signal a forward track that is lower than previously expected. The Reserve Bank’s announcements have had an immediate impact on retail interest rates, which have reduced, on top of significant reductions that have already occurred over the past year. These reductions have lowered the cost of borrowing for New Zealand households and businesses, delivering much-needed cost of living relief and supporting the economic recovery.
Nancy Lu: What did the Reserve Bank say about the current state of the economy?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Reserve Bank highlights the fact that export-focused parts of the economy are currently doing well, supported by high dairy, meat, and horticulture prices. Activity remains subdued, however, in many industries reliant on domestic demand. The bank expects that in the past quarter, the one that ended on 30 June, the economy contracted slightly, reflecting temporary factors such as high global economic uncertainty, but it expects the economy to be growing again now, as those temporary factors pass and as the stimulus of lower interest rates transmits through the economy. It expects unemployment to peak at 5.3 percent, slightly lower than Treasury was predicting in its pre-election update in 2023.
Nancy Lu: What did the Reserve Bank say about the outlook for the economy in the future?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Looking ahead, the Reserve Bank expects economic growth to pick up strongly in the last quarter of 2025 and persist across 2026 and 2027. Growth is supported by the stimulus from lower interest rates, continuing to transmit to higher domestic demand and as the effects of global economic uncertainty wane. As the economy picks up, the unemployment rate is forecast to fall steadily. This isn’t me expecting higher growth and lower unemployment; this is the independent Reserve Bank.
Nancy Lu: What did the Reserve Bank say about the inflation outlook?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the Reserve Bank expects inflation to be at the top of the 1 to 3 percent target band in the current quarter, but thereafter to fall quickly towards the 2 percent midpoint. The bank also had a point about inflation that is worth quoting. It said: “Declining Government spending as a share of the economy is expected to reduce inflationary pressure in the medium term.” That is a key part of the Government’s fiscal strategy. Our sensible economic management is actively supporting inflation and interest rates to be lower than they otherwise would be, meaning fewer cost pressures for New Zealanders.
Question No. 4—Workplace Relations and Safety
4. Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Will she rule out any changes to the Employment Relations Act 2000 that would weaken working people’s right to strike; if not, why not?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I can confirm that I do not currently have any planned work in this area. However, I cannot rule in or out future changes in any policy area, because Government decisions are made at Cabinet.
Hon Jan Tinetti: Will she rule out any changes to working people’s right to strike?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I don’t wish to repeat myself, like I had to in a previous question. I made myself quite clear in the primary answer.
Hon Jan Tinetti: Has she sought or received advice on imposing additional requirements on working people before they can access strike action?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I don’t believe I have.
Hon Jan Tinetti: Will the Government introduce barriers such as mandatory mediation periods prior to people being legally able to strike?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Like I said, I have not personally requested or asked for any advice in this area, but I would highly suspect that if the questioner keeps going down this line, like her colleague did yesterday, you might be starting to give the Government a lot of thoughts.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, sir. The question was whether the Government is planning to make the changes outlined in the question. The response was that the Minister has not personally sought advice. That actually doesn’t address the question. Whether there is work under way by the Government that is related to that portfolio isn’t addressed by the Minister confirming whether she’s sought advice.
SPEAKER: The Minister might like to expand on whether that advice has been sought by her office, as a Minister.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Or “received”—wasn’t it?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I haven’t—
SPEAKER: No, don’t—look, sorry. Do you want to come and sit in the Chair or something—because you’ve got so much to say, it’s unbelievable. Just let the person answer the question.
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I haven’t asked for, nor have my officials given me, advice in this area. I was responsible for the partial strikes legislation that was taken through this House only a few months ago, which I understand has been implemented and is working well. However, that is not another area that I’m doing future work on at this stage.
Hon Jan Tinetti: Will the Government introduce limitations on when strikes can start, such as only allowing strikes during the school holidays?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Like I mentioned to the member before, the member may wish to stop giving other colleagues of mine some ideas.
Question No. 5—Housing
5. TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Housing: Does he stand by his statement to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce that the housing crisis is “state neglect on an industrial scale”; if so, is he doing enough to end that neglect?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Yes, I do. The Government has a comprehensive plan to fix the fundamentals of our housing and urban land markets through Going for Housing Growth. It involves freeing up land, fixing infrastructure funding and financing, and creating incentives for growth. In the long term, ultimately, that is the way to fix New Zealand’s housing crisis.
Tamatha Paul: Why have zero of the 1,500 new community housing places announced in Budget 2024 been allocated to Wellington City, especially when rough sleeping is up 24 percent from last year?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Some of those places have been allocated to Wellington City. I don’t have the exact numbers with me, but some of them have been allocated to Wellington and there will be continued allocations out of that 1,500 in the weeks and months ahead.
Tamatha Paul: Can he guarantee that the number of community housing places allocated to Wellington City will be sufficient to address the 328 homeless people in Wellington City, 141 rough sleepers in Wellington City, and the 775 people on the public housing wait-list?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The Government’s got an active programme of work in Wellington and other cities around addressing all of these issues. As the member knows—I think from her own time at a local council level—all of these problems are connected together. Ultimately, what we’re trying to build, as a Government, is a housing system in which there is downward pressure on rents; there is support provided for those who need it, particularly those who are rough sleeping and in difficult circumstances; and our overriding mantra when it comes to social housing is trying to make sure that the right houses are built in the right place for the right people and the right support is provided to those people. That’s not the status quo at the moment—I fully acknowledge that. That’s why we’re working so hard to change the system so that we better calibrate Government support around the need that is evident in particular regions and around particular cohorts of people.
Tamatha Paul: Does he accept that cancelling 100 new homes in Rongotai, freezing progress on 300 new homes in Wellington Central, and allocating zero of the new community housing places to Wellington City means that Wellington City is seeing hundreds fewer new public houses under this Government?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, I don’t accept that. There are some factual inaccuracies in what the member just said.
Tamatha Paul: How much does homelessness need to increase for the Minister to accept that he needs to reverse their changes on emergency housing criteria?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’m open to sensible changes around emergency housing, but I do just want to warn the member and others that it would be intolerable for this Government—and I think for the country—to go back to a situation we had previously in which emergency housing was a free-for-all, and, in a five-year period, as a country, as a Government, we spent $1.4 billion housing families, including young children, in dark, damp motels. We are not prepared to get ourselves back to that situation. That’s why we introduced the Priority One policy, which has so far seen over 2,000 kids move out of those motels and into warm, dry homes. The member, I think, should also reflect on our wider planning system.
The member may have seen the example of the New Plymouth man who was in a motel for over three years with a disability, with a young son. Finally, that man has been able to move out of a motel into a Kāinga Ora house—fantastic for him and for his whānau, but it took 18 months to get resource consent and building consent to retrofit the house. That is why all of the housing changes the Government is making, including with the building consent system, are so important. It is ridiculous that we live in a country in which it takes 18 months to get consent to put a ramp in a house so that someone with a disability can move out of a motel into a social house.
Tamatha Paul: Will he accept the invitation from local service providers and businesses to walk the streets of Newtown and get an understanding of why the local community are desperate for wrap-around support services, accelerated affordable housing solutions, and a focused Government response to growing homelessness, or is their preference to simply kick people to the streets, to tents, and to sleep in their cars?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: My preference is actually to go and meet with front-line service providers, as I’ve done alongside Minister Potaka in the last few weeks, including the Wise Group, the Auckland City Mission, Downtown Community Ministry in Wellington that I know the member has a passing familiarity with. My preference is to actually go and meet with those providers and ask them, as I have done, what would work on the ground to try and improve the situation for rough sleepers. We are working on that. No one in this House wants to live in a country in which people sleep rough. No one wants to live in a country in which people who need housing support don’t get it. That’s why the Government is working so hard to change the system: so that we can create a situation where the right houses are built in the right place for the right people. That’s not what we have right now. That’s why we’re changing the system.
Question No. 6—Defence
6. TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato) to the Minister of Defence: What recent announcement has she made about investment in defence?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Today, I announced the first major investment decisions to be made as part of the Government’s Defence Capability Plan (DCP). I was delighted to announce that the MH-60R Seahawk is the preferred option to replace the existing maritime helicopters, and that the Airbus A321XLR aircraft will replace the ageing 757 fleet. These represent once-in-a-generation investments in our national security to ensure our economic prosperity. It will ensure New Zealand has a critical combat capable, interoperable, and dependable fleet. We need a force that is ready and equipped to do whatever is asked of it today, tomorrow, and beyond; and to ensure we can deploy, deter, defend, and respond to protect New Zealand, New Zealanders, our way of life, and our economy.
Tim van de Molen: What capabilities will the new helicopters provide?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: [Holds up a model helicopter] Well, Mr Speaker—[Interruption] I could always wear it, if you wanted. The MH-60R Seahawk—[Interruption] Yes, it’s very nice. Just behave, everyone—[Interruption] I’ll pop that down.
SPEAKER: Just before the Minister puts that away, it’s a particularly handsome looking desk model. Just send it my way, please.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh, thank you very much. The MH-60R Seahawk is a great aircraft for what New Zealand needs. The five new Seahawks will replace the ageing Seasprite fleet—and when I say ageing, I mean four of these were around in the 1960s. I’m reliably assured that one of the airframes was actually used in the Korean War. The new air maritime helicopters are versatile at combat and deterrent capability to our naval fleet. It’s the helicopter used by Australia, the United States, and seven other countries. These five Seahawks will increase the offensive and defensive capability and surveillance range of New Zealand’s frigates, and ensure we’re interoperable with our ally Australia, and our partner defence forces.
Tim van de Molen: What capabilities will the new planes provide?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: We’re replacing the 32-year-old Boeing 757 fleet with two new Airbus A321XLR aircrafts. These extra long-range aircraft will be capable of returning safely from Antarctica if they are unable to land due to conditions on the ice. This is not a capability that we’ve ever had before, because we have had to know, when our people fly down to Antarctica to drop people in or rescue them or anything else, that there is a point of no return; there is nowhere for them to go if they can’t land on the ice. This is going to fix that. They will be able to also fly as far as Singapore without needing to stop and refuel.
It’s a decision that reflects the need for New Zealand to have a reliable aircraft for our personnel, to deliver military equipment and humanitarian aid, support the evacuation of civilians, and transport Government trade and diplomat delegations quickly over long distances, often at short notice. Just remember that we are responsible in New Zealand for the fourth largest search and rescue area in the world and one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world. We have to make sure our people actually have the equipment they need to do their job.
Tim van de Molen: How do these investment decisions contribute to the Government’s Defence Capability Plan?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: These $2.7 billion of investment decisions are part of the $12 billion in planned commitments outlined in the Defence Capability Plan (DCP). I announced a few months ago. The DCP provides the foundation for doubling our defence spending in the next eight years. Two yearly reviews that are planned will allow us to adapt—
Celia Wade-Brown: No money for pay equity.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —as the security environment continues to change. These decisions show how quickly the Government—
Celia Wade-Brown: No money for DOC.
Hon Member: Predator Free.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —is responding to a sharply deteriorating security environment. The men and women of our Defence Force step up time and time again and do an outstanding job. I heard something from over that side. Let me just tell you: when you’re out at sea or you’re lost in a boat or your kid’s in a kayak, who do you call? You call our Defence Force. So stop bagging—
Tākuta Ferris: Coastguard.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —our defence—what a foolish thing to say. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: That’s enough.
Question No. 7—Local Government
7. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Local Government: Mālō e lelei, Mr Speaker. Does he stand by his refusal to answer questions about water affordability yesterday; if so, why?
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Local Government): I do not accept the premise of that question. I back Local Water Done Well to deliver and I’ll answer questions on that any day of the week.
Tangi Utikere: How can he justify celebrating the passage of his water reform laws this week, when councils’ own plans now show Christchurch families facing increases of $900, Hamilton families $1,700, and Selwyn $1,800—all directly under his model?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, we have given councils the tools to get water on a financially sustainable footing. What that looks like will be different between different councils. The Government’s approved changes have already seen Watercare in Auckland alone save Auckland households $900 million over four years.
Tangi Utikere: Why has the Government focused on so-called financial sustainability of water providers while refusing to include any requirement that costs remain affordable for ratepayers?
Hon SIMON WATTS: It is easy for that side of the House to hold up paper numbers from a failed co-governed mega-entities model that they were proposing. Between the four councils with approved plans, already, these changes have been made, including Watercare—they’ve affected over two million Kiwis, who are now getting financially sustainable Local Water Done Well. That’s two million more people than the failed three waters mega-entity reforms, and I’ll answer questions on three waters any day of the week.
Tangi Utikere: Why has he designed a system that leaves councils to go it alone, that will create more than 40 water entities in a country of 5 million people, and, in doing so, has limited scale, efficiency, and borrowing power, which, as his own advice says, will drive up bills for households?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, I reject the premise of that question. This Government promised Local Water Done Well, and we are delivering it. If Labour wants to stand up here and say they’re going to bring back three waters, then good luck. See you at the ballot box.
SPEAKER: No—just a minute. With all due respect to the passion exhibited in his answer, using an answer to challenge an Opposition party is outside of the Standing Orders. Don’t continue with that line.
Tangi Utikere: When he said he was “out of time” yesterday, was he actually referring to his tenure as local government Minister, given the significant extra costs his water reforms will pile on to households?
SPEAKER: Well, sadly, that is a question that you can answer, because it’s about—
Hon SIMON WATTS: Oh, please. Well, with respect, Mr Speaker, that side of the House has no basis to talk about water reform. Their failed co-governed mega-entities model was a failure, and I will stand by Local Water Done Well every day of this week, because we are delivering financially sustainable water to Kiwi households, and I am proving that through the delivery we’re doing.
Question No. 8—Local Government
8. RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) to the Minister of Local Government: Mālō, Mr Speaker. What recent announcements has he made about the progress of Local Water Done Well legislation?
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Local Government): This Government campaigned on restoring community ownership of water assets, and Local Water Done Well received its third and final reading this week. After years of back and forth on water reform, local ownership and sustainability for water services is now here, and councils are getting on with delivering their plans.
Rima Nakhle: What water delivery plans has he seen?
Hon SIMON WATTS: At the core of Local Water Done Well is community choice, which means that councils can choose the shape of their plans as long as they meet the test set out around quality and sustainability, meaning that they can cover their costs and service their debt. I’m pleased to see that, despite the due date being 3 September, plans for Selwyn, Waimakariri, and a joint Waikato-Hamilton council-controlled organisation (CCO) have already been approved. Combined with the changes to the Watercare Charter that was made last year, now over 2 million New Zealanders are already getting Local Water Done Well.
Rima Nakhle: What will Local Water Done Well mean for communities and ratepayers?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Water is a critical infrastructure, and everyone in this House would acknowledge that it has been under-invested in for too long and things have to change. Local Water Done Well strikes the right balance by keeping these assets in local hands while making the needed changes. Most importantly, it ensures water investments are made and services are professionally run, ultimately saving ratepayers money.
Rima Nakhle: What is his ideal number of water entities?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Local Water Done Well is about quality, not quantity. Whether it’s a multi-council CCO, like in the Waikato; a single-council entity, like Watercare; or an in-house model, like in Waimakariri, our priority is to ensure affordable services, and we’re getting that done.
Question No. 9—Energy
9. SCOTT WILLIS (Green) to the Minister for Energy: How many households, if any, have been brought out of energy hardship this winter as a result of Government policies?
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister for Energy): It is not possible to give a precise number of households lifted out of energy hardship this winter, as that data is not yet available. But what I can say is that this Government is providing direct support through programmes like Warmer Kiwi Homes, which this Government has expanded to reach an additional 300,000 households, saving these families up to $340 per year. We’re also tackling the root causes of high costs by boosting competition and driving new generation with the strongest pipeline of new projects in 15 years. Households will continue to see further downward pressure on prices.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of Order. Madam Speaker, not now but perhaps later, you can check the Hansard record and see whether or not that questioner asked the question that was on the order paper or one that he just left words out of? I think you’ll find that’s what he did. All I’m trying to say is, after all this time, perhaps they can start learning how this place operates.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I will check the Hansard, Mr Peters. I was following the question, and if I missed something, then I apologise, but I will check it later. I was sure he asked the question correctly, but I promise to check.
Scott Willis: Does he accept that energy is an essential service fundamental to human wellbeing; if not, why not?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Absolutely, we do, but we also know that, at the moment, when times are tough, with rising energy prices putting pressure on Kiwi households, the Government needs to respond, and we are responding to support those in energy hardship. Things that we are doing include the Support for Energy Education in Communities Programme, the winter energy payment, Warmer Kiwi Homes and Healthy Homes Initiatives, the Electricity Authority consumer care obligations, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s tips for saving power on household bills, and funding for Consumer New Zealand’s Powerswitch. Under the last Government, 110,000 households reported that they couldn’t afford to keep their home adequately warm.
