Tuesday, 18 November 2025
Continued to Friday, 21 November 2025 — Volume 788
Sitting date: 18 November 2025
TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025
TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
KARAKIA/PRAYERS
KARAKIA/PRAYERS
TEANAU TUIONO (Assistant Speaker): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kīngi, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.
[Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King, and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility for the welfare, peace and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]
Petitions, Papers, and Select Committee Reports
Petitions, Papers, and Select Committee Reports
SPEAKER: No petitions have been delivered for presentation. Ministers have delivered 12 papers to the Clerk.
CLERK:
2024-25 annual reports of
Education Payroll Ltd
Climate Change Commission
Health Research Council of New Zealand
Network for Learning Ltd; and
Pharmac.
long-term insights briefings on
building New Zealand’s long-term resilience to hazards; and
the future of Public Service integrity.
Investment Statement 2025.
2025-26 statements of performance expectations for
Education Payroll Ltd
the Health Research Council of New Zealand
Network for Learning Ltd; and
Pharmac.
SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Nine select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.
CLERK:
Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the 2023-24 annual review of Te Pūkenga
reports of the Environment Committee on the
petition of Forest & Bird; and
report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Urban ground truths: Valuing soil and subsoil in urban development
reports of the Justice Committee on the
petition of H Hakepa; and the
petition of Jody Hopkinson
reports of the Petitions Committee on the
petition of Carin Robinson; and the
petition of Yasmeen Altaher
reports of the Primary Production Committee on the
Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill; and the
Briefing on the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust.
SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and briefings are set down for consideration. A bill—
Amended Answers to Oral Questions
Question No. 10 to Minister, 12 November
Question No. 9 to Minister, 13 November
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister for the Public Service): Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct answers I gave during oral questions on 12 November 2025.
SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: In answers to oral question No. 10 on 12 November 2025, I advised that neither the Prime Minister nor I had advance knowledge of the Public Service Commission’s intention to pay for advertising to reach audiences affected by the strikes. That statement was correct. Neither the Prime Minister nor I were told in advance. I also note that in answers to a follow-up question on the same topic—question No. 9 on 13 November 2025—my colleague the Hon James Meager also stated that I was not informed in advance. However, late in the day on 13 November 2025, my office discovered that it had been informed, on 17 October, that the communications would include paid social media. Either earlier information Public Service Commission had not advised it would be paid, and the addition of the word “paid” was not noticed by my office, being in an A3. The Public Service Commission also did not highlight the change, as it has used paid social media before, most recently in 2022. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Voting
Correction—Medicines Amendment Bill
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to correct a vote which was mistakenly given on my behalf on the Medicines Amendment Bill third reading.
SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: My vote on the Medicines Amendment Bill third reading was given as one against. It should have been one in favour.
SPEAKER: Thank you. A bill has been introduced—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Do you recall me raising a point of order about the authority for certain members to have their vote cast the way it was? I was overruled, and here we have got somebody now correcting it. That was only a week ago.
SPEAKER: Yeah.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, maybe there's a lesson I would like to hear that we've learnt.
SPEAKER: Well, if you're expecting some sort of humble pie exercise from me, it’s not happening. A bill is—
TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Tai Tonga): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to correct a vote which was mistakenly given on my behalf on the Medicines Amendment Bill third reading.
SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.
Tākuta Ferris: My vote on the Medicines Amendment Bill third reading was given one against. It should have been one in favour.
SPEAKER: Thank you. Well, in response to the Rt Hon Winston Peters, I'm starting to back down a little bit. I think that if other parties are being asked to cast votes for people who have Speaker’s leave, they should make sure that the people casting those votes understand exactly what was required.
Introduction of Bills
Introduction of Bills
SPEAKER: A bill has been introduced.
CLERK: Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill, introduction.
SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading.
Urgent Debates Declined
Transfer of Funding—Bridge Funding in Hutt South Electorate
SPEAKER: Members, I have received a letter from Tangi Utikere seeking to debate, under Standing Order 399, the decision by the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Finance to transfer funding to fund a bridge in the Hutt South electorate. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. I have considered this matter carefully, recognising that expense transfers do occur. Having weighed the interests of the House and ministerial probity with the high bar for urgent debates, I do not think this matter warrants setting aside the business of the House today. The application is declined.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Prime Minister
1. Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all the Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and can I just personally extend the member a very warm congratulations on his recently announced engagement and wish him and his fiancée all the very best for the future.
SPEAKER: I’m surprised it wasn’t a snap debate application.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: I can assure the Prime Minister there were no Government actions involved. Does he agree with the immigration Minister that over 200,000 people leaving the country is just due to “normal economic cycles”; if so, how much more exodus of talent do we need to see before the Government will stop treating it as simply business as usual?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as we have discussed in recent weeks, people go overseas to earn more money, and the reality is we have been through incredibly difficult and challenging economic times—not helped by that member’s previous Government that created a huge amount of economic pain and suffering for people—but, as I have said before, if the member really cared about this issue, he would back mining because there is a lot of New Zealanders going overseas to Australian mines for high-paying jobs. I haven’t heard him categorically rule out the Greens’ recent madness.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he accept that rising unemployment in New Zealand, including 20,000 fewer jobs in building and construction, under his leadership is one of the reasons that Kiwis are giving up and leaving?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: As I said before, it’s been a very difficult time. Unemployment rising is a function of wasteful Government spending, driving up inflation, driving up interest rates, putting an economy into recession, and that’s why this Government is doing everything it can to balance the books and to make sure we have prudent economic management. It’s been good to see commentators reporting that unemployment is now peaking. We obviously want to see that coming down, but one of the ways we do that is we create opportunity for our people here at home. That means supporting fast track so we can create job-rich infrastructure projects, it means supporting mining, and it means repealing the oil and gas ban—good things that create high-paying jobs in regional New Zealand.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why does he regard infrastructure spending as wasteful spending, given it is one of the areas where his Government has reduced public spending?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I don’t. It’s great to see the infrastructure pipeline has increased, yet again, this quarter. More projects are being financed, more projects are under way, and that’s a good thing.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why has his Government agreed to a policy on financial support for unemployed 18- and 19-year-olds that, potentially, offers more financial support to low-income parents who reduce the amount of paid work they undertake?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We stand by our policy on 18- to 19-year-olds because we’re not prepared to consign young to a life on welfare unlike the previous administration. At a time when there was 3.2 percent unemployment and 60,000 more people put on unemployment benefit, that is utterly unacceptable. We care about those young people. We love them deeply. We want them connected to work, education, and training.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So how is telling their parents that if they stay home and work less, their families will be financially better off, a way of addressing that issue?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I have greater faith in parents than that member because I think that any parent that actually thinks that’s the way that they advance the interests of their 18- to 19-year-old—that’s not the way forward.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he agree with Christopher Luxon that “people skipping meals because they can’t afford food—that’s serious”; if so, why, under his leadership, are one in four households with children regularly missing out on the food those kids need to grow?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Because my comments are about fact that that is the reality when you don’t run an economy well, when you crack up Government spending by 84 percent, when you add in $43 billion of new taxes, and you triple the debt so that we end up paying $9 to $10 billion worth of interest, which is money that cannot be used to support out fellow Kiwis. That is utterly unacceptable.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he still think it isn’t “rocket science” for parents to buy bread and fruit for their kids, given that those basics are now too expensive for many families, with the cost of bread and kiwifruit up 50 percent in just the last year?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, I’ll just say to the member, food price inflation is up about 4.7 percent. It was up 12.5 percent under his Government. There are global prices around dairy, red meat—that has been well recorded—and coffee that has driven that number, but that is a lot better than 12.5 percent.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: What happened to his promise of a “comprehensive plan to rebuild the economy, to end the cost of living crisis, to lift incomes, and to give Kiwis a reason to stay” when, after two years of his leadership, the economy’s shrunk, the cost of living’s worse than ever, incomes have only stagnated under his watch, and the number of Kiwis giving up and leaving is now at a record high?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’m proud of this Government: a 35-year-low recession that we inherited, and, importantly, a long COVID hangover because of the actions of the previous Government. But isn’t it fantastic that we’ve cut back on wasteful spending, we’ve got inflation down from 7.5 percent down to 3 percent, and we’ve got interest rates having been cut eight times. We’re now growing our economy, and we want to see people put into work.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister continues to claim that the Government inherited a recession. I seek leave to table the Statistics New Zealand data that shows that the economy was not in recession under Labour; it went into recession under National.
SPEAKER: I’m sure that that information is publicly available.
Tākuta Ferris: Given the overwhelming pushback from more than 200 schools and the Iwi Leaders Forum, does the Prime Minister—
SPEAKER: Hang on—wait on. Start with a question word, and ask a question without the statement.
Tākuta Ferris: Does the Prime Minister continue to have confidence in his education Minister, given the significant pushback by schools—more than 200—and the Iwi Leaders Forum to retain Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education legislation and delivery?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely. She’s done more in two years than the previous Ministers in the last six. But I want that member to be under no illusions. If you actually think about upholding the obligations of the Treaty of Waitangi, your first obligation is to get your kids to school and to teach them the basics brilliantly—some maths and some reading—and that’s what the focus needs to be. We make no apologies—none whatsoever—for the number one priority of our school boards to be to get your kids to school and get them educated.
Tākuta Ferris: Supplementary. Does the Prime Minister believe—
SPEAKER: No, we’ve had enough. We’re moving on to question No. 2.
Hon Shane Jones: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: Oh, have you got a question?
Hon Shane Jones: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the absence or otherwise of the Treaty of Waitangi—we are still seeing an improvement in Māori numeracy, given that some Māoris don’t know how to count?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’ll just say, I am very, very proud, and I think all members, the independents that are here, Te Pāti Māori—it’d be fantastic to say congratulations. Isn’t it fantastic that five-year-old, young Māori students have seen such an improvement in their literacy in their first 20 weeks at school? That’s something that all members of this House should be celebrating.
Question No. 2—Finance
2. CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has she made about fair trading?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): On Sunday, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson and I announced that the Government is increasing penalties for breaches of the Fair Trading Act. The purpose of the changes is to deter unfair trading that disadvantages both consumers and other businesses that do play by the rules. Common examples of unfair trading include misleading advertising, inaccurate pricing, refund refusals, non-delivery of goods, and subscription traps. Legislation giving effect to the changes will be introduced to Parliament early next year and is expected to pass into law later in the year.
Cameron Brewer: What is the difference between existing penalties and the proposed new regime?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: At the moment, the maximum penalty for a breach of the Fair Trading Act is $600,000. The changes we are proposing will increased the maximum penalty to the highest of either three times the value of the commercial gain, the value of the transactions, or $5 million. This means that serious offenders will be liable for fines of up to tens of millions of dollars if they have gained significantly from breaching the law.
Cameron Brewer: Does this mean penalties for all offences will automatically increase?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: No. The courts will continue to have discretion to consider a range of factors. These include the nature of the conduct, whether the party has breached the Act before, the size and scale of the party, and the breach it made. The courts seldom impose the maximum penalties, but lifting the ceiling gives them more room for discretion.
Cameron Brewer: Why are these changes necessary?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, penalties under the Fair Trading Act were last updated in 2014—so more than a decade ago—and they are no longer fit for purpose. Over the past five years, the number of complaints received by the Commerce Commission has increased significantly to more than 10,000 in the most recent year. Some businesses have breached the Act multiple times. There are circumstances in which the gains to be made from breaching the Act can currently outweigh the penalties for breaching it. The new regime will eliminate those incentives, and these changes will give New Zealand consumers more confidence that they are being treated fairly by the businesses they buy from.
Question No. 3—Prime Minister
3. Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green) to the Prime Minister: Ki te Pirimia, e tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?
[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think it is possible to protect the environment and create new jobs, or is relying on extractive industries the only way to create jobs?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first part of the question: yes.
Hon Marama Davidson: How would he respond to concerns that he is leading a Government that is willing to risk permanent and irreversible damage to our land, oceans, and fresh water through his Government’s courting of policies of offshore mining?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What I’d say to that member is I think their actions are economic vandalism and insanity. I think the recent statement and policy we’ve seen around mining makes no sense. You are literally, as a Labour-Greens coalition, telling regional New Zealand—
SPEAKER: Just answer from a Government perspective.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think it’s acceptable that his fast-track process could be excluding the voices of communities like those in Otago, Northland, and Coromandel who don’t want to see their local whenua or moana turned into an ecological wasteland?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I reject the characterisation of that question, but I’m incredibly proud of our fast track. We make no apologies; we are going to get things done and built in this country, and we are prioritising economic growth above everything else.