Scott Willis: Does he think it is fair for the gentailers to, yet again, be paying out hundreds of millions in dividends for this essential service while tens of thousands of households are in energy hardship, cannot afford to heat their homes, and are living in cold, damp, desperate conditions?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, on this side of the House, we are absolutely aware that we need more competition in our energy market, and we recognise that the status quo is not tolerable. As a result of that, this Government is taking actions in order to put downward pressure on Kiwi power bills. An announcement yesterday by the Electricity Authority in order to ensure that gentailers are not able to sell to themselves cheaper than the rate at which they provide to independent retailers is a good example of the mandatory action we are taking against the big players in this market to ensure Kiwi households are getting a fair price on their energy.
Scott Willis: What is his response to Kim from Upper Hutt, who is a pensioner, wheelchair user, and full-time carer for her adult son, who said, “My last power bill was quite high. It was a lot higher than I could budget for. It took my breath away, to be honest, and I am just sick of being constantly cold.”?
Hon SIMON WATTS: On this side of the House, we understand that tackling the cost of living crisis and keeping energy prices under control is a significant and major priority. The first thing that we did, on this side of the House, was to undo the damaging policies from the last Government that pushed up prices and scared off investment. The sector is now delivering market-led solutions, regulators are taking steps to ensure that the market operates fairly, and we are strongly supporting a market-led approach because it encourages more competition, delivers results, and, importantly, lowers prices for Kiwis.
Scott Willis: Does he agree with Consumer New Zealand Powerswitch manager Paul Fuge, who said that “Providers of essential services must not place commercial interests above consumer safety and wellbeing. Electricity retailers, by choosing to operate in this space, accept a duty of care. If they are unwilling or unable to meet that responsibility, they should not be permitted to serve the market.”; if not, why not?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Our approach as a Government is to ensure that we get on and actually deliver real changes: more competition in the energy market, more energy generation, security of supply so that prices come down for Kiwi households, and reliability improves. That is the focus of this side of the House. That is the action that we are undertaking, and that is the priority. Why? Because on this side of the House, we are focused on dealing with tangible actions that deal with the cost of living crisis that we inherited coming into Government. We are working damn hard every single day to make changes that will improve this country, because the mess that we inherited from the last bunch is not the legacy we will leave. [Interruption]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Quiet, we've got a question coming.
Scott Willis: Does he stand by his statement that “small, surgical interventions will make a big difference and drive real results for Kiwi households and businesses.”, in relation to the energy system; if so, why does he not think that major structural transformation of the energy sector is required to address the cost of living crisis?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, this Government's vision is for a dynamic, competitive energy market that delivers affordable and reliable power to Kiwis. The Government has already taken actions to ensure that our energy system is secure and affordable. We are currently considering a report on the broader energy market, and we will have more to say on that in due course.
Question No. 10—Mental Health
10. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister for Mental Health: Why are mental health providers only receiving a 3 percent increase in funding when internally delivered mental health budgets are increased by considerably more?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ve been advised that the Minister’s primary answer might be longer than normal.
Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health): While there has been an uplift in funding for mental health providers, Health New Zealand - delivered services will not automatically receive the remainder of the ring-fence uplift once mental health NGOs have received their 3 percent. Cost pressure funding for Health New Zealand is to cover both price uplifts and demographic growth. While price uplifts are aligned with inflationary pressures at 3 percent, demographic growth and anticipated increased demand for services is also to be covered by this funding. There are a range of other cost pressures and new initiatives that also need to be funded from the envelope, many of which are still in train or under negotiation.
Ingrid Leary: Was the decision to increase funding for community mental health providers by only a third of what Health New Zealand is getting based on modelling or data, or were they just picking a number out of the air?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: Well, what they were modelling on was, in fact, one of the biggest barriers to timely mental health and addiction support in New Zealand, which is that there are too many workforce vacancies. That’s why that is one of my top priorities. That’s why, coming to office, we’ve grown the front-line Health New Zealand - funded mental health workforce by almost 10 percent. That’s what that uplift is paying for.
Ingrid Leary: How can he justify the budget disparity, given that at the same time, his Government has cut pay equity claims covering many of the lowest-paid community mental health workers?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: I can justify that uplift because part of that uplift is going towards Government priorities. For the first time in a long time, we’ve funded more forensic mental health inpatient beds under that uplift, with an extra $5.88 million under Budget 2025-26.
Ingrid Leary: How does pitting one part of the sector against the other lead to better health outcomes for those in need?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: Well, what I can commit to is that I’ve already tasked Health New Zealand, who work with NGOs. They are led by a sector body group called Platform. They are going to review the cost pressure model for 2026-27, but, on top of that, I’ve sent a very clear instruction to move to phasing away for singular contracts to give those community providers more tenure and sustainability in their contracts, going forward.
Ingrid Leary: Why is the Minister restricting the community mental health sector funding when it will cause even more workforce burnout and worsen mental health outcomes for those in need of support?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: Well, in tight times, I’m very proud to stand on our record. In two Budgets now, we have significantly increased the mental health and addiction ring-fenced funding, from $2.4 billion—it went up to $2.6 billion after the last Budget—up to $2.8 billion. But what I will point out is that one of the reasons there is an uplift in Health New Zealand services is we’ve got more people at the front line working, compared to when that Opposition party was last in office.
Question No. 11—Land Information
11. JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) to the Minister for Land Information: What is the Government doing to make it easier to deliver critical infrastructure projects?
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Land Information): Soon, Parliament is set to pass amendments to the Public Works Act to cut delays and reduce costs on large infrastructure projects. We’ll be able to cut costs while being more generous to individual landowners. We know that, as a country, we need to do better in the delivery of these projects as there is an urgent need to address our infrastructure deficit and to deliver critical projects at pace. This Government is taking decisive action so we can build the infrastructure that Kiwis desperately need.
Joseph Mooney: What specific changes are included in the bill?
Hon CHRIS PENK: The new accelerated land acquisition process includes changes that make it faster and fairer and more certain for landowners, including in relation to fast-track approval consented projects. These include incentive payments of 15 percent of the value of the land, capped at $150,000, available to landowners who agree early; recognition payments being for all landowners whose land is acquired under the accelerated process to receive a 5 percent recognition payment additional to the value of their property, capped at $92,000; and a replacement objections process so that submissions will be considered by the relevant decision maker rather than being mired in the Environment Court processes, speeding up resolution by months or even years.
Joseph Mooney: What projects will be eligible for the streamlined pathway?
Hon CHRIS PENK: The pathway is available to public projects in Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act consented thereunder as well as roads of national significance in the Government Policy Statement on land transport 2024. These will all be eligible for the pathway. They include projects such as the Northland Corridor improvement programme, which includes the alternative to the Brynderwyn Hills, Transpower’s Cook Strait high-voltage direct current cable replacement, a second Ashburton Bridge, and—close to my own heart as the member for Kaipara ki Mahurangi—the express Northern Busway.
Joseph Mooney: Is the Government planning more changes to the Public Works Act?
Hon CHRIS PENK: We are. Further reforms will ensure that the Crown and councils can deliver for New Zealanders across a broader range of projects by modernising the law, streamlining the processes, improving landowner engagement, and introducing new tools to support disaster recovery—all while protecting and respecting private property rights. Legislation with wider amendments will be introduced to Parliament later this year, with the public being able to provide feedback through the select committee process, and I encourage them to do so.
Question No. 12—Science, Innovation and Technology
12. REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) to the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology: Does he stand by his statement that we are “reforming our science sector to better support a growing economy and provide higher paying jobs for New Zealanders”?
Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries) on behalf of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology: Yes, the reforms the member refers to will be unlocking the full potential of our research to contribute towards economic growth and development.
Reuben Davidson: How many science jobs have been lost because of the Crown research institute restructure?
Hon SHANE JONES: No jobs have been lost; people are being reassigned and invited to apply for fresh jobs.
Reuben Davidson: Does he regret releasing an AI framework with spelling mistakes and apparent AI hallucinations but no workforce strategy to protect New Zealand jobs?
Hon SHANE JONES: Given that we are talking about scientists, they can improve their performance.
Reuben Davidson: Can he confirm that he has been unable to get the required support from his coalition partners to get the Gene Technology Bill over the line?
Hon SHANE JONES: The reference to the Gene Technology Bill is a work in progress.
Reuben Davidson: How can he expect New Zealanders to have confidence in him when, at every corner, jobs are lost, even more are put at risk, and he has no plan to protect them?
Hon SHANE JONES: In actual fact, as part of these reforms, $60 million has been dedicated to supercritical geothermal energy, which will completely rewrite the costs and the sustainability of energy sources, and considerable amounts of effort will be put into the minerals sector, including the long-term future of coal.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order. Thank you very much. In light of that last answer, I think it’s really important that the House is clear as to whether Minister Jones is answering as the Acting Minister or on behalf of the Minister.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Minister Jones, could you please clarify? I took it as “on behalf of”. Am I correct?
Hon SHANE JONES: Speaking to the point of order, the moment has passed.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order. There is a convention in this House that we take members at their word, and if they are answering a question without indicating they’re doing it “on behalf of”, there is an assumption that they are doing so in an acting capacity. It became clear to me, especially with that last answer, that perhaps the Minister wasn’t, and if he was answering on behalf of, for the purpose of clarity in the Hansard, he should make that clear.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think it’s a fair question, a fair point of order, and I would like the Minister to clarify what capacity he is speaking in, please.
Hon SHANE JONES: Speaking to the point of order, perhaps the Speaker could elicit from the Opposition member what he is talking about.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’m very clear on the question that the Opposition member is asking. He’s asking for the Minister to clarify whether he’s speaking as the Acting Minister or on behalf of the Minister.
Hon SHANE JONES: Speaking to the point of order, I’ve given four or five answers. Which particular portion of an answer to the various questions is the Opposition member seeking clarification on?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I think the member has a very clear position in the House today: he’s either answering on behalf of or as Acting Minister, and he would have been answering those questions in that capacity. It would be very helpful if Minister Jones could clarify that position, please.
Hon SHANE JONES: Obviously I’m doing it on behalf of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. The Hon David Seymour has a supplementary question.
Hon David Seymour: As the Minister listened to that line of questioning, was he moved to wonder if artificial intelligence might be better than nothing?
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not sure—
Hon SHANE JONES: I’ll gladly answer it, though—[Interruption] I’ll gladly answer it, Madam Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, I can’t hear; there’s a lot of noise going on over here. As long as it doesn’t relate to attacks on a member of the House, the Minister is able to answer that question. He has chosen not to. Thank you. That concludes oral questions. I’m going to give the traditional 30 seconds for those people who are leaving the House to leave quietly.
OK, that is sufficient time for the conversations. I’d ask that everyone now be quiet as I call on Government order of the day No. 1. I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill.
Bills
Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill
In Committee
Debate resumed from 19 August.
Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the House is in committee on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. When the committee was last considering the bill, we were debating the preliminary clauses, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. As we come to the title of the bill, this is an important debate. It is the only debate in which, if it is voted down by the House, then the bill is considered to have been defeated too; it’s right that we will spend some time being clear on both the title and the commencement provisions of this.
I would like to propose an amendment to the title, which is the “Hauraki Gulf Saying One Thing and Doing the Other Bill”. That happens twice in this bill. The first time is in the Minister’s Amendment Paper that was brought to the committee at the final stage possible. The change that was made by the Minister was to remove every reference to “hapū” and “whānau”. Doesn’t matter where it was, doesn’t matter what it meant. “Hapū” and “whānau” out, only “iwi” in. The problem with that is that we might accept, from this ideological Government, that all references to anything Māori must go. But no, that’s not what the Minister said. In fact, he claimed over and over and over again in the committee stages that it would make no difference to those hapū out there every day, monitoring the shellfish beds that clean the pollution from our ocean, monitoring the Caulerpa that is a serious threat to the health of the Hauraki Gulf.
“No”, he said. “It won’t make a change. It will be fine. Those hapū and those whānau don’t need to down tools. The marae who have been working for generations to protect their seabed do not need to worry.” So what is it, Minister? Are we getting rid of the whānau and hapū references at every stage; doesn’t matter where they are, doesn’t matter what they do, we’ll just get rid of it? Does that have a point or does it not? I think it does, Minister.
I think you’ve told this House over and over again that what you want to be remembered for is for protecting Māori rights and interests in the Hauraki Gulf, but what this law does is something completely different. You have name-dropped over and over again those people who you have consulted with, who have told us that they are uncomfortable with the way that those references are removed because it leaves them in a position where they do not know whether their projects and protections will continue under this law and that there is an uncertainty for them which causes them pause and makes them very unclear about whether they have a place around the negotiating table to make sure that biodiversity outcomes and environmental outcomes are still part of this law. We should be clear with people who protect our Hauraki Gulf what our intentions are in this House. Yet after committee stage questioning, after all sorts of interrogation on this bill, we still are none the wiser what the status of whānau and hapū is under this law.
There’s the second issue of saying one thing and doing the other in this bill, and it is that the Minister has tried to claim credit for passing a law which protects the Hauraki Gulf when, in fact, he has introduced an Amendment Paper which undermines the protections within it for high protection areas. They’re called “high protection areas” still. “High protection” in which there can be fishing, in which there can be environmental degradation, in which boats will be able to put down anchor in areas of Caulerpa and spread that around the Hauraki Gulf—which is something we should be desperately prohibiting—which the local council wants to protect, which local politicians are standing up for but in this House we have a completely different approach and we’re still calling it “high protection area”. It should be called “low protection area”. It should be “go for it and don’t worry about it because this generation of Aotearoa New Zealand won’t have to deal with it”, but our kids and their kids will have to. Our kids and their kids will have to deal with Caulerpa in the Hauraki Gulf taking over. Our kids and their kids will have to deal with the locking out of whānau and hapū who do the great work now and won’t be able to any more.
The “Hauraki Gulf Say One Thing and Doing the Other Bill”—that is what this Minister’s record is as the Minister of Conservation; that is what he should call it. He should be clear with Aucklanders that this is another broken promise.
LAN PHAM (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. It is really important that we do look very carefully at the title of this bill, because this bill really matters, and it particularly matters to the communities and iwi and hapū of Tīkapa Moana / Hauraki Gulf. It matters because they literally spent over a decade—closer to 15 years, actually, but definitely over a decade—of blood, sweat, and tears to actually nut out and understand the issues of Tīkapa Moana, put heads together, and actually come up with a way forward.
What's really worthwhile remembering in this title is they did that because of the ecological losses. They did that because of the environmental dysfunction that people were seeing and observing in the gulf, and all that effort went into it to actually enable this bill to be developed from the grassroots. That's why it is so disappointing to have these Government amendments which change it.
Why we need to really carefully look at the title of this bill is because it is literally called the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. Now, protection, we know, means different things to different people, but certainly, on the whole, protection means specific things when it comes to, in this case, actual evidence-based biodiversity objectives. That's the whole thrust of this bill. We want to protect those marine biodiversity objectives. We want to protect the life of the gulf. We want it to return and restore so that our communities can get out there, enjoy nature, fish and swim, practice mahinga kai, and actually be part of that in the way that they have in the past and hopefully will do in the future.
So I want to pick up and suggest some particular amendments to the title. First and foremost, we heard through the committee stage, on the impact of particularly these amendments that allow commercial fishing in these high protection areas, that it was somewhere between being incompatible with the purpose and undermining biodiversity objectives to minimal impact. So I propose that we call this bill the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Somewhere Between Being Incompatible with the Purpose, Undermining Biodiversity Objectives, and Minimal Impact) Marine Protection Bill”.
Jenny Marcroft: Oh, too long—too long.
Ryan Hamilton: Too long, and frivolous.
LAN PHAM: But you're right, you're right—that is too long. That is too long, so I think we could shorten it and we could shorten it to the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Compromised Marine Protection Bill”. That would be in line with the Minister of Conservation’s absolute reiteration that this bill, for this Government, is a compromise. We've heard it time and time again, so let's reflect that and not pretend that this is some kind of high protection, which it's not.
We could also call it—and this is particularly when it comes to Minister Jones' influence in this bill—the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Flawed Justification of Plunder for Profit) Marine Protection Bill”, because this is what is happening when we are opening up these parts of the bill in the high protection areas to commercial fishing. It's a really shameful disappointment when it comes to the genesis of this entire process, the communities that have been a part of it, and I would really like to hear the Minister consider these titles. Thanks, Chair.
RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this important part of the bill, which is the title and commencement. I want to talk specifically to my suggested amendment to the title of this bill. I propose that the bill name be changed to the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection (Deceleration and Weakening) Bill”.
There are some reasons why I want to talk about how this bill has been decelerated and how it has been weakened. As we’ve mentioned in previous debates on previous parts of this bill, Christopher Luxon and the National Party have broken their promise to New Zealanders on this bill. Let me show you exactly why they have broken their promise to New Zealanders and why it relates to my proposed amendments to the title of this bill.