Hon David Seymour: Is the Government very careful not to do permanent and irreversible damage to New Zealand’s reputation by avoiding even the threat of tearing up consents already issued?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We are. I think that is very dangerous when you send a message to regional New Zealand that you don’t deserve high-paying jobs—“You can go on the benefit.” I think it’s a very dangerous message sent to international investors that creates a chilling effect for all investors. I think it’s a very dangerous thing when you say, “We won’t do those high-paying mining jobs here in New Zealand, but we will do them in Australia, so go over there.”
Hon Marama Davidson: Is the Government’s message to people in regional New Zealand that their future is in the boom and bust of mining, instead of backing them with long-term, sustainable industries that won’t disappear when all the profits have been extracted from our environment?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Our message is very clear to regional New Zealand: you deserve high-paying jobs, not just being consigned to a life on a benefit.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he accept that genuine economic security for workers comes from sustainable industries like wood processing, renewable energies, or Jobs for Nature, and not from gambling the future of our regions on the fluctuating price of gold and coal?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I think job security comes for actually respecting the rule of law and not ripping up contracts you don’t like the shape of. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: The Hon Shane Jones.
Hon Shane Jones: To the Prime Minister—
SPEAKER: No, just wait till the House shows some respect for people who are about to ask a question.
Hon Shane Jones: To the Prime Minister: what is his response, given that the message has gone to international and domestic investors that their rights will be expropriated after the next Government, heaven forbid that the last member who spoke should be in a Cabinet?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I think it sends a chilling effect, as we saw with the oil and gas ban. That is what happened. It sounded like a great bumper sticker, but the second and third order implications were not thought through and, as a result, we have a shortage of gas which we desperately need. This just sends a chilling effect to investors—all investors—for a country that struggles to attract foreign direct investment. M
SPEAKER: Look, I just want to reiterate that the Prime Minister has responsibility for the Government only and that while I did let that question go because of the way it was structured, it’s not appropriate to use supplementaries from the Government to attack Opposition parties.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the Prime Minister whether he finds it ironic that the Nordic countries are the world’s leading environmentalists but they believe massively in extraction because you can’t get to being one without the other?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: The Minister’s exactly right: if we want to make the transition to clean energy, we actually need mining—we need mining for EVs, we need mining for solar panels—and Norway is a great example of that.
Hon David Seymour: How important does the Government believe confidence, continuity, and certainty are for investment, jobs, and growth?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely important. It’s important, as I said, to respect the rule of law and to ensure that there is certainty, that there is clarity, because these are investors making long-term investments that end up ultimately creating high-paying, high-income jobs for Kiwis, and that’s a good thing.
Question No. 4—Finance
4. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): In context, yes.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: What process does she undertake to ensure that ministerial conflicts of interests, perceived or otherwise, are managed appropriately when it comes to joint ministerial funding decisions?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The management of conflicts of interest is a matter for the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: On what date did Minister Bishop, the MP for Hutt South, first approach her regarding using Kāinga Ora funding for the RiverLink bridge project, and in what capacity did he approach her?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: With that question on notice, I’m happy to get a written answer to the member. If the member wants specific questions on a particular line of questioning, she should make it clear the subject of her questioning in her primary question.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Did she, given the ministerial funding decision did not go to Cabinet, seek specific Cabinet Office advice regarding any potential or perceived conflict of interest for Minister Bishop jointly signing off the use of Kāinga Ora funding for the RiverLink bridge project; if so, what did that advice say?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: No. I did concur with the advice from Kāinga Ora, who advised that the course of action I agreed to was the right course of action. I am pleased that our Government has actually delivered the funding for the Melling project, which the last Government talked about, never funded, and never started.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Did she seek any advice from Treasury regarding using Kāinga Ora funding for the RiverLink bridge project, given that the request for funding was dated 12 March and she signed it off on 21 March?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I did receive a cover note from my Treasury secondee with their views on the proposal.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: How can the New Zealand public have confidence in her decision making, given she sought no Cabinet Office advice, only received a Treasury private secretary cover note, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development opposed a funding transfer, but she proceeded to sign off funding for the RiverLink bridge project with Minister Bishop, given his conflict of interest as the MP for Hutt South?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: There are many statements in that long question which are wrong—in particular, the advice that I received was both from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Kāinga Ora, who provided the full advice on this decision; and also, the member’s continued assertion that I am responsible for the management of any perceived or actual conflicts of interest.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Minister not think it’s extraordinarily novel that helping one’s electorate is regarded as a conflict of interest these days in the Labour Party?
SPEAKER: No. [Interruption]
Rt Hon Winston Peters: What!
SPEAKER: The Minister has no responsibility—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: She said it.
SPEAKER: —for the other side.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: She may well have alleged that she was—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: She threw that into the debate.
SPEAKER: Yes.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: That entitles me to work on that and use that information. I didn’t introduce it; she introduced it.
SPEAKER: That’s right, in context of the Government—the Minister answered it in the context of the Government. But I think—the member’s been here a long time. He knows he’s made his point. The Hon Shane Jones. Did you have a supplementary?
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It’s quite clear, in Standing Order 390, that the member of the Labour Party is not allowed to throw those epithets. There is no conflict of interest in looking after the constituency who sent you to Parliament. How can that possibly be admitted?