This is the National Party’s blueprint for a better environment. In the section specifically related to the Hauraki Gulf, it says that National will accelerate initiatives like the Hauraki Gulf marine protection and Kermadec ocean sanctuary bills. Well, let’s not even talk about what happened with the Kermadecs, but let’s talk about the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill and the National Party’s deceleration of this bill.
The National Party came into office nearly two years ago, and instead of accelerating the bill and having it passed really quickly, it reported back from select committee last year unanimously—one year ago—and then it stalled. It sat on the Order Paper—it sat around on the Order Paper. Why did it sit around on the Order Paper? Well, it turns out that the New Zealand First Party wanted to weaken the bill. So alongside decelerating the bill, the National Party has weakened the bill, which is why I am proposing today that the title—
Hon James Meager: You’re still drafting your policy. Draft your policy—policy one.
RACHEL BOYACK:—of the bill change to the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection (Deceleration and Weakening) Bill”. I hear people interjecting about a policy for oceans and fisheries. I mean, if there’s an interjection and you genuinely want me to talk about that, I’m happy to talk about why National cut funding to Moananui, to the blue economy cluster that will grow—the money that I got as the local MP to grow the blue economy—
Hon James Meager: Where is the policy?
RACHEL BOYACK:—in the Nelson-Tasman region. What I can assure you of, Mr Meager, is that those kinds of initiatives to bring millions of dollars of investment into the Nelson-Tasman blue economy sector are a priority for me as the MP for Nelson and as a spokesperson for oceans and fisheries. I’ve been very pleased, Mr Meager, to thank you for the question you posed as an interjection, which I am now going to respond to, bringing it into the debate. I am very pleased to have met with Moananui. Five times, the iwi would like to meet with you. They told me last week, the two iwi leaders, that they’ve asked to meet with you and you haven’t. You haven’t met with iwi. You need to meet with iwi.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): I am going to ask members to keep their interjections rare and reasonable.
RACHEL BOYACK: I met with two iwi leaders at Picton this week who both assured me they have asked you to meet with them and you have not, and I’d suggest you do that.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Please just address the Chair.
RACHEL BOYACK: So coming back to this important bill and the National Party’s broken promise to New Zealanders and Christopher Luxon’s broken promise to New Zealanders, where they said they would accelerate this bill; they have decelerated it. It should have been passed nearly two years ago. The people of Auckland and the people supporting the Hauraki Gulf protection—all those people who have worked on this for years, for decades, and have been pushing for this bill to pass. It will finally pass, but it will be weakened.
Even in the Minister’s own Cabinet paper, it stated that there were other parts of the gulf where ring-net fishing could occur with minimal impact on those fishers. But instead, the Minister chose to ignore his own paper and to include the ring net fishing inside those two high protection areas that have been listed in the bill.
So it is a bill that breaks its promise to New Zealanders, it breaks its promise to Aucklanders, it decelerates the introduction of this bill to the House, and it weakens it, so I propose that a much better title is the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection (Deceleration and Weakening) Bill”.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I move, That debate on this question now close.
STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s notable the vocal—
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Hold on a sec. If you want to have a conversation, step out into the hall.
Hon James Meager: No, I’ll do it now—
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): No, if you’re going to have a conversation, step out into the hallway. I don’t want this cross-Chamber chat.
STEVE ABEL: Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s notable that the Minister for the South Island is so enthusiastic about the Hauraki Gulf. I wonder if the Minister has visited the Hauraki Gulf and seen the soberingly sad destitution of that jewel in the crown of Tāmaki-makau-rau. This is a place that has been very poorly treated over decades. This is a spectacular ecological location for our nation, and it has had pollution poured into it; it has been exploited excessively through dredging and overfishing; it has piled up with silt and contamination; and through collective, significant effort, multiple parties have come to the table and come up with a solution by agreement that the gulf be protected with these high protection areas. That was by unanimous agreement. As my colleague pointed out, at the end of the last term, the committee recommended it to the House, and this Government came in and has delayed it two years and has explicitly made a compromise to the primary purpose of the bill. That is what I will speak to now, in terms of my proposed title for the bill.
To understand the scale of how grievous it is to take a high protected area and allow ring net fishing into it, perhaps an analogy is useful: someone who has suffered a thousand cuts and you put them into bed to recover, and you say, “You will no longer suffer any more attacks. Oh, but wait, we’re going to keep cutting you while you’re trying to recover.” That’s, basically, the effect of taking a high protected area which we’re setting aside to allow it to recover and to recuperate—“Oh, but we’re going to keep fishing in it.” It completely defeats the purpose and the logic of why you have marine protected areas. The permission of ring net fishing in these high protected areas will actually go against the halo effect. Where you get this amazing recovery occurring, where you have no fishing allowed, the halo effect means that the fish spill over into areas outside of the high protected area, where fishing is still permitted, to the benefit of the fishers: the recreational fishers, the subsistence fishers, the people in this country who go to the sea with a fishing line to catch their kai for their meal that night. To the benefit of those people, these high protected areas serve.
This compromise, as the Minister so frequently called it, undermines the fundamental benefit of having high protected areas. I think it is appropriate that the defining effect that this Government has had on this legislation has been that compromising—of permitting ring net fishing—so I propose that the bill should be correctly called the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Ring Net Fishing) Protection Bill”, because that is what it does. It protects commercial fishing in the high protected areas, and that is the stark impact that this Government has had on this bill. There was a collective agreement across the House, across the community, across iwi and hapū, across fishers—and noting, of course, the recreational fishers are very unhappy with this, because they agreed to not have fishing there. A compromise was made to allow the ring net fishers to keep fishing, so that’s my proposal: “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Ring Net Fishing) Protection Bill”. Kia ora.
Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I, too, would argue that the title of this bill—the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, which was the title given to this bill when we introduced it quite some time ago now. It was the culmination of over a decade of people coming together, various stakeholders coming together, to reach a consensus on what needs to be done to improve the health of the Hauraki Gulf. The State of our Gulf reports over the last 20 years have shown that the Hauraki Gulf is in an ongoing state of environmental decline. This was the work that was done by so many to get to this point of increasing marine protections for the gulf.
Now, as my colleagues on this side of the House have pointed out, there’s been quite a delay between the introduction of the bill to the House, the consideration by the select committee, select committee reporting back—unanimously—that this House should pass this bill with no substantive changes, and then, as we have traversed in the committee stage, there have been various steps at which we know that the Minister and the chair did not want to progress the amendments suggested, or potential amendments, at the time, suggested by Minister Jones. But here we are, where they are being progressed. The only contribution that this Government has made to this bill is to delay the passage of the bill, which they said, and have said in their own Cabinet paper, they would accelerate. It’s been delayed. It’s been delayed considerably. Then, as my colleague Rachel Boyack pointed out as well, it has been weakened: allowing any fishing in a high protection area—or HPA—goes against the intent of the bill, which is to increase protections for the gulf.
The point that I want to make here is that, if you’re going to do this, you should at least be able to justify and provide a rationale that is strong for doing this. Now, we asked the Minister whether there was an economic rationale for this, and he couldn’t answer us. There was no strong economic rationale. The best figures we’ve seen is under $14,000 of revenue from catch across all HPAs, and in two HPAs, it will be much less. We asked, perhaps, as Seafood New Zealand has said, is it about saving the livelihoods of the fishers? The Minister couldn’t confirm that, because it says in the Cabinet paper that they could fish elsewhere in the gulf, outside of the high protection areas. We asked whether there was a way that the Minister would ensure that the food would go to the communities in South Auckland that Minister Jones claimed this was all for. He said it was “vibes”; there was no real way to determine that it would do that. So there is no rationale for this lowering and weakening of protections.
I would argue that the bill should actually be called the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Weakens) Marine Protection Bill”, because that’s all this Government has contributed to. Alternatively, it could be called the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Lowers) Marine Protection Bill”, because, again, that’s what it does. It could also be called the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Puts Fishing Lobby Interests Before) Marine Protections Bill”. It could be the “Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana (Taking Us Backwards On) Marine Protections Bill”. All of those, I would argue, would be a more reflective title for this bill, given the contribution, or lack thereof, of the conservation Minister and this Government more broadly.
The final point that I will make is on the commencement date of this bill. It should really be 2024. So I suggest that this Minister backdate the bill to when the Government said they would be passing the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. Because, had it been left to the rest of us, it would have been passed by now. Thank you.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Rachel Boyack’s tabled amendment to clause 1 inserting the words “(deceleration and weakening)” is ruled out of order as being not an objective description of the bill.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 349 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2 as amended agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
Bills
Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)
First Reading
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): Madam Speaker, I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2).
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill, with a period of four months and one day for the select committee process.
This bill is a short bill that makes needed changes to make it more likely that New Zealanders will benefit from the clean vehicle standard rather than face higher vehicle prices because of it. The standard is our light vehicle fuel-efficiency or carbon dioxide standard. If it works as intended, New Zealanders will benefit from estimated fuel savings of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion over 2023 to 2050 and 8.2 million to 9.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission reductions over the same period.
We’ll only achieve those benefits if vehicle importers achieve the standard’s annual carbon dioxide targets. This is because every vehicle that doesn’t achieve its target attracts charges. If importers can’t offset those charges with credits earned on low-emissions vehicles, then those charges flow through into high vehicle prices. Higher prices will make it even harder for New Zealanders to afford to replace their vehicles with more fuel-efficient and lower-emitting vehicles. To prevent this outcome, the bill gives importers more flexibility in how and when they comply with the targets; flexibility is critical because importers can’t control all the factors affecting whether they can supply the low-emissions vehicles needed to comply with the targets, nor can they control whether consumers will buy them.
Currently, many importers are not achieving their targets and are attracting charges because of unfavourable supply-and-demand conditions. For example, there is currently a shortage of used EVs available for importers to supply to our market, so the bill makes it easier for importers to offset charges with credits. There are three main ways it does this.
First, it allows credits to be transferred between used-vehicle importers and new-vehicle importers; currently this can’t happen because credit transfers between the sectors are prohibited. To acknowledge the greater fuel-saving value of new low-emissions vehicles, the bill sets a 2:1 exchange rate—so you’ll need two credits earned on used vehicles to offset a charge on a new vehicle. Secondly, the bill extends the lifespan of credits from three years to four years. This gives importers more time to use the credits that they earn from importing volumes of fuel-efficient vehicles. Third, the bill extends the ability for importers to offset the charges accrued in a year by supplying and selling more low-emissions vehicles the following year when conditions improve. Currently, the ability to borrow credits will stop at the end of 2025.
Finally, the bill futureproofs the standard by enabling targets to be set that are not adjusted by vehicle weight. It’s the Government’s view that this ability will be needed over the next five years as EVs and hybrids disrupt the traditional positive relationship between vehicle weight, fuel use, and emissions. In other words, soon, large SUVs will not need easier targets than small hatchbacks. The bill makes it more likely that the standards’ annual carbon dioxide targets will be achieved, and, by doing this, New Zealanders will have access to vehicles that cost less at the pump and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
So, with those brief remarks, I commend the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): This bill is a bit of a shocker, really. It’s an extraordinary thing that that side of the House is doing. It stacks up with all their other climate-denying work, but this one is a bit of a corker.
I don’t get it. The reason that we have clean car emission standards is so that we start transitioning our fleet from internal combustion, using fossil fuels, to electric vehicles. The idea is to actually decrease emissions. It’s a critical need. We have a Paris target of reducing our climate emissions to net zero by 2050, and the way we have been trying to do that is, primarily, so far under this Government, by planting more trees. We’ve carried on emitting carbon. We’re not trying to get actual carbon emissions down. Instead, we’re just offsetting them with trees. The trouble is that that approach is going to fail. We cannot plant our way out of climate change. In order to effectively address climate change, we have to get emissions down.
There are two major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in our country—two major industries or areas of our economy that we get greenhouse gases from. One is from agriculture, and there is a whole lot of work going on in that space to see how we can actually reduce methane flow. That’s what we have to do with methane flow. The other is transport. Transport is one of our biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike methane, where there are some pretty interesting technologies coming through which may help with that—in terms of carbon, we have to get the emissions down.
The clean car standards were a part of that. The whole idea was to incentivise the transfer over to an electric vehicle fleet. There were a whole lot of strategies around that. One was the Clean Car Discount, a scheme that was working really well; and one was this clean car importer standard. This whole clean car importer standard was a way of incentivising the uptake of electric vehicles by ensuring that we had to bring more electric vehicles into the country in the first place. This bill changes that around. It’s noticeable, in the departmental disclosure statement, that the people that were consulted with included the motor vehicle industry but did not include the Climate Change Commission. In fact, there’s very little assessment of the impact that it will have on our climate emissions. Going through in terms of deciding on which option was best to address this policy, the people who had all the input on it were various industry stakeholders. They were the people who were consulted to see whether or not we should change around the clean vehicle standard.
Going through the regulatory impact statement is quite an eye opener. I’ll see if I can find the relevant bits. The way it sets it out is it says that current vehicle importers were not going to meet the target for importing clean vehicles, so they’ve changed the targets. They’ve just simply changed the targets. Well, that’s not going to get emissions down, is it? “Oh, we’re not going to be able to do it, so we just won’t do it.” But we still need to get emissions down. Climate change is a pressing, pressing need for us to address. What are they doing? They’re consulting vehicle importers about how to avoid getting emissions down. It’s a shocking bill, and it demonstrates, yet again, that this Government is not—is not—committed to addressing climate change. The Labour Party does not support this bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time has expired.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia orana, Mr Speaker, and tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is not supporting this bill. As someone who worked closely on both the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount in the initial days, I can tell you that those were evidence-based policies that have been used in other jurisdictions to improve fuel economy. The overall benefits to New Zealand of having more efficient vehicles is undeniable, because we spend more money to drive a given amount on petrol or on diesel, as a consequence of having less efficient vehicles. There’s this bizarre ideology on the other side of the House that somehow having more polluting vehicles is good for New Zealand; it’s not. It’s not good for New Zealand.
The way that the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount worked was intentionally done so that they worked together. The idea of the standard is quite simple. It’s that over time we’re expecting vehicle importers of both new and second-hand vehicles to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicles that are being imported. The Clean Car Discount used a feebate signal, which was a levy on polluting vehicles, which is recycled into a discount or a rebate on zero-emissions and low-emissions vehicles. That feebate was actually far more effective than I think anyone realised. I mean, I knew it would be effective, hence why we worked on the policy, but when they actually brought it in—the Labour Government brought it in—it was massively successful and effective.
Usually, the vehicle importers understand that they want something like the Clean Car Discount. They find it difficult to implement the standards without the overt price signal. So the reason why the Government is now having to come back again with another bill to amend the clean vehicle standard—now, this is the second amendment bill in just a few months—is to give importers more flexibility to achieve the standard. Ultimately, what it’s doing is just making it harder for us to achieve the actual targets to achieve the goal.
As the Climate Change Commission recently recognised, the Government has no plan to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels or things that create greenhouse gas emissions, and that is totally ridiculous in 2025. It’s completely ridiculous, and it’s particularly ridiculous, when you consider that everything we do to reduce the fossil fuel intensity of our vehicle fleet is not just beneficial from a climate point of view; it’s beneficial from an air pollution point of view, it’s beneficial from a pure cost point of view, and from an energy sovereignty point of view.
We have majority renewable electricity generated in this country, right here in this country. Electric vehicles are far more efficient than internal combustion engine vehicles, so just switching to electric vehicles is an efficiency gain, a massive efficiency gain. It doesn’t matter how that electricity is generated. Even if it was generated from coal, it would still be more energy efficient. Now, personally, the Green Party doesn’t believe we should be using coal to generate electricity; there’s no question. But even if it were the case, an electric vehicle would be more efficient than a combustion engine vehicle. So we have everything to gain from switching to more efficient vehicles.
But guess who doesn’t want us to switch to more efficient vehicles? The vehicle manufacturers. And the oil companies, obviously. Why? It doesn’t benefit New Zealanders. People would like to spend less money on driving around, wouldn’t they? Well, the best way to do that is to make sure that the vehicles coming into the country are more efficient. Every country in the world that has achieved progress in the area has done so through a combination of standards and price incentives. That’s what works, and the economic benefits massively outweigh the cost.
So, you know, classic National-led Government being lobbied by big corporate interests, and who misses out? Who’s paying the bills on this? Who’s paying for it? It’s New Zealanders paying higher petrol bills, higher diesel bills, higher hospital bills, higher emissions, which is going to cost us in the medium and long term. But this is a Government of absolute climate deniers who can’t even understand how the economy works. I mean, they’re claiming victory from dropping interest rates. Geniuses! They dropped the interest rates because the economy crashed.
MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must confess to the House that I’m not the actual speaker that would normally speak to this bill, but I have a couple of thoughts, if I may. I can imagine the heckling will begin, at some point in the near future, from my team on the left. But I’m fascinated when I’m trying to digest what the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) looks like in the real world—in the real world of choice. I think, in a house of debate—and this is, of course, a house of debate—that New Zealanders are a group of collective deniers. Well, certainly, this side of the House is.