SPEAKER: Well, it’s a matter for debate—that’s the point. I’ve already ruled; it’s not going to be debated further.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is the Minister aware of paragraph 2.81 of the Cabinet Manual that states that “Where the member also holds the relevant portfolio or is the Associate Minister, further measures” in relation to conflicts of interest are set out in the Cabinet Manual, but “If the matter is more significant, the Minister may instead pass ministerial responsibility for it to another Minister”?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, and I'd suggest that the member really wants to ask questions of someone else and is putting them to me. I can only assume that that's because she's afraid of the debating skills of the person she should be putting the questions to.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. During the line of questioning just put to the Minister of Finance, she continued to claim that she is not responsible for managing conflicts of interest. The Minister of Finance has the ability to change appropriations made by the House. It is a relatively serious matter. In many cases, they don't receive further scrutiny; they simply report it back to the House at some future point. Therefore, the management of conflicts of interest in that process is quite a significant matter that the Minister should be answering questions on and not simply dismissing them out of hand. The matter here concerns a Minister who has two different ministerial portfolios that were in conflict and an electorate responsibility which was also in conflict. There can be conflicts of interest between someone's ministerial portfolio and their local duties as a member of Parliament. It's a question of how those are managed. They happen all of the time. Some of them don't need management, but some of them do need management. When you're talking about millions of dollars of public money, it can be a very real conflict, and the Minister who signs that off, in this case, is not the Prime Minister, it is the Minister of Finance.
SPEAKER: The Speaker's role, as you know, is not to judge the quality of the answer, but simply to make sure that there is an answer provided in the nature of an address, which is not always satisfactory to all members of the House.
Question No. 5—Transport
5. CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) to the Minister of Transport: What announcements has he made about the Hawke’s Bay Expressway?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): I’m thrilled to advise the House that construction has begun on the State Highway 2 Hawke’s Bay Expressway project, one of the first new roads of national significance to reach the main works stage, and I thank the local member and her colleague Katie Nimon, who joined me last week to celebrate this occasion. It’s a major milestone for Hawke’s Bay and for the Government’s transport investment programme.
Catherine Wedd: What are the benefits of this critical project?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: As the member knows so well, the expressway is a critical lifeline route, linking people to the regional hospital and, indeed, the busy airport and the port. It’s a national freight corridor. It will deliver an average peak time travel improvement of 21 percent and an average 18 percent improvement in reliability. It’s a very important project for the lovely part of the world that the member hails from.
Catherine Wedd: What does the Hawke’s Bay Expressway construction corridor include?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It includes 7 kilometres of four-laning between Links Road, Pakowhai Road, and Taradale Road, duplicate two-lane overpass at Meeanee Road, a duplicate two-lane overpass at Kennedy Road—
Chlöe Swarbrick: Walking and cycling?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —a duplicate two-lane bridge over the Tūtaekurī River, and a four-lane grade-separated interchange at Links Road and Pakowhai Road. I invite the member who is calling out to go for a cycle or a walk in the Hawke’s Bay and maybe just calm down. She will enjoy—
SPEAKER: That’ll do—that’ll do.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —the experience.
SPEAKER: That’ll do.
Catherine Wedd: Supplementary. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just wait.
Catherine Wedd: What are the next steps to the delivery of this project?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Initial construction focuses on the section of road between Taradale Road and the Tūtaekurī River. Four-laning is expected to be completed in 2028. Work on the new overpass on Meeanee Road is planned to start in January 2026. The full project will be completed in December 2029. It has a construction budget of between $600 million and $700 million, and alongside the investment in the Waikare Gorge bridge replacement, it is over $1 billion worth of infrastructure investment in this wonderful part of the country.
Question No. 6—Prime Minister
6. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?
[Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions?]
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Is his Government committed to contributing to the global effort under the Paris Agreement to limit global average temperature increases to 1.5 degrees?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We are doing everything we can to meet our international commitments, but, of course, our most important one is net zero 2050, and it looks like we’re on track to deliver that maybe a little bit early.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Are our domestic climate targets—especially with the Government’s halving of our methane target—sufficient to meet our Paris Agreement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius or not?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Look, the NDC target is tough, but we’re going to give it a good go. We’re going to prioritise domestic action. The good news is that NDC2 is now aligned with net zero 2050—that’s a good thing—and, of course, this is a Government that has actually looked at the science and made a very good decision around methane emissions.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Does his plan to untether the emissions trading scheme (ETS) from our Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement mean that the Government is conceding that we will not be able to meet our international commitments through domestic action alone, and, if so, how many billions of dollars is he budgeting to pay other countries to reduce their emissions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, linking the ETS to align with our domestic budgets and targets is just a sensible thing to do. It was a domestic policy tool that was created before the Paris Agreement. It’s absolutely critical for us to deliver on our net zero 2050 goals. With respect to NDC1, I just want to reassure the member that we are not sending billions or jobs overseas.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Ministry for the Environment and Treasury have estimated that our country could be liable for anywhere up to $24 billion to pay other countries to reduce their emissions, which becomes more and more likely with every action that his Government undertakes to increase our emissions, such as those policies announced last week?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I just want to reassure the member, in answer to her questions, that there is no way that we will be sending billions of dollars overseas—period.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Is the Prime Minister now telling the House and committing the country to not paying offshore mitigation to meet our NDCs under the Paris Agreement?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’m saying NDC is tough, we’re going to give it a good go, and we’re going to prioritise domestic action, as I answered in the first question.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was specifically about the commitment that this Government is making to meet our NDCs and the billions that need to be budgeted to do so. The Prime Minister didn’t even address the question.
SPEAKER: No, your question asked if he was telling the House, and then it made a statement. He responded to that. Is there another supplementary?
Question No. 7—Transport
7. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by his statement, “It’s part of the Government’s work to ensure New Zealand has a credible pipeline of high value infrastructure projects extending into the future, and that they’re ready to go as funding becomes available”?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): Yes. The Government has committed to building a long-term pipeline of transport infrastructure investments to address our infrastructure deficit and build jobs and growth for Kiwis.
Tangi Utikere: How can he stand by that when he used Kāinga Ora funding to push through a bridge in his own electorate, a project his Government had already cut?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I reject the characterisation of that. Firstly, the decision was made in relation to that as Minister of Housing, not Minister of Transport. Secondly, the member asserted, this morning, it was for State housing. The money was not for State housing, even though that’s been pointed out to him at least twice by journalists. The third point is that I have acted in accordance with Cabinet Office advice throughout this.
Tangi Utikere: Did anyone advise him that his involvement in the funding transfer could constitute a conflict of interest, and, if so, who?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’ve acted in accordance with Cabinet Office advice throughout this process. Right from the time I became a Minister, I have sought, and taken, and acted in accordance with, Cabinet Office advice in relation to local advocacy projects. The short story here is, actually, not a complicated one, which is that the Hutt council asked the Government to allow them to swap some money allocated for water infrastructure into another form of infrastructure. It was not dissimilar to a separate request from the Hamilton City Council made a few months previous, in which they sought permission to transfer money that had been allocated to them in relation to the infrastructure acceleration funding given for a cycleway across the river in Hamilton. Ministers agreed to transfer that money from a cycleway, in that instance, into waste-water infrastructure in the Hamilton CBD.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister reference the very credible pipeline of a high-value infrastructure project near Palmerston North, and what did Tangi Utikere say about that?