As we speak to what this bill does, it extends the lifespan of carbon dioxide emissions credits that are earned on low-emission vehicles—yeah, three or four years—and removes the restriction on carbon dioxide emission credit transfers between new and used importers and various sectors.
I just want to touch on a point that the previous member did make—that this side of the House were climate change deniers. I find that an oddity that that side of the House, if I could be so obliging to share a couple of thoughts pursuant to Indonesian coal—now, in the world of hydrocarbons, if I get the pronunciation correct, we have seen huge increases to hydrocarbons, like coal in this instance, coming into New Zealand. That helps electrify the grid. If we look at the world of averages—whether it’s electrification and the use of electrified vehicles in this instance or hydrocarbons being used for the sake of petroleum by-products or petroleum or diesel or petrol—how can we not square up, either way when we’re having this debate, that invariably there’s an endpoint user that has a pollution problem. Now, it could be the electrification of the grid and a greater consumption of it, or it could be used in hydrocarbons that are used in motor vehicles that happen to be internal combustion engines.
I am a bit struck by Julie Anne Genter’s remarks. I don’t think it is balanced to say, in this instance, that members on this side of this House are climate change deniers. We’re just having a balanced debate. Where I land on this bill, having not had a chance to read a great deal of it—I maintain that it sort of lands on about the right place in the world of averages, so, on that basis, I commend it to the House.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on this Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). This is something I think was signalled in the 2024 Budget that this work was going to be done. In fact, it’s interesting in the speaking notes I’ve got here that I refer to it being proposed by the Hon Simeon Brown. So it suggests it was a little while ago that this was being talked about.
This clean vehicle standard is about trying to make sure that over time the emission levels, which are produced by vehicles which are imported into this country, are progressively reduced. That doesn’t change in this bill. What this bill is mostly about is two things. The first one of those is about saying, “Let’s do that. Let’s hit those targets by regulation rather than by locking them in legislation.” Because—oh gosh—every time we change a piece of legislation, we’ve got to go through the whole process. That is enormously expensive, enormously cumbersome. Quite frankly, why we don’t lump a whole lot of these pieces of small legislation together—that would be much more efficient. That would certainly reduce a lot of hot air.
The first thing that this bill does is to say instead of doing it through legislation, let’s do it through regulation, so it is a much more flexible, much quicker way of responding. Of course, different Governments may do that in different ways in terms of the regulatory process. So the standards and the process still exist. [Interruption] It's wonderful seeing the byplay going across the House there. But anyway, I’ll carry on with it.
Look, over time we are quite clearly seeing the vehicle fleet, by and large, becoming more efficient. Obviously, we’ve had an uptake of electric vehicles: we’ve got plug-in hybrid vehicles, we’ve got more hybrid petrol vehicles as well. The level of emissions from those, and the fuel efficiency of those, is coming down.
In fact, that is one of the reasons we’re having to look at changing the way in which the whole road transport system is funded. Because what’s been reliant on both the road-user charges and FED, the fuel excise duty, that level of charge, particularly the FED side, is starting to reduce. That is a problem for our ability to be able to fund transport generally, whether it’s public transport or maintaining and building our roads. So we need to change things there. Over time, the intent is that we will get a more efficient vehicle fleet, and then, obviously, we’ve got to change the funding around it.
I just want to pick up on one other thing, which is what my colleague Mark Cameron was talking about: choice. What is the part that the market plays in this? What we should be trying to do is to send the right signals in terms of the actual costs that apply: the costs of using the road, the weight of vehicles on the road and so on, the damage the vehicles do to the road—but also, the emissions side of things, and that’s why we have an emissions trading scheme, for example, whether that’s working efficiently or ineffectively. Then people can make their choice. They can say, “Well, an electric car may cost me more to buy in the first instance. But is it cheaper to run because it’s more efficient? Yes, maybe. Maybe I choose that; maybe I don’t.” People have the ability to choose that depending on the circumstances and the needs that they have for their particular vehicle. That is called choice. That is called a market. We need to make sure that we do that because we can’t be forcing people to make particular choices.
I’m looking forward as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to seeing this piece of legislation in front of us, the submissions that we get on it, and to making decisions on that and reporting that back to House in due course. I commend this bill to the House.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): Kia ora tātou. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak for Te Pāti Māori on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). So here I am—here I go. This bill undermines our commitment to reducing climate change through the clean vehicle standard. It does so by introducing more flexibility in meeting the targets, which, effectively, weakens the standard itself. Tautoko mārika au i ngā kōrero ka puta mai i tētahi o wō tātou kaikōrero i mua i a au.
[I absolutely support the comments made by one of our speakers prior to me.]
Specifically, the bill extends the lifespan of carbon dioxide emissions credits earned on low-emission vehicles from three years to four. It removes restrictions on transferring these credits between the new and used import sectors, and it allows borrowing of future carbon dioxide target overachievement beyond 2025. This subject itself isn’t one of one of my—you know, I don’t know this really well, but certainly listening to Julie Anne Genter and others, when I did spend a little bit of time with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee at times, I believe her, is the thing to say.
The Clean Car Standard limits the average carbon dioxide emissions from the tailpipes of new cars imported into Aotearoa—I’m sorry, I just heard a bit of muttering over to the left there. I wasn’t sure what that was meant to do—
Arena Williams: Just muttering.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Yes, another bunch of mumbling, bumbling ideas. It was introduced to reduce emissions and prevent our country from becoming a dumping ground for inefficient vehicles rejected in other places with stricter environmental rules—worth noting.
Te Pāti Māori climate change policy is designed to incentivise low-income and rural whānau, and that takes quite a bit, knowing that I come from Te Aupōuri and so on. They’re like “How are we going to get a blinking plug-in thing here, Meno?”, but let me tell you, the mood is changing. Our whānau are getting that this is a smart and good thing. So let’s just keep talking about this, making it happen, and making it work—so, to incentivise low-income and rural farmers to purchase electric and low-emission vehicles.
This bill, however, makes it harder to achieve these goals—thank you to those on the left. Climate change poses an existential threat not only to our environment but to our way of living and to our people and to our place and to our identity. It just gets more grave the more I read on. Any legislation that prioritises short-term profits over long-term health of our taiao and of our environment harms our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. So be it on your heads, to those on the left. Modelling shows that by 2035, these changes could result in 39,000 fewer fully electric vehicles and 19,000 fewer plug-in hybrids on our roads. This is yet another piece of legislation pushed through by this Government to weaken environmental protections for short-term gain.
The Government often speaks of striking a balance, and I was listening to that bit of rhetoric earlier, but I don’t believe them, and I’m not convinced; it has very little merit, when I hear it from the left of the House, when we face already multiple once-in-a-lifetime, extreme weather events every year. Obviously, I think of Whangaroa when I’m talking about that, I think of Whangārei, I think of Te Kaipara and those terrible moments which they talk about being once in a lifetime but, in fact, I think I’ve probably experienced about four or five lately. And still people deny; still Government is denying that these things are real and have serious and long-term impacts for our whānau on the ground every day.
Even now, when you go through Kāeo and you go through Whangaroa and you go through the back road, it’s the decimation of properties, farms, roads, structures, infrastructure to a tiny little town reduced hugely by all of the flooding that happens not just once in a lifetime but far too often.
So there is absolutely no way that we would support this. We do not support it, we do not commend it, and we would ask that maybe you change your mind. Let’s do that. Kia ora tātou.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Good news for Labour and the Greens today: Statistics New Zealand figures just out show that emissions in New Zealand decreased to December last year by 1 percent—total greenhouse emissions. In 13 out of 16 regions in New Zealand it decreased. So despite the rhetoric from the other side, something is working in the coalition Government with respect to emissions. So, on that basis, I look forward to welcoming the bill at select committee and I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think that the member who’s just resumed his seat, Dan Bidois, might like to think about the correlation between emissions reducing and the economy shrinking and wonder if there’s a little bit of a lesson in there as well.
As has been said, we won’t be supporting this bill. It’s a really disappointing bill, and it’s a disappointing bill for a number of reasons. Fundamentally, it weakens New Zealand’s clean vehicle standards at exactly the wrong time. Even just looking at it, it’s very clear that it benefits industry lobbyists while leaving ordinary Kiwi families paying more at the pump—which is quite ironic when you think that this Government has made such a big song and dance about being laser focused on the cost of living and then, at every opportunity, when they actually do something practical about that, more often than not, they make the wrong choice and choose to do something that doesn’t actually make life any easier for people and, in fact, just simply makes life worse. In this instance, we’ve got a bill before us that not only means that New Zealand families will be paying more at the pump because they’re stuck with old cars; they’ll be breathing dirtier air and missing out on those affordable clean cars to boot.
When you look at this piece of potential legislation, this bill, three things stand out. The first one is its loopholes over real reductions. The bill extends the lifespan from three to four years—the credit lifespan—which is actually really disappointing. Importers can now borrow and defer indefinitely. It creates a trading scheme that, when you look at it, you really can’t make any other conclusion apart from the fact that it favours manipulation over emissions cuts—and that is simply not climate action. Even if you’re not into that, that should give people pause for concern. It’s creative accounting at best, and it delays cleaner cars, which would have been something that was really good and really progressive and, just as importantly, created cheaper bills for families. For a Government that’s laser focused on the cost of living, yet again, they’ve got a choice to do something, and they’ve chosen not to.
Instead of delivering cleaner cars, year on year, which was the previous regime, importers can essentially bank those credits, they can dodge those obligations, and delay making those changes that would have been something to be proud of—all the while, those bills creep up higher and higher. It’s a simple lose-lose situation, and there are no winners in this bill. Families lose while industry wins—and isn’t that a theme of this Government. Time and time again, they talk a big talk about wanting to do something for Kiwi families—we’re still waiting for that one mythical family to rear itself from the ashes of the FamilyBoost policy promises earlier on—and this is another example of families losing out. The Government has the audacity to sell it or to highlight or to frame it as some sort of move towards flexibility, but it’s really just a concession to the industry. We won’t have the wool pulled over our eyes with regard to that.
As has been said by Te Pāti Māori just prior, New Zealand risks becoming a dumping ground, and since when was that our aspiration? Again, this Government talked a big talk about having high hopes; they’ve failed to deliver, and one of the repercussions of this piece of potential legislation is that we literally have gone from having high hopes to potentially being a dumping ground. Congratulations! How anti-aspirational can you possibly be? Weakening the standards simply opens the door to those higher-emissions second-hand imports that other countries are rejecting—I mean, let that sink in. We’re literally going to become a place where all the stuff the other countries have rejected we’ll take, because that’s the type of market forces we’ve opened ourselves up to.
With regard to clean vehicle standards, I think it’s fairly obvious why we don’t support this bill. I just want to finish by saying—and it has been the theme of my contribution—that Christopher Luxon had a choice, and he’s had several choices as this Government has gone on for the last 18 months. At every single opportunity, he’s simply chosen to do the wrong thing, and, in this particular instance, he’s siding with polluters, and that’s actually shameful. He’s siding with polluters and industry insiders, whilst simultaneously breaking his promise to New Zealand households and making things worse rather than better.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): For communities like Mt Roskill, home to many hard-working families, this bill matters. It supports our climate goals but also makes cleaner vehicles more accessible and affordable. By giving suppliers more flexibility, we reduce costs that would otherwise be passed on to the consumer. This means families in Mt Roskill can benefit from cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars without being priced out. It is a fair, smart, and future-focused policy. I commend this bill to the House.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). What a shame it is that we are here debating this bill, which will take us another step backwards away from New Zealand’s Paris Agreement targets. They are targets that this Government claims to still be honouring, and yet Government Ministers just yesterday in the House at question time were waving haere rā to Paris, haere rā to climate leadership, and haere rā to New Zealand’s place on the world stage as a nation that actually did its bit and gave young people around the world and young New Zealanders a fair go. [Interruption]
Who’s going to pay the cost of this, Mark Cameron? Who’s going to pay the cost of this, James Meager? I’ll tell you. The people who will pay the cost of bills like this—the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2), which is a tax break for industry—are the young New Zealanders who are going to pick up the bill for the remediations that we will need to pay as a nation going forward.
Do you know what this bill does? This bill lets some importers bank up their credits for as long as they like and sell them to other parts of their business or—it’s quite unclear yet, but we’ll get to the bottom of it in the select committee—others who would otherwise import dirty vehicles longer and more than they would have otherwise under a Labour Government. This bill puts dirtier cars on the road. This bill makes it harder for those people who want to transition to be able to do that. This bill is a sop to industry, who asked for it, and it doesn’t have any place in a Parliament that would pride itself on values-based and evidence-based policy to deal with climate change. This is a real shame.
There are two major areas that New Zealand should be focusing on in reducing its climate—
Mark Cameron: Oh, here we go.
ARENA WILLIAMS: —obligations, and Mark Cameron says, “Here we go.” He doesn’t want me to talk about the farmers, so I’ll give him the good answer that he’s after. Transport is one we all agree on. Transport is part of New Zealand’s economy where there are good wins to be made. I’ll tell you who said that: the Hon Simon Bridges, when he was the transport Minister.
Remember when the Key Government used to like electric vehicles (EVs)—when they used to point to electric cars as part of a transport solution which would actually make a difference to Aotearoa? They said, “Oh, buses—we’re not so keen on buses. Trains—we’re not so keen on trains. But EVs are coming, guys—just wait.” Well, now this is what’s coming: the next National Government, which walks that back. You can’t trust them.
You can’t trust them when they point to some techno solution. These guys are looking into the future and they’re casting around for something that will get us out of the hole without doing any of the heavy lifting, and then the next National Government comes around and says, “Oh well, it was all too hard, and industry has come with their hands out and we feel very sorry for these big car manufacturers, who have all these tax credits banked up that they can’t get the value out of. So we’re going to let them use those tax credits for money. That’ll be good—that’ll sort it out.” No, it won’t sort it out. It won’t help people buy cleaner cars, it won’t help reduce the footprint of the transport fleet in New Zealand, and it certainly won’t help future generations and young New Zealanders get themselves out of this mess.
Many of the MPs, in a few hours, will be meeting with groups of young people from the Aspiring Leaders Forum. They are here today in Parliament because they think about the future issues that affect our country. They have tried very hard to get into this programme and are proud to be here.
Dr Carlos Cheung: You are here to advocate for people in South Auckland.
ARENA WILLIAMS: Some of them are from the member Carlos Cheung’s electorate of Mt Roskill, and they believe in MPs like him to represent their generation for the future. What they are seeing from a debate like this is that this Government is happy to lump costs on to their generation and their children’s generations because they will not deal with the reality now, which is that we need standards, we need rules that are debated and set by this Parliament, where we are accountable to them.
You know, instead of having this debate in the future, we won’t actually have it in here at all, because it will be set by regulation, and Andy Foster stands up and he goes, “Oh, good, the bureaucrats can sort it out. Get that red tape out and wrap it all around these standards. Elected members shouldn’t be accountable when they are lumping costs on to future generations. Elected members should not be accountable to young people.” Well, I say to Mr Andy Foster that he is an excellent committee chair, but he is dead wrong on this issue.
Andy Foster: Oh, not at all—not at all.
ARENA WILLIAMS: Young people want you to advocate for them, Andy Foster. Young people deserve parliamentarians to come to this House and give it a go—to give them a fair go—so that their generation won’t be picking up the bill for short-sighted legislation like this.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): I’d just like to bring the energy in the room down a little bit; I think that’d be good. Because this is just another example from the other side of where they’re just yelling and screaming about something, when they’ve demonstrated that they’re not bothered to talk to industry about how things might actually work. We have listened to the way that pragmatic things need to be done. We have provided flexible options so that we can actually get more clean vehicles into this country. I commend the bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Instruction to Transport and Infrastructure Committee
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be reported to the House by four months and one day after the bill receives its first reading.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill
Third Reading
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): I present a legislative statement on the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon CHRIS PENK: I move, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
I’m pleased to bring this bill back to the House today, and I’d like to start by acknowledging the previous debates we’ve had on the bill in the House, including in the committee of the whole House recently, and the engagement from other members of the committee, including across the aisle. I appreciate all the discussions and contributions—well, almost all of them—on this important piece of legislation.
As for the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I do want to acknowledge in particular the chair of the select committee, Mr Andy Foster, and all relevant members, some of whom are in the House today, no doubt preparing to speak on this, the third reading. The careful consideration given to the issues through the select committee process, I think, has resulted in a bill that strikes the right balance between efficient delivery of critical infrastructure for public benefit and, at the same time, the rights of landowners. Thank you also to the users of the Public Works Act, industry experts, landowners, and the public for taking time to provide feedback on the bill.
The bill contains targeted amendments to the Public Works Act specifically focused on speeding up the delivery of specific critical infrastructure projects. These are the projects listed in the bill and are on Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act, and the roads of national significance listed in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2024.