SPEAKER: Well, he can talk about a high-value pipeline, but he can’t reflect on a member of the Opposition.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, no. I’m talking about the Manawatū-Tararua development, which everybody is saluting.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, there are lots of things happening in Palmerston North, particularly around freight, which I know the member asking the question is an advocate for, and I suspect also the member who asked the original primary is as well.
Tangi Utikere: On what date did he seek the Cabinet Office advice on potential or actual conflict of interest management in relation to the decision to redirect $27 million of Kāinga Ora funding, and what did that advice say?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, as the member, I suspect, does know or perhaps should know, Ministers have regular meetings with the Cabinet Office, right from the time they are sworn in as Ministers, in relation to conflicts of interest, at least every six months. I had my first one soon after. [Interruption] Just listen: I had my first one soon after being sworn in as a Minister, and I have acted in accordance with Cabinet Office advice the whole way through.
Tangi Utikere: Why did he not recuse himself and delegate responsibility for those decisions, given the conflict arising from the project being in his own electorate?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The member is making an assertion there that is not borne out by the facts. I have acted in accordance with Cabinet Office advice and guidance the whole way through.
Tangi Utikere: How can the Minister maintain that he is ensuring a credible approach to infrastructure while he intervenes in funding decisions for projects in his own electorate without recusal or adequate conflict of interest safeguards?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, three points: firstly, I followed the advice from the Cabinet Office; secondly, the decision was made by two Ministers; and, thirdly, last time I looked, that member supports the decision.
Question No. 8—Regulation
8. SIMON COURT (ACT) to the Minister for Regulation: What does the passing of the Regulatory Standards Bill mean for New Zealanders?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Minister for Regulation): Mr Speaker—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: No, just hang on—hang on. Why so much talk? The Hon David Seymour.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: It means when politicians bring legislation to this House and officials make regulations that affect New Zealanders’ lives, the impacts on them, on their property, and on their liberties, and the question of whether the law was made properly and thoughtfully will be crystal clear to those New Zealanders so that they can put pressure on politicians and choose better laws for their future.
Simon Court: What are the next steps in bringing the Regulatory Standards Bill to life?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: The House passed the Regulatory Standards Act last Thursday. It will come into effect progressively from New Year’s Day 2026. There is work to be done, creating guidance that the Act provides for so that officials and Government departments can make sure that they are properly following its requirements. There is also a Regulatory Standards Board to appoint, who act as a watchdog to ensure the declarations for the public benefit are made properly.
Simon Court: How will the Regulatory Standards Act be helpful to decision makers?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I’m sure I speak for many people on both sides of the House who have been subject to long, ponderous, and ultimately ineffective regulatory impact statements. This will be changed, to a large extent, with the Act’s introduction of consistency accountability statements, which have legislative requirements for what they must contain, and no more, so that decision makers and the public can clearly see what the impacts of a Government’s initiative on the people of New Zealand actually is.
Simon Court: How will the Regulatory Standards Act be useful to public servants developing policy?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, right from the beginning, public servants will be required to think hard about what the impacts of rules and objectives they pursue on New Zealanders actually are. I was just reading an excellent opinion piece on The Post about an Epsom electorate constituent we’ll call Robyn, who lost her life-savings and her livelihood because of a totally irresponsible piece of legislation that came out of this House. People in New Zealand will enter an era of transparency and accountability where if politicians want to do things like that to people, at the very least, we as a country will be making those decisions with eyes wide open thanks to the accountability and transparency brought by the Regulatory Standards Act.
Question No. 9—Tourism and Hospitality
9. JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent announcements has she made on tourism in New Zealand?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality): Last week, we announced the first tranche of the successful recipients of the second round of the regional tourism boost. Four successful campaigns will attract more international visitors from Australia and Asia to explore, stay, and dine in our regions. We also announced that we are investing $2 million to extend the Dunedin Tunnels Trail. Tourism is a crucial part of our Government’s focus on economic growth, so these announcements mean more international visitors exploring our regions, which is good news for small businesses, jobs, and the local economy.
Joseph Mooney: What are the successful regional tourism boost initiatives?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Three regional tourism organisations will launch four campaigns focusing on attracting international visitors, between January and March next year. RotoruaNZ, along with other North Island regional tourism operators (RTOs), are partnering with Ctrip to attract travellers from China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. RotoruaNZ, in partnership with 14 North Island RTOs and major airlines, are targeting people travelling from Australia’s eastern seaboard. WellingtonNZ’s Classic New Zealand Wine Trail is promoting wine, food, and star-gazing to Australian visitors across Wellington, Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay, and Marlborough. Lastly, but not least, the Great South’s Southern Way will encourage Australians from the Gold Coast to explore the southern and lower South Island.
Joseph Mooney: What benefits does she expect to see as a result of these announcements?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The benefits of these investments will reach beyond our cities and into our regions. Our regional tourism boost package is part of a bigger plan to create a thriving, resilient economy. There is an appetite for growth in our regions to encourage more international visitors to explore the special experiences New Zealand has to offer outside of our main tourist hotspots. By investing in the Dunedin Tunnels Trail, we will attract more visitors to the Otago region, helping to unlock the region’s full tourism potential. More visitors means more income for local businesses, more job opportunities for Kiwis, and a stronger economy for all of us.
Joseph Mooney: What feedback has she seen on these announcements?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: RotoruaNZ’s chief executive, Andrew Wilson, has said, “We’re really grateful to the Minister for making some further money available to run a few more campaigns.” Fifteen regions, from the top to the bottom, and the breadth of the North Island—we’ve got a bunch of communities that will really welcome the value that tourism brings to them. There will be more to come. These campaigns are about more than promotion. They’re about helping visitors feel welcome, stay longer, and explore further. Every time an international visitor comes to New Zealand and spends money at a local shop, restaurant, or cafe, it’s good for jobs and it’s good for our local economies, and that’s why we’re doing it.