Rather than detailing the bill’s provisions again, I intend to focus on why the bill is needed. I think that we can all agree in this House, even though reasonable minds can differ on the way that we achieve these aims, that New Zealand has an infrastructure deficit, and it should be the role of Government to seek ways to address that. There is a growing demand for critical infrastructure, including transportation networks, to be built at a faster pace to support economic growth and productivity. Passing this bill will speed up the delivery of critical infrastructure projects and make strides towards addressing New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit.
Enabling faster delivery of critical infrastructure, again, such as better transport networks, will also help to drive lower costs for businesses and households, enabling Kiwis to get home safe to their families at the end of the day much more readily and quickly, and to support the delivery of exports to overseas markets. Better infrastructure will also enable Kiwis to have the high-quality public services they deserve and help grow the economy so that New Zealanders can get ahead.
The Public Works Act is a crucial tool for acquiring and managing land to support public infrastructure projects. There are often unnecessary and costly delays in the delivery of critical infrastructure, among other reasons due to the negotiations and objections to the compulsory acquisition of land with such litigation made to the Environment Court under the Public Works Act. These delays can extend construction time frames hugely, causing projects to incur additional costs, such as the escalating prices of materials and labour in the meantime, as well as, of course, the significant legal costs incurred in that litigation. While objections to the acquisition of land are rare, a single objection has the potential to add significant project delays—years and years in some cases. Larger and more expensive critical infrastructure projects face greater risk as construction costs increase and compound over time—notwithstanding the excellent efforts of the Government, in many respects, to make sure that there is downward pressure on such construction cost increases—and at a much larger scale.
The holding-up of public infrastructure projects up and down the country over a number of years—this not being a new phenomenon—means that projects that would provide benefits for communities often end up stalled with a lot of time spent in courtrooms. Faster infrastructure delivery through streamlined processes and efficient decision-making can ensure that Kiwis benefit from these investments sooner and at a lower financial burden. This is particularly crucial for large-scale, high-cost projects. This bill will streamline the process for objections, making the process faster. Landowner objections to the Environment Court are removed. Instead, landowners will be able to use a streamlined written process of submissions. Landowners will be compensated with incentive payments for reaching an agreement early and recognition payments for land acquired to help deliver critical infrastructure.
This bill is the start of changes to improve the Public Works Act. A further bill that I intend to introduce later this year will propose broader changes to the Public Works Act to improve its efficiency, effectiveness, and clarity on a broader range of projects, including improved landowner engagement and emergency provisions to assist and support the recovery from natural disasters.
In closing, I’d like to thank everyone again who has worked hard to bring this policy to fruition. I look forward to the positive impact that these changes will make for delivering critical infrastructure and the consequent benefits that they will provide to our fellow New Zealanders through additional growth and productivity. Accordingly, I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. This is a bill which the Labour Party supports, and so we have taken our time to work carefully through the committee process and also the committee of the whole House stage, to make sure that these changes are something which will be enduring and which give us a process to work through for the projects which are set out in the schedule. This is important, though, for any MP in this House who represents an electorate. Constitutionally, we are arranged so that we come from our community to represent their interests. Many of those who have represented those electorates also have represented them for many, many years and contested elections where some of those people in the House have lost those communities’ support and have gained it back in further years.
There are many people in this House who know just how deeply unpopular takings from the Public Works Act are, and I made the point in the committee stage that all of those MPs who have ever dealt with constituents who are losing part of their lawn or their home or part of their business or the car parks outside their shop will know how difficult this is for people. They need to be able to see the Public Works Act process as a process they can put their faith in—that it will not always benefit them, that it will not always result in something which directly aligns with their interests, but that they can put their faith in the process because the infrastructure that is enabled by that Act is something which is important and enduring for the whole country.
The Minister is right when he points to the desperate need for infrastructure to be built and built quickly in New Zealand. That is true. It is true that a long-term pipeline of infrastructure builds that have wide and enduring bipartisan support is necessary. That is true. But we need to make sure that this process which we are using to acquire people’s property, people’s land, people’s homes and businesses, is fair and has a way of people looking at it and saying, “Even if I don’t end up with the outcome that I want, I can be sure that this is something which benefits my community and has the full support of a Government that is acting in my interests—even if I don’t politically support them—and that it represents everyone.” That is why we have done that.
Now, I made it clear that we gave very careful consideration in our report to Māori rights and interests in this. It’s important to note, even at this stage, because there have been a number of questions which have arisen. A huge number of the submissions that were made on this bill were about that topic, and it is a topic that we should treat with gravity and respect, because there is a long and peppered history of Governments using the Public Works Act to take Māori land and then the disposals of it have not been fair. They have been far from fair. The giving of land for a school for a community and then the taking of that land in future years for other purposes is wrong, and we have recognised that again and again in Treaty settlements in this House and in our arrangements with iwi around the country. There have been public works takings of large swathes of land in some areas of the country in retribution for unrest or refusals in some areas to be conscripted for war. There are public works takings which we all agree in this House were unfair and unjust, and so it’s right that we treat any Public Works Act changes that have an impact on Māori rights and on rights that have arisen in Treaty settlements very carefully. We’ve done that. We think this is fair, we think this will be enduring, and it’s useful for us to have done that very carefully and given that the gravity it deserves.
We have other concerns with this, too. One of those concerns is that this is part of a suite of bigger changes to amend the Public Works Act, but that it doesn’t do that all in one go. We have the regrettable situation here where there are some projects which have been outlined by the Minister in his schedule, which include projects which we have concerns about and that will be on a separate track to those other projects that have been ordinarily notified as projects which take away someone’s property, take away someone’s home, that are available to local government, or that have been central government projects that have been consented over the years. Just the other day, I had a constituent get in touch with me. She was living on Puhinui Road, which is an area which has been notified under the Public Works Act for takings for, essentially, a road-widening project there. I went back to her and I said I would carefully consider whether there was any effect on her property rights, but the answer is that there is not, because this is a bill which only deals with a few projects.
Every MP who has any public works taking place in their electorate will know that that will be a difficult conversation for them to have—that there are some people out there now who have had property which has been notified—and more difficult in the next year or the year after that. There will be others who will receive notifications even after this is passed where they will not receive or be entitled to the higher level of compensation which this bill provides for. That is difficult for us as MPs, because we know that, when people put their faith in these processes that have existed for a long time, they expect to be treated fairly and they expect to be on an even footing with others. There is some difficulty in this, but ultimately, if this is what it takes to be part of a bipartisan process towards building more infrastructure, that is something which we can remain open-minded with.
But it comes with a weight for this Government to make sure that it does deliver projects which are ultimately for the benefit of the communities they serve, which are ultimately taking into account all of those considerations which make good infrastructure, and which make popular infrastructure projects in the communities because they are good for those communities, not just road users, not just public transport users, not just the people who see it every day or the people who drive past the community and aren’t impacted by the actual building. Everyone who is affected by these infrastructure projects needs to benefit from them. That is why there is social licence to do something like this, and it’s important that the Government treats its responsibility to govern for all New Zealanders very carefully when it’s implementing a kind of add-on to a process which is well understood and which is well established.
I won’t take much more time, except to say that that is a weighty responsibility: of building infrastructure that many of us won’t see the benefit of, because it will have benefits for the next 30, 40, or 50 years. We need to make sure that we’re putting it in the right place, that it’s serving the right community, that it’s in the interests of everyone, and we have that responsibility going into the future. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Everything about this bill is related to fast track and is related to the Government’s haste in locking in projects that it campaigned on but that, actually, are not the right projects to take us in the direction we know we need to go as a country.
We’ve known for over a quarter of a century that climate change is real, that our transport emissions are rising, that we need to change the way we do things. The funny thing is that changing how we do transport, how we do buildings, how we do food production, how we look after our waterways, how we look after our native forests, and land use, generally—all of that stands to benefit all of us, and I think New Zealanders know that. New Zealanders care about nature. New Zealanders care about their waterways. New Zealanders want trains, coastal shipping, public transport, and warm and dry, affordable homes. We could have all of that if we had a Government that was responsible, and a Government that was caring about people and caring about the planet.
But the changes to the Public Works Act in this bill are about making it easier for the Government to take land away from people in order to push through its priorities, and we can’t support it, because a number of the priorities in the schedule are simply the wrong projects. We know that, because they’re not on the Infrastructure Priorities Programme.
The Government has set up this independent body—you know, we’ve got the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission. They talk all the time about how great it is, but they’re not actually listening to their advice, because if we look at the Draft National Infrastructure Plan, does it say we have a deficit of roads? It sure as heck doesn’t. It says that New Zealand has been spending too much on roads for a really long time and getting really poor outcomes, and that, by the way, we’ve got to use our existing infrastructure better by using levers like direct pricing.
But at least eight of the projects in this schedule are these just outrageous, incredibly expensive four-lane highways for the sake of it, and the Government MPs will get up and say that this is about economic productivity and growth, but it’s just not—like, it’s just not.
I know that they love heckling me about this, and they’re all just so wrong. It’s just sad to see. It’s sad because I naively believed when I came to this place 14 years ago that if we just had a rational conversation about transport and the outcomes that we all want and that we all say we want, then we could get political buy-in across the House for a better approach to transport investment. But the National Party and the ACT Party and the New Zealand First Party do not care about evidence. They do not care about cost-effectiveness. They don’t even care about property rights—they definitely don’t—because this bill is making it easier for the State to take your land.
It’s making it easier and faster so that people have less ability to object through the Environment Court and say, “Actually, no.” That’s what’s happening here, and it’s for a bunch of projects that were on some deranged campaign wish list from Simeon Brown that have no actual basis in reality, because we all know that if you look at the New Zealand Transport Agency’s plan around spending, this plan for all these roads is completely unfunded—like, they have no idea where the money is going to come from to pay for these projects.
We got a briefing at the select committee from the Infrastructure Commission about what would be needed for roads to pay for themselves with tolls, and they have to cost less than $32 million per kilometre, have more than 40,000 vehicles per day, and have time savings of 15 minutes or more. I can tell you, there’s not a single road of national significance that passed that test. There’s not a single one that passed that test. They don’t have 40,000 vehicles a day, they’re way more than $32 million a kilometre, and they’re not going to save 15 minutes. So—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can we come back to this bill—can I ask the member to come back to this bill.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, these projects are in Schedule 2 of the bill, Madam Speaker, and that’s why I’m talking about this. We would totally be open for a conversation about how to have a more efficient Public Works Act that meant we can build critical infrastructure projects, but the reality is that this bill isn’t about critical infrastructure projects. It’s about projects that the National Party promised, in a delusional campaign, that they don’t have money for and that they will never be able to raise money for, because they don’t have a revenue plan to pay for it, and they don’t deliver the outcomes that are claimed. I mean, it’s like a matter of religious belief on the part of that side of the House that a road magically delivers economic productivity and growth. It does not—it does not. What if we could—
Cameron Brewer: Waikato, the fastest-growing city of Hamilton.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Do you know, Mr Brewer has claimed that Hamilton is the fastest growing. Actually, the GDP growth rate is higher in Northland than in Waikato over the last census.
But if we look at the regional GDP growth numbers, the thing is that none of you people over there—sorry, none of you people actually care about evidence or looking at the numbers. You just repeat your talking points and say, “I just think it’s the case. I just think, ‘Oh yeah, I’d build a road. She’ll be right—that’ll make us richer.’” It’s cargo cult economics, and I’m just—like, I’m sad. I’m sad for New Zealand that we have such a poverty of leadership and that the leaders in power don’t care about reality. They’re more interested in winning a debate and pretending to deliver the things they promised to deliver than in actually solving New Zealand’s problems.
That is extremely evident in the news today, because the economy is doing way worse than people even predicted it would, and that’s why the Reserve Bank has had to drop the interest rates, because that’s when you drop interest rates. Reserve banks drop interest rates when the economy is not doing well.
So let’s come back to the Public Works Act.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That’d be nice.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: In my second reading speech, I shared a story about Patricia Grace, and I think that was very relevant to this bill. Patricia Grace and her rūnanga came to our select committee and submitted on this bill and said, back in 2011, 2012, or 2013, when National was first talking about Pūhoi to Wellsford—which they still haven’t delivered, and which will do nothing to help the problem with the Brynderwyns, by the way. National had proposed this Kāpiti Expressway, which had a benefit-to-cost ratio of 0.2, before we had to go back and resurface it again.
Cameron Brewer: Oh, reverse it.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: So that means it cost significantly more than the economic benefits, Mr Brewer, and—
Cameron Brewer: Reverse it—campaign against it. Abolish it.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It’s true. It’s, like, publicly available, Mr Brewer, that the benefit-cost ratio was 0.2.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Excuse me, can we please address the Chair and not have this conversation across the House. It’s not helpful, guys.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It’s all publicly available for anyone who wants to look it up, though I know none of them will. But the road, of course, was planned to go through this land that was not protected Māori land, but was the land of Patricia Grace’s ancestors, and a big part of what we have campaigned for within the Public Works Act is stopping the compulsory taking of Māori land by the State, because too much has been taken and it’s time to stop.
If anyone actually believed in property rights on that side, they would be talking about land back. Land back—we would love to hear it. Land back—because there was a heck of a lot of land theft. This whole country—basically, the colonial project of New Zealand; white New Zealanders coming here to speculate on land. You know, they justified wars in the Waikato—land wars—so that they could steal the land and then sell it off to make a quick buck, and, I mean, I swear that’s still what’s running this country, pretty much.
But tangata whenua actually care about the long-term interests of this place. They’ve been here longer and they have a relationship with the land, and they understand how important it is—that relationship with the land. So Patricia Grace was able to appeal to the Environment Court and the Environment Court found in her favour, and now there is a permanent reserve where there would have been a road. It’s a permanent reserve for the descendants to enjoy for ever , and that’s great. That’s a great outcome.
We’d like to see it possible when there are genuinely projects of public interest, and right now, one of the number one things that is in the public interest is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making it possible for people to move and for goods to move around this country at lower cost and with lower carbon. If that’s what this public works amendment bill was about and there was the ability to prioritise projects on the basis of their contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions—which, by the way, would also reduce cost of living for New Zealanders—then maybe we could talk about supporting it, if it was appropriately protecting all Māori land and having enough safeguards in place. But the Green Party will not support this bill.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I stand here and speak for the sibling of the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 , which is the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill—allowing projects to get under way. We need to get New Zealand in a state of productivity, with a growing economy and a changing and improving state of living for all New Zealanders. This bill is going to do some important things. It’s going to incentivise early settlement, so people can agree to having the Public Works Act take effect on their land, to provide infrastructure for the good of all New Zealand. It’s going to recognise that with early payments. It’s going to protect Māori land, which cannot be acquired under this legislation. Protected Māori land is exempt from this bill. This is going to inform and give time. Thank you.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): I rise to support this bill on behalf of New Zealand First. This bill accompanies the Fast-track Approvals Act. Basically, what it’s about is to speed up the acquisition process for land which is required for public works under the fast-track Act and roads of national significance under the Government policy statement. There’s a very specific set of projects which we have defined as critical infrastructure projects.
A few key elements: first of all, it removes access to the Environment Court. It speeds the process up for everything except for protected Māori land. We heard a bit of angst about that—we’ve heard a bit of angst about that today—but that’s excluded from this. They still have access to the Environment Court. It changes from a sequential process that you had to get the consent or the designation done first. So now you can do it at the same time as the acquisition under the Public Works Act. So it’s a parallel process rather than a sequential one. And then also, as we’ve heard, it allows for financial incentives for early settlement.
But taking people’s land—it doesn’t matter whose land; Māori land is very, very important. For many people, land is very, very significant. It’s a place of memories; a place of blood, sweat, and tears; a place which you have great commitment to. So taking that land is very, very significant. We heard through the select committee process a lot of angst about that process and we actually responded to some of those things.
We did suggest a number of different things, which maybe ought to be thought about, about who the decision maker might be or whether that should be an idea like a panel, like the fast-track approach, the ability to be able to face people face to face and talk about the land acquisition process. We heard a lot about the process— Land Information New Zealand told us a lot about the process—that it needs to be done properly so that you identify whether you’ve actually gone through all the options before you actually say it is this piece of land that we want to take. So we had some considerable assurance given to us about that, and also that the compulsory acquisition process that is already there—[Interruption]—I’m going to take longer if you do that—under section 18 and section 23 of the Public Works Act still applies.
Though what I do want to say is we did increase, as changes were made, the length of time for feedback. We gave people a little bit more time to be able to respond to that knock on the door that says, “We want your land.” Secondly, we also said that there is an obligation—and this is now in the legislation that we’re about to pass—to provide information, to provide that information promptly, comprehensive information, to the people whose land is proposed to be taken so that they are able to respond to that. That’s a really important improvement, I think, to the bill.
But what I wanted to end on is to say we need to grow our economy. That is absolutely essential. If we don’t do that, all the grand aspirations, all the desires that we’ve got on both sides of the House to improve public services, we’re not going to be able to afford those, to be able to pay for all the things that we want to deliver the quality lifestyle for New Zealanders, the quality living standards for New Zealanders. We are not going to be able to afford to do those things.
The Fast-track Approvals Act, the accompaniment of this bill here, and the Public Works Act—they are about trying to make the boat go faster, trying to improve the productivity of “New Zealand Inc.” Because one of the things that we’ve heard is that we’ve talked about an infrastructure deficit, that we are in the top 10 percent of countries in the OECD in terms of investment in infrastructure. Well, we’re in the bottom 10 percent in terms of what we get for that investment. That is something we have to fix.
The Fast-track Approvals Act and this legislation, the Public Works Act amendment bill, are part of doing that. If we don’t do these things, we will continue to languish. We will become a poorer and poorer country. People will continue to leave this country and that is not the country that we want to be. I commend this bill to the House.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I’m going to start with a quote from Patricia Grace, actually: “Tangata whenua in this country have given enough.”
This is a quote from Patricia Grace, who, in 2014, defeated the Government in two court cases after they attempted to confiscate her whānau land to build the Kāpiti Expressway. The land in question is in Waikanae and it belonged to her great-great-grandfather Te Kākākura, also known as Wi Parata. Without the generosity of Wi Parata, neither the township of Waikanae nor the railway line to Manawatū would exist. Because Wi Parata graciously donated this land to the Crown to establish and connect Waikanae to the rest of the country, all he asked for in return was for a kura to be built and for the small parcel of land he left behind for his descendants to remain untouched. The Crown did not honour either of these commitments.
In 2013, the Minister for Land Information and the New Zealand Transport Agency came for that land under the Public Works Act. The taking of land needs to meet the standard of being fair, sound, and reasonably necessary. The Environment Court ruled that the Government’s proposal was not fair, sound, and reasonably necessary. Patricia Grace’s whānau then took the Government on in the court, where they successfully transferred the status of her land to a Māori reservation for the benefit of the descendants of Wiremu Parata, Te Kākākura. As a reservation, this land has now been afforded the protection of being inalienable to the Crown.
Had the Grace whānau not had the resources or public profile to successfully fight the Government in two court cases, their land, their urupā, and the historical significance of this site to our entire nation would have been erased. The whakapapa and livelihoods of future generations would be lost and condemned to instability and poverty. This is the reality for the majority of Māori, and I open my contribution in this way as a real and actual story, and just to acknowledge Julie Anne Genter’s contribution referring to that particular whānau and the battle that they had to take on.
The thing at the moment is that “public works” is a dirty word; it has been for some time. That story expresses that, and coupled with the current reality of—I’m not sure what the number is—particular bills that have been rammed through in the last little while that are impacting directly on Māori lives, on hapū Māori, and on iwi Māori. The thing that has completely vanished down the toilet, if it was ever out of the toilet, in this particular regard, is the relationship and trust that Māori—Māori individuals, Māori hapū, iwi—do not have. The audacity to bring this up and use the same public works—those words—is a foolish and dumb thing, and you’re not going to get the response from Māori that you think you deserve.
Can I now just relate this, my final bit, to what’s going on in Bream Bay. Marsden Point is on the list—and I did discuss this in the committee of the whole House piece. With Marsden Point on the list of projects, right in that same strip of road and of river and of the shopping central to Marsden Point is Bream Bay, where they want to mine the sand. They want to mine sand because they think they can, and they’re just going to bowl in and do that. Now, when you run that scenario up against Marsden Point on the same list, the foolish thing about this is that the community there already distrusts what’s going on, driven by what the Government is doing at the moment.
We don’t support this in any possible way—I think you might have gathered by the way that I’ve been talking—but the thing that is failing and has failed for many, many Māori hapū and individuals is the trust and the lack of trust in this particular Government and the regime of bills that have been rammed through that impact negatively against our families. We would ask, if anyone is listening, to please, think again—please, think again. We cannot support this in any possible way. Kia ora.
HŪHANA LYNDON (Green): I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki to firmly oppose this legislation. Public works has been used as a patu on te iwi Māori for generations. We have lost large tracts of land for the purposes of public good. Public good has imposed State highways, taken huge tracts of land for railways, has put a whole heap of whānau off their lands. Just like Hīhīaua, in the middle of Whangārei, taken through the Public Works Act, removing Hori Rewi from that whenua so you could put the CBD right on top of the whenua of Te Uriroroi, Te Parawhau.
This is lived experience, and it's actually happening now. As I've already heard in the House from my colleague from Te Pāti Māori, in Bream Bay it is proposed to have the Marsden rail spur, Kopuawaiwaha Block—that ahu whenua trust, the one that's left on that side of town, has been fighting to retain their whenua out of the public works takings process, and it's been years that they've been negotiating their way out. Yes, they're out of it now, but why cause all of this stress to whenua Māori landowners, who actually are volunteers in this space? They're barely making a dollar to give an education grant to their whānau, and yet they have to go through a process of many years of negotiating, of engaging lawyers, and trying to plead their case so that their whenua isn't taken for the rail spur to Marsden.
That's the lived reality of many land owners, Māori and Pākehā. In giving up our land for the public good, for these roads of national significance, that's whānau land, that is personal property rights, that is whenua tūpuna tuku iho. Many of those who will lose their lands are tauiwi, are Pākehā whānau too, and you are stripping their ability to go to the Environment Court. It is unheard of that the whānau who are going to be victim to this bill will have to go and ask the Minister for Land Information as to whether they will give a reprieve for that family who could lose their land for a rail spur, who could lose their land for a State highway. What on earth is that about? That's too much ministerial power. Why should they not have the ability to go to the Environment Court? Don't dangle some incentive payments to them. Don't dangle and expect them to give up their property rights for the benefit of all New Zealand.
This isn't just about Māori; it's about all of our whānau and community, because if you've got a connection to the whenua—you've been farming it, you've had your kāinga there—why should you have to give it up for a State highway coming through, or any other public works public good for the betterment of all New Zealand? Māori have already suffered enough, and now we're seeing it happen because this is going to be an overreach of ministerial power. This will see the way that the Minister will come down and they will have the decision as to who will ultimately keep their land or lose their land.
You're removing the right of the Environment Court for the everyday New Zealander to be able to have their time in front of the court. Then you say, “Oh, well, the Māoris get to go to the Environment Court.” I've already said this in the House: it's too expensive. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to the Environment Court. Do the members of the House ever go to the Environment Court? Do you know how much it costs? Yeah, and for hapū who don't have a dollar and whenua Māori landowners, we can't afford it. Sorry about it. Not all New Zealanders are benefiting in this current environment, not at all. We have lived experience right now trying to fight developers who are trying to take whenua Māori, who are trying to destroy the taiao, and you're arguing here that somehow public good works takings, these public works, are going to be good for all New Zealand.
Us here as members of the House need to really think about the ripple effect of dislocation for families, the ripple effect as you remove land out from underneath whānau—tauiwi mai, Māori mai. What will happen? People leave the community; people will have to move and shift away because the roads of national significance are coming right through. We've got that in Waiōmio right now: the road of national significance, aka State Highway 1, goes right through and separates the marae to the wāhi tapu. We have to put signs up and cones in the middle of the road when we go to bury our dead. That's the reality of what we do when we give to the public good.
So kia tūpato, tātou mā—all of us who support this bill, all of you who support this, you be careful, because there will be ripples for future generations. How do we turn around and say, “Oh, aroha mai, moko—yeah, we supported it because we thought a road would be good for New Zealand.”
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is a great bill. It’s going to allow us to get stuff built in this country so that all New Zealanders can benefit from those projects—infrastructure. I think it strikes the right balance. I’d like to say a very special thankyou to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and the Minister for Land Information and officials, including Land Information New Zealand, for working expeditiously to get this bill to this stage. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): You can always rely on Dan Bidois to do a short contribution on a bill that he proclaims is very important. It’s his skill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I look forward to your fulsome contribution.
Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you very much. Nine minutes and 48 seconds to go.
The thing with infrastructure is that, for too long in this country, there has been a short-sighted approach that has led to the politicisation of infrastructure, that has led to a stop-start approach. That is the case across successive Governments. What is really clear from the sector is that they cannot get ahead if that is allowed to continue. The role of the Opposition in that is to provide as much certainty as possible, not just to those that work in the sector, recognising that they have been significantly impacted over the last 18 months to two years. I’m thinking of the construction sector, for example, that have lost 18,000 jobs, and the civil contracting sector, that are seeing record levels of liquidations. We acknowledge the impact that those have on the families involved and, of course, the communities in which they live. They can’t afford for things to be uncertain any more.
It’s not just them, though; it’s the prospect of attracting investment into this country. They are less likely to invest in New Zealand if there is a fear that when there is a change of Government—and there may well be one soon; who knows?—those investments won’t be fulfilled or continued and honoured by any Government that follows this one. The role that we see for us in Opposition is to take whatever opportunity we can to provide certainty. That is why we have committed to honouring any contract that is signed and work that is under way by this Government when we come in and to working with those in the sector to reassure them that we are working with the Government, wherever possible, to provide that certainty. I see this bill as an opportunity to provide that.
The fact of the matter is that the Public Works Act, whilst controversial when it impacts on communities, is essential if we are going to get the infrastructure that we need moving forward. But it is also important to provide certainty to those communities that are impacted as to how that’s going to go about.
I was thinking, as I’ve been listening to the contributions, of the new Manawatū Tararua Highway. Now, that was, essentially, a six- or seven-year project. At the time, it was the largest earthworks project in the country. It was funded and commenced by the Labour Government, and it was recently opened. Now, a big chunk of that time was going through the process of securing land for it to be able to go through. Of course, a very, very brief history was that there was the Manawatū Gorge, but then it had to be closed. I think Simon Bridges was the Minister at the time. He, essentially, closed it because the number of landslides was too frequent for it to remain open. There had to be an alternative. It couldn’t go where the old gorge was. It had to go on the other side of the Manawatū River. But, of course, in doing so, it required the Government, essentially, to acquire private land. That’s not easy. Some of those families had been farming on that land for generations, and for them to give that all up, even if they agreed with the road, which they all did, that was a big ask. It did take time, but I want to acknowledge the way in which the New Zealand Transport Agency, the local community, and the local iwi worked with those landowners to make it work, and it did. It’s a marvellous piece of infrastructure. It’s one which we are very proud of, and we’re very pleased that this Government’s proposal to put a toll on that was quashed after massive community push-back. That would have been a devastating outcome for the community.
The point, though, is that that process could have been made smoother, and there could have been a bit more certainty given to everybody involved. My colleague Arena Williams outlined the areas in which we had concerns about this bill. I think it’s fair to acknowledge the work that she and Rachel Brooking and Tangi Utikere and Damien O'Connor have put into actually trying to work with the Government to make this work. That’s how these sorts of bills should be done. Try and find those compromises because then, if compromises are made, things are less likely to be changed by future Governments, and then people can have more confidence that this is how things are going to operate moving forward. It’s not to say that we agree with absolutely everything in the bill, but if you’re willing to make a compromise, you’re never going to agree with everything.
The Labour Party does support this bill, and we’re happy to see it progress, and we would very much like the Government to continue to work with us. We have offered them an ongoing offer to work with us on the Resource Management Act reform so that we can give everyone confidence that what is settled on will last the test of time, and we genuinely hope that that will continue. There are other areas around infrastructure and planning laws where everyone wins if we try and find that middle ground that will stand the test of time. I commend it to the House.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): New Zealanders have voiced frustration about outdated infrastructure and slow delivery. The stormwater issues we face in Mount Roskill are a clear example of why faster and more efficient infrastructure delivery is urgently needed. This bill modernises the Public Works Act to speed up nationally significant projects. This is a balanced reform that delivers urgency with compensation rights. I commend this bill to the House.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I rise with some pride to hear the name of my whanaunga Patricia Grace mentioned twice today in the House. I’m related to her on her Pākehā side. I have to mihi also to my sister, who I think inherited the English language writing gene and aced her School C. with 90-something percent and does a lot of writing. So I mihi to both of my whanaunga there.
I’ve been listening to this debate and I just really want to acknowledge the seriousness of what we are proposing here and the really fine balance that is needed to be struck. I can hear the mamae from our Māori colleagues, in particular, across the aisles over in the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, talking about what happens when land that has been theirs for generations—or, really, for ever—is deemed to be taken in the public benefit. Also, the Hon Kieran McAnulty talking about the farmlands and those intergenerational farmers—some of them might have century farms, for example—who feel the hurt, and feel it very personally, if it is deemed that there is a public benefit that requires works to be done. So it is a very fine balance.
I know that my colleagues who sat on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee gave it an incredible amount of thought. I feel comfortable that we have landed on the right side due to the strengthening, actually, that occurred in that committee phase.
When I think about the type of situation that we would need this public benefit for, I can look immediately to my own electorate in Taieri, and the flooding situation in South Dunedin, where something like these provisions of the Public Works Act providing more certainty but also more facility to be able to get stretches of land or strategic parts of the electorate that would help to ameliorate flooding is incredibly important. I acknowledge the Dunedin City Council for doing just that when the Forbury racecourse came up for sale, and they took what I think is quite a visionary course of action, which was to purchase that land, hold it without an immediate plan, but knowing that it is strategically incredibly important for the future of South Dunedin and how we handle the flood risk and the water table and the rising tides that are happening there. So I can imagine that, in future, there will be other flood-prone parts of Aotearoa New Zealand that are going to need this type of legislation.
When I look at the bill, I can see that there has been strengthening done around not only certainty but also extensions to enable communities and landowners who do have a legitimate claim to want to debate and to really test out whether the public interest should prevail. Those have been strengthened, and I am grateful for that.
I do take a little bit of issue with some of the Government members saying that this is about growing the economy. Actually, for me, it’s about critical infrastructure. The “growing the economy” line that I hear them say is so much about trickle-down economics. I’d just like to say that, on our side of the House, when we talk about growing the economy, we’re talking about investing in people, we’re talking about feeding our kids in schools and making sure that they’ve got school teachers who are properly paid, that they can get healthcare when they need it, that there are hospital staff available. We see that as an investment. It is about investing in people. This particular bill is about investing in the infrastructure that will support people. So I don’t subscribe to the trickle-down economic theory that we have heard from the Government.
Nevertheless , I do agree that the infrastructure is a very important piece in investing in our people, making sure that they can travel around, that they do have access to the places they need to go, the things they need to do, that we can attract foreign investment, as the Hon Kieran McAnulty has said. For that reason, we do need to have the certainty and we do need to have agreement on these enabling pieces of legislation, because if we’re talking about cross-party support for infrastructure, which I have heard around the walls of this Chamber, then we need to start with agreement and cross-party collaboration on the very enabling legislation that enables that to happen. I think, what we have seen with this bill is a very good example of that, in the select committee stage and in some of the very thoughtful speeches that have been given.
I do want to, again, acknowledge that this has not been done lightly. It has not been done frivolously. It has been done with a great deal of care and thought from Labour members. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): Can I just acknowledge Oliver Crotty , who’s here from Palmerston North Boys’ High School , and, like everyone that drives through the Levin, Horowhenua area, will be as eager as Suze Redmayne and I are to see that new road start construction imminently. That’s why we need this legislation. I commend it to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would just like to reiterate that for something that often gets talked about or mentioned as incredibly important, I would have expected the members of the Government to make a little bit more or add a little bit more information to their contributions—maybe even to try and flesh out some of the reasons as to why this is important, or to provide us with a little bit more confidence in the fact that this is something that they’re absolutely 100 percent committed to, given the enormity of it, really, and all of the factors involved with something that is—fundamentally—acquisition, and what that means not only to individuals but to families and to legacies and to generations.
As has been said, this bill has not been taken lightly. There are several aspects to it that I know the Transport and Infrastructure Committee worked through in so far as on the surface, it might have seemed like a straightforward thing, but then once some information was added to it, there were complexities and there were considerations to be made to ensure that something could be fair and reasonable. But ultimately, this is about getting those key infrastructure projects done and completed and the confidence and the forward-looking nature of that pipeline. So we do support this bill.
We support the Government’s efforts in so far as to aid the construction of that critical infrastructure and also their retention of the right to appeal to the Environment Court in the case of Māori land, which is something that the select committee grappled with. I think it’s one of those things that came out of select committee, in terms of some sort of compromise, and being able to take a step in the right direction while still providing additional payment incentives under that standard process for this land.
There was a lot of talk at select committee, and I do remember subbing in, or being there, for part of that. I didn’t get the opportunity to have a proper overview of everything, but there was a lot of talk about appropriate incentives and making sure that whenever you’re talking about incentives or any kind of carrot-and-stick operation, there is a fine balance. At this opportunity, at this juncture in a process, it is worth spending the time to make sure that that’s been well-thought-out.
We believe the intention of this bill is to streamline the process of land acquisition. Four things are part of that critical infrastructure, and remembering those are things that are listed in that schedule as worthy, but that’s notwithstanding the fact that as my colleague Ingrid Leary pointed out, we do have some concerns and some things that we will be mindful of.