Question No. 10—Housing
10. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What are the total proceeds received from the sale of Kāinga Ora properties under this Government?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Kāinga Ora advised me that, so far in 2025-26, a total of $99.5 million has been generated through the sale of 297 homes. In the 2024-25 financial year, Kāinga Ora sold 119 homes, generating total proceeds of $53 million. For the period from 27 November 2023 to 1 July 2024, which is the balance of the time this Government has been in office, Kāinga Ora has been unable to work it out in the available time for this question, as it would require a manual process. From 1 November 2023 through to 1 July 2024, there were 15 house sales. If the member wants the exact balance from the 27 November onwards through to 1 July, that will have to be done through a written question—apologies.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Has this or any other funds administered by Kāinga Ora been redirected to purposes other than housing?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The Kāinga Ora sales programme, as a result of the Kāinga Ora turnaround plan, is focused on selling older properties in high-value areas with the proceeds going to provide multiple other units in different areas. That process is managed by Kāinga Ora.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: How can he justify redirecting funds administered by Kāinga Ora towards building a bridge in his own electorate—a project his Government initially declined to fund—when the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development advised him not to?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: This is a wee way away from the primary, but the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund used to be administered by Kāinga Ora. We’ve now taken it away from Kāinga Ora because we want them to focus on their core business, which is running the social housing portfolio of the Government. I think I’ve dealt with the issue in relation to the city link bridge, in relation to his colleague’s questions.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. In response to questions from Tangi Utikere, the Hon Chris Bishop said that this is a matter more related to the housing portfolio, not the transport portfolio, and now that we’re asking questions of him in that capacity, he’s saying he’s already dealt with those questions. He can’t have it both ways, sir.
SPEAKER: No, quite right. You can have another crack.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, does the member want to repeat the question?
Rt Hon Winston Peters: What day is it?
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Don’t be so hard on yourself, sir. I know you’ve been here a while, but I’m sure you know what day it is. How can he justify redirecting funds administered by Kāinga Ora towards building a bridge in his own electorate—a project his Government initially declined to fund—when the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development advised him not to?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There are a couple of errors there. Firstly, the Government didn’t decide to decline to fund it; it did not come up for funding approval by the New Zealand Transport Agency through the Government policy statement, which is a separate decision. As I’ve already said, it was a pragmatic decision. The Hutt council wrote to the Ministers and wrote to the Government and asked for the funding swap to take place. As I said, in relation to Mr Utikere’s question, it’s not dissimilar to the Hamilton City Council asking for exactly the same thing not a few months previous, and Ministers approved that as well. Ultimately, the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, which was set up by the previous Government, gave money to a variety of local councils for local infrastructure. This is still being spent on local infrastructure.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Is it correct that the total number of Kāinga Ora houses will have reduced by 177 by the end of the year, as confirmed by his responses to written parliamentary questions Nos 39322 and 39321?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: That is probably true at a particular date and point in time. On balance, over the next few years, Kāinga Ora stock will stay at around 78,000 units. At any one point in time, it will be up or down a bit, depending on the sales process, depending on demolitions, and depending on construction time lines. As the member knows, these things oscillate a bit. There was a point, at one point, during the previous Government when there had also been net demolitions and sales compared to construction. But ultimately, over time, you’ve got to look at the smooth glide path into the future.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he believe that the growing number of people experiencing homelessness in the Hutt will take comfort from the fact the number of Kāinga Ora houses will go backwards by the end of the year, at the same time that funding intended for housing has been redirected for unrelated projects?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it wasn’t intended for housing; it was funding intended for infrastructure into the CBD. It is, essentially, a finding swap from one form of infrastructure to another, as the member well knows, and, actually, I think all members of the Opposition support that project, so it’s a bit strange to criticise it. I’m also advised that since this Government come into office, the social housing wait-list in the Hutt Valley—as, indeed, it has around the country—has fallen.
Hon Nicola Willis: Could the Minister please expand on the “smooth glide path into the future”, which he has described for Kāinga Ora?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, because I used a term most commonly found in the bureaucracy, and I’m regretting using it already.
Question No. 11—Building and Construction
11. DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What is the Government doing to make building easier?
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): The Government’s doing a lot to make building easier because that means more affordable homes for families, more economic growth, and more jobs for Kiwis. This includes the overseas building product regime for more affordable, quality building products to enter New Zealand, common-sense changes to insulation rules, and allowing Kiwis to build a granny flat of up to 70 square metres—a single-storey, simple dwelling—without a building or resource consent.
Dan Bidois: Why is the Government allowing plumbers and drainlayers to sign off their own work?
Hon CHRIS PENK: Today, a bill will have its first reading that will enable plumbers and drainlayers to certify their work. This policy is backed by sector groups such as Master Plumbers and will bring plumbers and drainlayers into line with the work that electricians and gasfitters can already certify. The relevant plumber or drainlayer must meet certain eligibility criteria, and the work must be relatively simple, low-risk, and routine. We know that about four inspections per build are undertaken for plumbing, so this will make a meaningful difference for tradies.
Dan Bidois: What else is the Government doing to speed up the consenting system?
Hon CHRIS PENK: Well, one of the biggest frustrations that I hear from tradies is that it takes many days and sometimes even weeks for a building inspection to take place. These delays are frustrating, costly, and get in the way of the building of homes that this country desperately needs. That’s why, in August, we introduced a new requirement for 80 percent of building inspections to take place within three working days.
Dan Bidois: Is the Government doing anything to help encourage greater uptake of solar panels or homes that are more energy efficient?
Hon CHRIS PENK: Why, yes, we are. We know that, in order to encourage the uptake of more solar, in the name of energy efficiencies and also lower energy bills for families, we require building consents to be issued in half the statutory time frame—that is ten working days rather than 20. We will allow that where a building has solar panels in its plans or meets the definition of being a sustainable building such as a Homestar certification. This change will see homes built more quickly, more affordably, with lower power bills and lower emissions—all of which are good for Kiwis.
Question No. 12—Prime Minister
12. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government's statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: “Rawiri-no-mates.”