The bill, I think, it’s fair to say, consolidates a reasonable amount of powers with the Minister, in this case the Minister for Land Information , and it does—objectively, it does—remove some checks and balances from the system. That is not something to be done lightly. The bill is potentially confusing for landowners, and certainly for some landowners, it creates some rules, or a set of rules, for some acquisitions and it keeps existing rules for others. That is something to be to be mindful of as well. These are issues that the Government, I think, will need to make sure that they do consider carefully moving forward.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make an assumption that, inevitably, there will be people that see this as an undermining of property rights. The bill changes the process, and it changes the process specifically for those infrastructure projects that are new and in Schedule 2A of this bill. These projects are public works that are specifically listed of the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 and of the roads of national significance. So under this bill, the right of a landowner, or person of interest, to object to land acquisition in the Environment Court is also being written by a written submission process with which there is no opportunity for oral hearings. I think that that is also something that is important to highlight. The judicial process obviously can still be used for a review of those procedural issues, and these written submissions will be sent to the relevant authority. So those are things that have changed.
On this side of the House, certainly the contributors from Labour who sat on that select committee were mindful of that, and there was—well, the House should take some sort of satisfaction in the process, and that there were plenty of discussions along those lines. The Minister must regard every submission when making those decisions. We can take some sort of solace in that and consider the same matters as considering the Environment Court, if it was going through that process. But this bill does not change the Public Works Act itself, in respect to projects that are not on that Schedule 2A; and I think that that is a point worth making and being very explicit about as well.
Māori landowners will still be able to appeal to the Environment Court. The bill will be reviewed after three years of enactment, and I think that that is something that is absolutely worthwhile. When we talk about critical infrastructure—it’s a phrase that kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?—but the word “critical” is important to evaluate in so far as making sure that it is critical and that it is hefty enough to be worthy of the acquisition powers that come with it. Therefore, reviewing the bill in three years, I think, is the right thing to do. We will be supporting this bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 20
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: I move, That the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the hard-working Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by four months and one day after the bill receives its first reading and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any day on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.
This bill introduces a new offence into the Summary Offences Act 1981 for engaging in a targeted and disruptive demonstration outside of a residential premises. I’m sure this bill will be a welcome relief to many MPs, officials, and individuals who, themselves, have been targeted.
The bill targets a narrow range of behaviours that can unreasonably disrupt a resident’s quiet enjoyment of or access to their private property. The new provision would make it an offence to engage in a demonstration near a residential premises that is directed at a person regularly occupying the property, and, importantly, where the demonstrator knows or ought to know that the demonstration is causing an unreasonable disruption in relation to this or another residential premises.
This Government is continuing our commitment to strengthening our democracy. The public’s ability to protest, which is protected by important rights like the freedoms of expression and of peaceful assembly contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, is a cornerstone of our free and democratic society. However, over the last few years we have seen increased reports of demonstrations and protests which target private residences, especially of public persons such as MPs, judges, and other public officials. Such demonstrations can impinge on peoples’ privacy, disturb the quiet enjoyment of their homes, and create an environment of fear and intimidation for individuals, their families, and their neighbours. They also have the potential to deter elected officials from taking stands on contentious issues, which undermines our democracy.
Just as we value the right to protest, privacy is also a key value of our society. It reflects our respect for freedom and individuality. Unreasonable, disruptive intrusions into peoples’ private spaces are simply unacceptable. In particular, the home is the place where anyone should be able to retreat to, irrespective of who they are or what they do for a job.
Current offences do not clearly reflect the importance of privacy in the context of demonstrations and protests that occur near private homes. This has led to difficulties for the police in applying existing offences such as the offence of disorderly behaviour in that situation, even when a demonstration is very disruptive to residents. This is the gap that the new law will fill.
The offence created by the bill is very tightly formulated to ensure that it reflects an appropriate balance of rights and freedoms. The ability to protest is protected under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. But all rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act are subject to such reasonable limitations that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. This new offence is such a reasonable limitation.
The new offence will not stop people from demonstrating or from expressing their views. What this new offence will do is provide reasonable boundaries about how people can demonstrate near private residences in order to better protect peoples’ rights to privacy and the quiet enjoyment of their own homes. The law will only apply to demonstrations that are directed at a person and which occur near a person’s private residence. This includes any place where that person regularly resides, even if it is not their main residence. Demonstrations that affect the enjoyment of or access to a property but are not directed at the person living there are not covered. This could be, for example, a march which passes by that residential premises. That wouldn’t be covered under the Act. The law will only cover unreasonable disruptions for residents.
The bill includes a list of considerations to assist police and the courts, as well as demonstrators themselves, in assessing what is unreasonable. That could include things like the time of day, the duration, the actions of the demonstrators, the level of noise, and the distance to the premises. The offence will protect all New Zealanders; not just MPs or elected officials. This recognises that a wide range of people could be and have been targeted by unreasonably disruptive demonstrations.
The bill itself includes a maximum penalty of three months in jail or a fine of up to $2,000. This aligns with offences of disorderly assembly, intimidation, and other offences under the Summary Offences Act. Other laws provide for higher penalties for more severe forms of disruptive behaviour, such as criminal harassment or assault.
The protection of New Zealanders’ privacy is fundamentally important in our society, as is the ability to protest. The Government upholds both of these values. So I encourage members of the public to have their say on the bill and the protection it introduces when the committee calls for submissions later on this month. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Oh, thank you, Madam Speaker. This is not as straightforward as the Hon James Meager would have us think. Here we have what is essentially a privacy right of residents in a home rubbing up against a free speech right, and that is a challenge. There was the case, I think, of Brooker v Police where the Supreme Court found that protesting outside someone’s home by singing songs with a guitar was not disorderly behaviour, because it was effected not in a public place but the disorder was, in fact, in a private place. So if that’s your problem, the easy fix is actually to fix the offence of disorderly behaviour and make it clear that disorder that flows into private premises can, in fact, still amount to that offence.
But if we pass this law, we will stand apart as being one of the very few countries that claim to be a liberal democracy which is actually prohibiting a demonstration. This is targeted to suppress political action, and that’s not something that we can support in the Labour Party, and certainly not in this form.
It’s surprising that the Government is bringing in a piece of legislation which chips away at free speech rights. I accept and I know that there are people in this House that have suffered from people acting inappropriately outside of their residences, and there are remedies for that. The police do have remedies for that already, but to have a targeted piece of legislation, notwithstanding the kind of purported constraints that it has to be an unreasonable demonstration, it has to be unreasonably disruptive—the point of political action is to disrupt. It is not to be nice. It’s not to be convenient. Protest is disruptive; that’s what a protest is. Now, there might be some quiet protests, but you don’t think the Springbok tour was stopped by people being nice. You don’t think that apartheid was broken by people being nice. I know we don’t agree. There are people out there with whom we don’t agree. There are people with whom I fiercely disagree. We only have to think about some of the protests that we’ve seen.
Protests which cross the boundary, which are trespasses, which engage in genuinely disruptive, disorderly behaviour—the police can intervene. They can do that already. But to say that someone who is being unreasonably annoying can’t protest, can’t have their free speech rights, can’t get their political view across, as much as I disagree with it, is a retrograde step. We in the Labour Party believe that when those two rights rub up against each other, when they knock into each other, the right of seclusion, the right to be peaceful in one’s home, has to be balanced against the right of political action. We don’t think that this Government has struck that balance right. In our view, as we see the law, there are tools there that the police can use already and do use already. The Associate Minister for Police can have her say any time she likes, and I look forward to listening to it, but the law currently before this House, the stalking bill, deals with harassing behaviour and it is exactly directed at harassing and annoying behaviour which is intended to cause distress, so we have an additional tool that will be suitable here.
What I won’t see is a law which says, “You cannot protest. You are being disruptive in such and such a way.” If we see this, what next? Where else can’t people express their views? I know the ACT Party stands firm on these values, so I’m fascinated to hear what they’re going to say on this bill as well, because free speech is an important right.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, I recognise that threats to people’s safety or their family’s safety are unacceptable. But I would agree with my colleague that there are already processes and legislation and offences to address that.
In the regulatory impact statement for the matter of addressing protests outside private residences, it says that this kind of protest has been a longstanding but minor part of protesting. It also says that there is a lack of complete data about how much of an issue this is—perhaps we should say there is an almost complete lack of data about how much of an issue this is.
The right to protest is a fundamental part of democracy. There are protests that I have been part of for homosexual law reform, for protesting about the nuclear testing in Mururoa, for a number of other things. Of course there are protests that I do not choose to join in, because I don’t agree with them. But everybody has that right to protest. If some people do a silent vigil—I remember the vigil about climate change. It was just one man a lot of the time, Ollie Langridge, standing there silently. Sometimes—though I don’t think my colleagues opposite always recognise it—silence is a very good form of protest; they should try it.
I am really proud of our New Zealand courts that have declined to balance the right of privacy against New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights. I think that we should, in this case, take the lead from the courts and not introduce a new offence, and particularly not introduce a new offence with disproportionate punishment. Three months in prison, $2,000 fine—this is not a parking ticket.
Hon Member: No, we’ll defund the police!
CELIA WADE-BROWN: It would be really good if some members of the Opposition actually read our policy and understood our policy, but there we are!
I also think that reducing the number of unreasonably disruptive residential protests—there are people who work night shifts, so does that mean that if they happen to be working night shifts, then we need to consider a daytime protest a problem, or is it for people who are working in the day and go home maybe after their long day supporting Parliament when we’re working under urgency until midnight? We may enjoy it, but I’m sure some of the staff don’t. Is it something that’s going to wake them up at 2 in the morning? Sometimes you need to be noisy to be heard, to make your democratic point. This is not about threats to human safety. It is not about trespass. It’s about creating a new offence when you might be outside a residence.
There are words in here about the person knowing where someone lives and choosing to protest outside that place, or, as Mr Meager introduced, there are various definitions of “residence”, and so forth. You could almost take it to an extreme, that there are a number of MPs who, I believe, live in some of the nearby apartments, like the Kate Sheppard Apartments, during the week. So if somebody’s coming and protesting at Parliament and they’re protesting about the actions of a particular party or a particular Minister, then they will be heard at Kate Sheppard. Think of all of the banging on the drums and the banging on the pots the other day in a very unplanned but quite lively demonstration—you know, a slash demonstration—you could see it being misused, as well.
So the Green Party thinks this is disproportionate and punitive sentencing for protesting.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. Thank you.
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill. It’s been interesting, hearing some of the contributions so far. Look, yes, we completely accept that there are two competing rights here: the right to privacy and the right of freedom of speech or to protest and demonstrate. That’s very clearly set out in the documents before this House. But what we’re seeking to do here is actually have a discussion about how you get that balance right and how, actually, can we ensure that New Zealanders—some of them will be public officials, but as the Minister, in introducing the bill, correctly pointed out, this actually can cover all New Zealanders. Again, we’ve started to see, disturbingly actually, that overseas some CEOs and other company officials are being targeted in the way that this bill might seek to stop.
It’s going to go to a select committee, so New Zealanders out there will have their say, and rightly so, on whether this is an appropriate piece of law to put into place. I also note that all parties across the House had advanced notice of this legislation, so it’s not been sprung on anyone. They’ve actually been briefed on it and about why it has come about.
It’s also clear in the legislative statement about why the police don’t think they have sufficient powers currently. It says, “Police are not clearly empowered to intervene in protest or other demonstration outside people’s houses, even when they are causing significant disruption or distress to residents.” So I think it is worthwhile, at least going through the select committee process and uncovering what powers the police do or don’t have currently. But they’re saying they don’t have sufficient powers.
I know for myself—I don’t know where other people live—but I know in my main residence, if people were to start protesting loudly in the middle of the night outside of my house, maybe shining laser beams, laser pointers, into my windows, I would be disrupted. I don’t live on some farm where I can get away from people; they would literally be outside of my house, on public space, so they’d be quite entitled to do that. But they could actually be very disruptive. I actually live in a community where the neighbours are quite close, so they wouldn’t just be disrupting me, they’d be disrupting lots and lots of families with small children, etc. I do not think it’s necessarily unreasonable to look at whether that kind of intrusion into my privacy and the privacy of my neighbours and my community would be unreasonable.
Again, as has been pointed out, we are actually just adding to the summary offences. The penalties in the draft legislation align with other similar offences. And again, there are some safeguards about what is unreasonable. Again, actually, as the previous Green spokesperson—Celia Wade-Brown—talked about, you actually do need to look at the time of day that the protest might be occurring, what is the nature of the disruption, etc. So again, there are some things in there.
Yes, we totally accept, in ACT, that we are balancing two competing rights, but let’s dive into that. It obviously has become necessary because of what’s been occurring in some parts of our community in recent times, and so let’s look at that, let’s do it in a kind of a methodical way, and actually have a reasonable discussion. We commend this bill to the House.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Police): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill. It is a sad, sad indictment on our democracy that we need to have this legislation, but the fact is that we know we have politically motivated groups who will purposely release private residential addresses of elected officials and business people in order to invoke an intimidatory approach to dealing with decisions.
Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It’s in the stalking bill. Doxxing is in the stalking bill.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: This is the point: we have to balance legislation to ensure that the police, when they’re called to provide protection, have the suitable powers and rights to intervene as necessary. This is not a limitation on protesting. This is not a limitation of having your voice heard. This is protection for people’s private residence, their children, and their families. If we do not do something to protect private residences, then, as we’ve seen occur recently, personal addresses of people, even people who are unrelated to decision making, are being put on public platforms to entice people to create this level of intimidation.
It is unacceptable that we have to pass legislation like this, but the reality is the reality, and my neighbours and my children and my mother did not sign up to be intimidated. Intimidation is someone simply standing at the end of your driveway, staring at you. That is intimidation. We have heard repeatedly in this House about members who are feeling unsafe, who have felt intimidated, abused, and threatened. Members across this House, on both sides, talk about feeling unsafe. Well, the very least we can do is provide some protections to your home, to your family, and to ensure that you have an absolute right to protest, you have an absolute right to be heard, but that your home will be protected. It is absolutely reasonable to say that we will ensure that voices can be heard but my children, my mother, and my family will not have to bear the price of the decisions or the public position that I hold.
I think there isn’t a member in this House that wouldn’t see that as reasonable, if they actually sat back and considered what this bill is proposing to do. To scaremonger by suggesting that a protest in Parliament would invoke somebody being arrested because MPs live in the Kate Sheppard building is absolutely ridiculous. The bill says that it’s targeted at the house. That’s what it will be used for. This is about presenting some powers so that when we need protections put in place for private residences, there is a power that the police can use. We commend this bill to the House.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau): I think if the police aren’t doing their job, then they should check their enforcement rules already. I mean, of course, you should feel safe at your own home, around your own home, to your gate, and so on. So of course any reasonable-minded person in this House would get that. I certainly get that and, in fact, I’ve been training and teaching aikido and a whole number of things for a very long time, so we have done what we can to look after those things for ourselves at the same time.
Obviously, there are some, possibly even in this House, who do feel at risk at their gateway or up their drive or whatever it is. I just want to say to ring the police. I’d just say that’s a 111 call. I would say that there are already systems in place that should just take care of that. They should, obviously, take care of that. That’s what I would do. Well, when one is feeling unsafe even now, who do you call? Ghostbusters. You know, you call the police. That’s the point. I mean, there are things that are already in place.
If they’re not happening in the right way, then check their practice, check their own systems, but don’t suddenly go and put another little bill in the place because there might be five or six that are having some real feelings about this stuff. I mean, just so you know, this stuff has been going on in homes and families that I know about and have witnessed for a very long time, so if you’re having feelings, get your stuff in order, I would say.
This is just a short call, and I don’t mean to be disparaging of all the feelings, but I’m taking this very short call on this because I do think it needs to be prosecuted in a better and more detailed way, but just short enough as a call to show the regard for this, unlike some of the colleagues on the left, who show very little regard for the public’s worth in those actual, serious matters. Thank you. I completely oppose it and others will too, so good evening.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): I rise in this first reading of the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill, in support of this bill. I find it very hard to believe that some members around this House think that if you disagree with someone politically, you can turn up at their house and harass their family. A lot of us in this House have young families, and it’s totally inappropriate that our children should be harassed for our doing our job. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. At its heart, this bill is about restricting the right of New Zealanders to protest, and that right is a fundamental right to our democracy and one that is protected under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
Yes, protest sometimes is noisy, sometimes can be inconvenient, and sometimes can be really hard for those people who are nearby to deal with, but those are the very qualities also that make protests effective. Protest has always been the way that ordinary New Zealanders have held powerful people to account, and we are concerned that this ability is being curtailed by this legislation.
We recognise that demonstrations outside people’s homes can cross the line, and there are times when they can be deeply intrusive to families. We take concerns about that incredibly seriously. But the answer to that situation is not to just rush through legislation that erodes fundamental freedoms. Police already have the powers to deal with unreasonable behaviour. I have been a manager within a police policy team, and we have dealt with these issues and we have looked at what existing legislation is there already. I’m sure that when police have been asked, they would say, “We want additional powers.” Police always say that, when they’re asked if they want additional powers. But there’s often a process about disrupting the public peace, about causing unruly behaviour. There’s a series of existing provisions in there that can be utilised, if required, so we on this side are not quite convinced the existing legislation does not provide adequate protections for instances such as those.
What we see is that this bill proposes an unnecessary and somewhat blunt instrument that may well risk capturing legitimate protest activity, and we would not want to see that. We need to remember our history: when Pasifika were subjected to the cruelty of the Dawn Raids—and I think there’s a documentary coming out with some of the ancestors of the member opposite prevalent in it—it was protesters who took a stand in carrying out reversing on the Dawn Raids on Ministers’ homes, shining spotlights, using loudspeakers, demanding justice. Those actions helped to expose and to end a gross injustice that’s a part of New Zealand’s history. If this law had been in place, those brave voices might have been silenced, and that should give us pause to have a think about what we are doing here.
We know that the select committee process will bring some really interesting submissions, and I welcome those. All those community groups who want to have their voices heard should front up to the select committee and make sure that they have the opportunity. We’re lucky that this is one of the pieces of legislation that isn’t being passed under urgency, so New Zealanders do get to exercise their voice and have a say on this.
There are also practical issues. Some residences double as places where protest is expected and appropriate, such as embassies, where an ambassador often lives onsite. Even here, in Parliament, the Speaker has an apartment within these grounds. This bill is unclear about how it would apply in those cases, and I’m sure the select committee will be asking those questions. We potentially risk creating confusion for both the courts and the police, who already sometimes struggle to interpret protest law consistently.
What makes this bill even more concerning is the broader context. New Zealanders are already finding it harder to get by. Under Christopher Luxon and this Government cutting women’s pay, making it harder to see a doctor, pushing up the cost of living, and pushing up the cost of local water bills, families are struggling to pay the bills while this Government looks after property speculators and fossil fuel companies. And now, rather than addressing the real issues facing middle New Zealand, they want to clamp down on the right of New Zealanders to make their voice heard. They’ve already taken away the right to partial strike, and there are inklings towards other issues as well. New Zealanders deserve to be able to voice their dissent against the actions of the Government.
We take a different view. We think we should be focusing on what matters: tackling the cost of living, making healthcare more affordable and accessible, ensuring people have access to warm, dry homes, and making sure that when they go to work and get paid it’s enough money to be able to pay the bills. Those are the real issues. We know that New Zealand is strong when people are looked after, and we know that part of that strength comes from protecting our democratic rights here in New Zealand, and that includes our right to protest.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): So it was a quiet, cold Easter Sunday night at about 9.30 in 2023 when a whole bunch of people turned up on my pavement outside my house, banging on pots and pans with loud hailers, screaming abuse at me, trying to get my attention. All they did was get more of my attention, of course, but then they got the attention of all of my neighbours, who, luckily, were the ones who managed to come out and get rid of them. I didn’t in any way expect that my family and my neighbours would be put in that situation because of my choice to become a politician. I do not commend anybody across the House who would think that any action like that is in any way OK, and to hear them sit across there and say that that’s a legitimate way to protest and get action on things like that is absolutely abhorrent. I commend our bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a saying that many of us owe our human rights more to protest than we do to the goodwill of politicians. Perhaps it’s not the audience to put that statement to, but I think it’s undeniable that protest has, in so many ways, shaped the evolution of human rights and that we ought to be very cautious about deteriorating that right. In fact, we’ve seen that happen overseas, where in places like Russia, you’ve had people hold up a sign that says two words and be arrested for that. The attacks on freedom of expression don’t happen in full; they happen piece by piece.
I think what’s problematic about this—because I do acknowledge to the members opposite that there are times when you do need to limit the right to freedom of expression—is that it reduces the threshold of what would count as an arrestable offence from, effectively, disorderly or offensive behaviour, to unreasonable disruption, but it also increases the penalty. So it’s not trying to match what a police officer could arrest for in a public space; it’s actually creating quite a new offence. The offence that exists under “disorderly” is an offence where the penalty is a $1,000 fine. This new offence lowers the threshold and it also makes it an imprisonable offence. So it is a very different framing against the right of freedom of expression.
Again, acknowledging that there are times when we do need to limit this right, the first question to ask isn’t whether this a reasonable limitation; it’s an assessment of the current legislative framework to see whether it adequately responds or not. We have two disorderly offences—[Interruption]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Too much noise on my right.
VANUSHI WALTERS: —which sit under the Summary Offences Act, which the police do currently use. We do also have the stalking and harassment provisions which are coming through the House, which are drafted very, very broadly. My read of that legislation is that it could be possible for someone who has concerns to notify police so that they can provide a notice to the individual or individuals at the scene of a protest outside a house, once that legislation is through the pipeline. Now, arguably, if the police do that, then any continued presence on those grounds could potentially constitute a second offence as well. So the question is always whether what we are doing is essential in terms of an additional limitation of the right to freedom of expression. We have other provisions in the summary offences—it’s actually two times over the course of two years. So if you had someone who was staying there who was notified once, once they stayed after that it could potentially be the second notification.
We have other offences, as well, that the police can use in circumstances like this, including section 28, “Being found in public place preparing to commit offence”. That’s a prior issue where if the police are on site, they’re able to then take action, or peeping or peering into a dwelling house, where, again, you have someone who’s very proximate. So there is a legislative framework there. I would just say that we need to be very, very cautious about taking additional steps in this area, because of the chilling effect that that will create.
Two more things before I close. I do have a concern about who gets prioritised in terms of protection against potential abuse. When we were in Government, we started work on hate speech law, which was then with the Law Commission. This Government has paused that work and, effectively, said, “No, we’re not going to look at the abuse that you are suffering.” Our Muslim community have said that they are not happy with that. I think it’s appalling to prioritise this work before that important work, which resulted as a result of the mosque attacks and the inquiry.
Finally, I have a deep concern about the layered erosion of rights. When I came back into the House, it was an attack on women’s rights to pay equity. Last sitting block, it was, effectively, the attack on electoral rights, and, this week, we’re seeing a gentle erosion of the right to freedom to protest. I don’t think that this is the Government that its voters expected to see. I think New Zealanders should be very concerned, but, more than that, I think New Zealanders must ensure that they are registered to vote next year.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): What a shameful display from a Labour Party that has lost its way so much—not one single policy idea. Instead, they just find themselves entrenched in this behaviour of opposing anything that comes up, no matter how logical. No one is removing anyone’s right to protest; we are protecting that, but we are also protecting people’s right to the quiet enjoyment of their home. Whether they are a councillor or a mayor or a business person or a public servant, they have the right. Living in community comes with rights, but they come from responsibilities. You can’t just do it if you want. You can’t set up a factory in your back lawn, and you can’t just turn up in the middle of the night outside someone going about their business and harass their family. This is sensible, and the Labour Party need to take a good, hard look at themselves. I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Summary Offences (Demonstrations Near Residential Premises) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Justice Committee.
Bills
Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 14 August.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The part we got to about this time last week was that the question is that the motion be agreed to and the Hon Jenny Salesa’s speech. Thank you.
Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu): Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker, and happy Tongan Language Week. I’ve got to say, it is so good that Tongan Language Week happens to fall on this week. Usually, we are not in session when we celebrate Tongan Language Week.
As the spokesperson for Customs for the Labour Party, it is my honour to be part of this debate on the Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. On the face of it, when you look at this proposed law, it looks and sounds very reasonable. It is a bill that’s proposed to help the New Zealand Customs Service—and it is the oldest department that we have—to do its role. Customs has been around for close to 185 years. This bill promises a fairer treatment, especially in terms of returned goods. It also covers waste minimisation and GST reform.
But when you look closely and when you read this bill clause by clause and understand better the real-world consequences that this bill will have, it becomes clearer, particularly in Part 1 of this bill, that it takes an unusual turn. The Government, through this bill, gives the executive sweeping powers to impose new levies without adequate checks, and we risk the scales being tipped against the very people who can least afford to pay these levies.
So what does Part 1 of this bill do? Well, the Minister, through this bill, will be able to amend the Customs and Excise Act 2018 to create an entirely new levy power, because new section 414A inserted by clause 6 will allow the Government, by regulation via Order in Council, to impose levies on virtually anyone involved in importing or exporting goods. Now, the Minister will probably call this cost recovery, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It is a new taxation power handed to the executive to be executed without direct parliamentary oversight on an undefined group of people for an undefined range of services for an undefined cost. In fact, in new section 414A(2), the bill even goes so far as to state that when Customs actually recovers the costs from those that it can charge these new levies to, it can do so “without limitation”, which is actually quite outrageous. This matters and it is important because these levies won’t hit everyone equally and it won’t necessarily be fair on all of those who will be affected.
So who will actually pay these new levies? We expect that it would affect small to medium businesses the most. The Government said that it is about making the system fairer, that it is about spreading the cost of managing goods at the border, but what we in the Opposition would like to know is: well, fairer, but for whom? Because in reality, small businesses, particularly nowadays, especially family-run importers, migrant and ethnic businesses, Māori and Pacific businesses, and traders, those who are trading on slim margins—and we know that small businesses are finding things really tough right now—are most likely to be the ones who will feel these new levies the most.
So a big importer is most likely to be in a better position to absorb another fee, but a small one with small margins, during this time of economic recovery, most probably cannot. Guess what happens next? Well, those new extra levies and costs are most likely to be passed on. Probably not to be felt by the multi-million or billion-dollar conglomerates. But if you are a mum buying nappies online or if you are a student ordering your books online or if you’re a senior returning a faulty hearing aid that you ordered online, those are likely to be the ones who will be affected.
Another couple of examples of those likely to be affected by this bill are: a Filipino family - owned business in South Auckland who started a small import business a few years ago, bringing in culturally specific products and food items from the Philippines and which Filipinos are not likely to find in supermarkets. They are not corporate giants. They probably don’t have a Customs broker on call. But now, under this bill, they could face new levies, audit powers, possible fines, and recordkeeping obligations that they themselves did not foresee coming their way.
Another example—and this is an example close to my heart—is a Tongan community group that occasionally exports donated goods or materials or groceries. I was involved in such a voluntary effort. After the tsunami a couple of years ago—this is during COVID times—I and many other volunteers got together. We were based from Mount Smart Stadium. We appealed and we were able to get the support of a lot of small businesses, including import and export folks. We were just a group of volunteers. We did not have any money. So we were asking businesses to donate containers, to donate some of the groceries that would go into these containers, and many of them did. We also, of course, asked Tongans in New Zealand. There are 104,000 Tongans in Aotearoa New Zealand nowadays, and many of them donated. We sent a total of 96 20-foot containers to Tonga, mainly of nonperishable foods and groceries.
But a group like that is also likely to be caught up in the net of these new levy orders. Clause 6 and clause 11 of this bill include enforcement provisions that could see people fined or prosecuted simply for misunderstanding the new, complex rules. That’s not necessarily fairness. That could be classed as punishment disguised as a policy.
But our concerns are not just about fairness on the ground. I also have questions about good lawmaking. Taxation powers should not be handed over lightly. In a democracy like Aotearoa New Zealand, revenue decisions should be made by Parliament in the open, with full scrutiny. Instead, this bill allows the executive to impose future levies by Order in Council—a process that bypasses robust, democratic debate. The only safeguard is a vague requirement for reasonable consultation. But reasonable consultation—reasonable to whom?
However, let me now turn to the parts that we absolutely agree with, which is Part 2. It amends the Waste Minimisation Act. It is a smart and overdue step forward. It empowers Customs to collect environmental stewardship fees like the tyre recycling fee under the Tyrewise programme at the point of import. That is efficient, it is effective, and it reflects the “polluter pays” principle that Labour has long championed.
We also support Part 3, which amends the Goods and Services Tax Act, fixing a longstanding anomaly where if you return a faulty imported good or receive a warranty replacement, you shouldn’t be taxed again. I want to be clear, though, that we are not against Customs being sustainably funded. We are not against smart cost recovery. In fact, Labour actually supports this bill at second reading, but we have a number of reservations, as I covered. Thank you.
FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take my call on the Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The Greens broadly support this bill, because it enables three key things. It enables Customs to establish levies to recover costs incurred undertaking their critical functions. It provides clarification around roles and responsibilities and product-stewardship legislation. It allows GST to be removed in certain cases from imported or exported products returned under warranty. While the Greens do broadly support this bill, I want to speak to some of the wider issues and some of the issues that have been previous that have been raised by the previous speaker, the Hon Jenny Salesa. And I do want to speak about the wider issues and difficulties that we have faced in the Customs space, and to stress that this enablement of this legislation now is not going to come even halfway close to meeting those challenges.
To the point of the bill enabling cost recovery to undertake its functions, I want to acknowledge all the hard-working Customs officials, both in the front lines and on the back lines, who all play a critical role in protecting New Zealand’s border. From facilitating the movement of people and goods through our borders and also all the essential work that Customs New Zealand carries out, they do a vital and challenging job. We need to acknowledge their mahi and the importance of adequately funding the public services that they provide. To everyone that works in the customs space, thank you for the work that you do. You are appreciated and you are seen.
Acknowledging the role of our public service workers in customs is critical, particularly within the context of the current meth crisis. We’ve seen The Spinoff reporting that meth consumption has nearly doubled over the second half of 2024 and remained elevated in 2025. Now, this is a wider public health emergency, which will require coordinated response across Government, with border operations playing a critical role in preventing meth. That’s why the cost-recovery functions are really important. A March report from the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational Serious and Organised Crime warned that New Zealand is losing the fight against organised crime as meth seizures reach record levels and signs of corruption accelerate. The group was told by enforcement agencies about trusted insiders at ports and airports helping to retrieve concealed shipments of illicit drugs before Customs inspections. It’s really vital that the cost-recovery functions that this bill will help enable will help deal with some of the critical issues that they’ve raised. They further report that New Zealand is the only Five Eyes country without a whole-of-Government, national anti-corruption strategy, and that this has created a significant gap in this country’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to corruption risks in both the public and private sectors.
In light of these confronting reports, we do need urgent coordinated action to address this crisis, which this bill will play some small part in enabling. We need critical strategic Government investment and we need cross-partisan commitment which recognises the scale of the problem and the cost-effectiveness of treating these problems before they escalate further. We need a strategic Government approach that actually addresses these issues. How much has the complacency over the past years and successive Governments actually enabled and facilitated the scale of this crisis? Are we too hamstrung by the idea of having to realise short-term cuts to actually focus on investing wider public services in New Zealand?
Now, this current Government would have the New Zealand public believe that they can make the cuts that they did, on the other hand, in one year, and then pretend like they’re not going to recoup the cost of the cuts later, as is enabled through the collection of levies in this bill. It makes no sense to underinvest in border services, then pay for this tenfold through our health services, through our social services, and, most importantly, through the human cost to our communities. I urge this Government to go further than this bill, to listen to the expert advisory group on transnational serious crime, and to get serious about addressing the corruption at our borders, reinvesting in our public services, and adequately fund the border service to address the scale of the threat we face. And I acknowledge the Government has made some moves towards refunding the service in the previous Budget.
To move towards technical points around this bill, I note that any move towards fuller cost-recovery through this bill doesn’t come without costs. In their submission to this bill, the Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Federation of New Zealand acknowledged that levies are seen as a more flexible and fair mechanism compared to fees, but that the imposition of new levies could disproportionately affect businesses already facing increased compliance costs and global economic pressures. It is a tough environment out there for people in New Zealand, particularly for importers and exporters, which is why we need to be thinking strategically about where we place public resources and be upfront where tax cuts and costs are being kicked down the line.
The customs workers in Freight Forwarders Federation of New Zealand also say in their submission that the lack of prior consultation with stakeholders is a critical shortfall. This is a criticism specifically about this Government’s approach to the bill but also more broadly could be applied to the wider problem of the under-consultation that’s occurred with critical Government bills, such as the pay equity one, which didn’t even go through a consultation phase. Sadly, this bill is not immune to this Government’s general approach to consultation. Unlike a raft of other legislation this Government has moved through the House, the regulatory impact statement for this bill does meet requirements, and I acknowledge that for once this Government has listened to official advice and the officials’ preferred option is in sync.
The 7 April departmental report on this bill does not recommend any changes based on the submissions that were made, and we welcome the parts of the bill that enable greater efficiency of process and fairness. The clarification around roles and responsibilities in product stewardship legislation, and the removal of GST in certain cases from port—oh, we’re nearly there. Is it 6 p.m. yet?
Hon Members: Yes.
FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Oh, great—wonderful. In conclusion, the Greens will be supporting this bill, and we really hope that this Government keeps the improvements in mind that the previous member supported—and support the right to repair! Kia ora.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 September 2025.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 6 p.m.