Rawiri Waititi: You done? Empty vessel. Does he agree the McSkimming case involved an abuse of power at the highest level and that this abuse of power was covered up by the New Zealand Police?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I’ve said, there’s been a tremendous breach of trust and integrity, and I’ve made public comments to that effect. But also, this was appalling, this was shocking, it was utterly unacceptable. I’m proud of the Government’s rapid response to put in place an Inspector-General; the highest mechanism we have, the strongest mechanism we have, of oversight.
Rawiri Waititi: How can he guarantee that the police are not abusing their power in our streets when they are so willing to abuse their power in the office?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Because there are 15,000 men and women associated with the police who do an incredible job coming to work each and every day to keep this community safe. It’s the same police force that has ensured that we have 30,000 less victims of violent crime, which I’m sure that member appreciates. It’s the same police that has delivered a 16 percent lower level of youth offending, which I’m sure that member appreciates as well. The men and women of the police force do an outstanding job. They have been tarnished of the actions of a few. This is a Government that is taking serious action against that leadership group.
Rawiri Waititi: Has he read the Understanding Policing Delivery report that shows that Māori lodged over half of all complaints to the police about use of force, and that Māori are more likely to be stopped, tasered, arrested, and prosecuted by the police than any other group in Aotearoa?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I haven’t read the report, but I would say to that member that I am very proud of our police force. I think they do an exceptionally good job. I also note that the victims of crime are disproportionately Māori as well. That’s why anything that lowers crime rates, serious violent crime, youth offending—as a result, we are a Government that has put in place tougher sentencing, more corrections officers, and more investments in prisons, because we’d sooner have people there than out in the community bashing and hurting and harming Kiwis.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Prime Minister aware that abuse of power can be seriously contagious and politically infectious?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: It is something in organisations that must stamped out.
Rawiri Waititi: Does the Prime Minister accept that last week’s Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) report, alongside decades of findings of structural racism against Māori, shows that the New Zealand Police require systemic reform, and does he support establishing an IPCA that is completely independent of police and the Government?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, that is what the role of an independent IPCA actually does. This is a Government that has taken that report incredibly seriously. It was a very good quality report laying out very, very clearly the hit to trust and integrity at the top of the police force. Importantly, this is a Government that has acted with tremendous speed to reach for the strongest mechanism possible, which is an Inspector-General to have oversight of the police as we have in intelligence, as we have in defence, and that’s the appropriate action.
Questions to Members
Question No. 1—Environment Committee
1. Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) to the Chairperson of the Environment Committee: Why did she explain advertising an 11-day submissions deadline for the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill on the basis that “Under Standing Order 198, I opened submissions to meet the expectation of the timeframe”, when Standing Order 198 makes no reference to the time frame for submissions?
CATHERINE WEDD (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): I was advised by the clerk of the committee that in my role as chair of the committee, I could call for submissions under Standing Order 198. This call for submissions, and the submission deadline, was endorsed by the majority of the committee.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. We’ve got an issue here in the respect that the question asked the chair to justify her decision to call for the deadline for submissions, referring to the Standing Order which does not give her that ability and in the context of her original response to the first question to her, on Tuesday last week, which was that this was done because the Government wanted this bill to pass by Christmas. That was literally the first thing she said. Now, that, in my view, is counter to what she is providing to the House now.
SPEAKER: Well, what she has provided the House is the factual authority for her opening the submissions. Whether the second part of it was answered or not is a matter of, perhaps, at least one further question.
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It's a mystery, sir, to a number of us why this question has even been permitted. When you look at Speakers’ ruling—and, already, Speaker's Ruling 116/3 covers this off: the chair has the authority. This issue was canvassed in Hunt's time, and I put to you, sir, that the question is actually superfluous, if not inconsistent with the traditional practices of the House. It's wasting our time.
SPEAKER: The member will know that the question was actually held over from last week, when the chairperson of the select committee was not here to answer it. The question itself is a legitimate question.
Catherine Wedd: Point of order. I seek leave to table advice I received from the clerk of the committee about Standing Order 198 and parliamentary process about calling for submissions.
SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection to that course of action? [Interruption] Is there an objection? No, there appears to be none.
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Why, as the select committee chair, is she prioritising Government objectives over instructions from the House?
SPEAKER: No, I don’t think that’s a question you can ask. Under questions to members, that's not a question you can ask.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Questions to members, quite rightly, is relevant only to the roles that they have relevant to parliamentary business, but they also relate to responses that were provided to other questions. Now, that question that was just asked by my colleague is in direct link to responses that that member provided to questions last week. The nub of the issue is that we are not disputing her ability to call for submissions, which is why we are asking why that extended to not only placing a deadline on the call but following the objectives of the Government, despite an instruction from the House to do so.
SPEAKER: The member will be—
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order.
SPEAKER: Just a moment, I'm dealing with one. The member will be aware that the rules for members’ questions are the same as for questions that are asked in a supplementary sense, and that is that the member answering a question can choose to answer one of the legs of that question, which the chairperson of the select committee did.
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Speaker’s ruling 116/3: “It is common for the initial advertisement calling for submissions to be placed on the chairperson’s authority rather than waiting until the select committee has met and formally resolved to place an advertisement.”—game, set, match.
SPEAKER: I’m sorry, the member is making an awfully strong bid to end up sitting where I am, but can I just say that that’s not in dispute.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, sir. That is indeed correct—Speaker’s ruling 116/3 is not in dispute. My previous point of order was in relation to your ruling that my colleague's question was not in order. It was simply to point out that it did flow from the responses that the member had provided, which is consistent with the requirements for questions to members, which are actually identical to questions to Ministers, as long as the topic is about the behaviour or decisions made by that member in their capacity as chair, which, indeed, that question was.
SPEAKER: OK, I'll allow one more supplementary question.
Hon Rachel Brooking: The same one?
SPEAKER: Try to put it differently.
Hon Rachel Brooking: I’ll do a different one. How can she defend a decision to indicate an early report-back date when Standing Order 198 does not give her that authority?
CATHERINE WEDD: I was advised by the clerk of the committee that this course of action was appropriate and in accordance with Standing Orders. I'm also advised that as the rules of this Parliament stand, there is no required minimum time frame for submissions.
SPEAKER: Thank you. That concludes oral questions. Those who need to leave for other businesses should do so quietly, and without that sort of discussion. It's an opportunity for people who have other business to move to that business as quickly as they possibly can, Ms Brooking.
Bills
Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill.
This bill is another step in the evolution in the approach to road funding in New Zealand. Since centralising our roading system in the 1920s, the principle that all users should contribute fairly in proportion to their use of the roads has underpinned how we fund and pay for our roading system. This is not a revolutionary idea. In this House, in 1933, the Rt Hon Gordon Coates remarked that “We should have all motor vehicles contributing more or less on the same basis.” The principle that Prime Minister Coates, as he then was, talked about is fundamentally about fairness. It directly links what you pay with what you use and the benefits that you receive.
Since then, we’ve continued on a pathway towards better transport pricing. In 1977, New Zealand introduced the road-user charges (RUC) system, moving diesel and heavy vehicles to distance-based charging. That system was and still is world leading. Today, other countries are looking at the model that we adopted back then as something that they could adopt today.
In 2008, we moved to a hypothecated transport funding system, ensuring that revenue collected from road users was invested into maintaining and improving the transport system. As we continue on this pathway, we need to ensure that our revenue tools are sustainable, fair, and fit for purpose. This bill focuses on two ways road users contribute to the benefits they receive and the costs they impose: tolling and road-user charging.
The bill makes amendments to improve the current tolling framework. Tolling allows us to bring forward investment and build the roads New Zealand needs sooner. It means users who benefit from a new road can contribute directly to its cost. There are three toll roads in New Zealand. In Auckland, we have the Northern Gateway, and in Tauranga, there’s the Tauranga Eastern Link and Takitimu Drive. Three more toll roads have been approved by Cabinet and are under construction. The model works, but as we progress the new roads of national significance, the Government wants to improve this tolling framework.
The Land Transport Management Act sets the high-level requirement for establishing a new toll road. Before a toll can be put in place, the Minister must be satisfied that the road is new, that there has been adequate consultation with a level of community support, that a feasible un-tolled alternative route is available to road users, and that the tolling scheme is sufficient and effective. Within this overarching framework, which stays, the bill makes several changes.
First, the bill allows tolling to be applied more flexibly, to include parts of an existing road where users of that road receive benefit from the new investment. Second, the bill allows toll revenue to be used across the entire tolling scheme, not just the new sections of the road. Third, the bill strengthens the fairness principle that underpins the system. We are maintaining the core requirement for a feasible un-tolled alternative route. However, the bill will also allow toll revenue to be used to help maintain that alternative route if the relevant council can’t fund that maintenance itself. The bill will also allow a restriction to be placed on heavy vehicles using unsuitable alternative routes, protecting those local roads and communities. Fourth, the bill makes the common-sense move to require annual inflation adjustments so that the value of tolls is not eroded over time. It also introduces clear principles for setting toll rates, focusing on benefits to users. Finally, the bill updates the rules for toll concessions to make it easier for the private sector to deliver the infrastructure we need. Taken together, these changes ensure that tolling remains an effective tool to help fund our roads, including the new roads of national significance.
There are also changes around road-user charges. To keep the funding system fair and to ensure that all users contribute based on their actual use of the roads, it is the reality that we need to transition 3.5 million petrol vehicles to road-user charges. The RUC system was designed in the 1970s and it charges vehicles based on their weight and travel distance, which is a fair way to charge for road use, but the manual payment processes reflect the world 50 years ago and they need to be updated. The current system is clunky. It’s paper-based. It relies on road users monitoring their odometers, pre-purchasing the paper licences, and displaying them on their windscreens. This is a 1970s solution in a modern world.
Forcing millions of Kiwis to swap the simplicity of paying at the pump for that kind of bureaucracy would be a step backwards. Paying bills and taxes is, unfortunately, a part of life, but it should not consume life itself. The bill removes the requirement to display, carry, or produce a RUC licence. In an electronic age, a paper licence should not be a strict requirement.
The bill also updates the definition of “electronic distance recorder”. The current rules are restrictive, hindering the use of technology already installed by manufacturers in many cars. The change will allow more flexible approaches to recording distance and it will save cost by giving drivers the option to use inbuilt vehicle technology.
The bill takes a first step in enabling new, convenient payment options. Users will be able to choose their preferred method. This could include set-and-forget, post-payment systems, similar to paying for electricity or a streaming service. The current Act provides for alternative RUC payment methods, beyond the default prepay model. None have been created, because they have been restricted to vehicles with electronic distance recorders. The bill removes that requirement for alternative payment schemes.
We also aim to change the RUC retail landscape. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is currently both the main RUC seller and the regulator. Responses to a Ministry of Transport request for information confirm that there is market interest in providing RUC services for the right vehicle fleet, but potential RUC providers see the NZTA’s dual role as a barrier to offering services for road users, and so the bill enables the separation of the NZTA’s RUC retail role from its regulatory role, giving the market certainty that they are entering a level playing field.
There will be the opportunity for providers to innovate and invest in New Zealand. We have one of the world’s largest and most established RUC systems. Having a more attractive environment for private sector participation may position our system as an example for other countries.
These changes are the first step in transitioning petrol vehicles to RUC. As some people will note, the bill deliberately omits a date for transitioning the light petrol fleet from fuel excise to RUC. That date has not been set by the Government. There is much work to do before we do that, and it would be a large transition as we do that. Rather, this puts in place the legislative framework on improving the RUC system for light vehicles, enabling a competitive retail market and improving user experience before that transition occurs.
It is really important that we get this legislation right. The Government welcomes the input and scrutiny that the select committee will provide. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee, in my experience, has done a very good job, and I acknowledge the chair in the House today—Mr Foster—who, I am sure, will run a robust process. My experience so far is that that committee has operated in a relatively bipartisan and collegial fashion, and I’m sure that that will continue.
This is a really important bill. It’s not a long bill, but it is an important bill in the evolution of our land transport funding system. It continues our long history of evolving our system to meet changing circumstances and of upholding the principle of fairness. It makes improvements to tolling and paves the way for a modern RUC system. It cuts red tape and enables new payment options. It is, as I say, the next step in our evolution, and I commend it to the House.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Labour Party and indicate that we will be supporting this bill through to select committee. There are a couple of issues that we would like teased out at select committee, which I will come to in a moment. But I just want to acknowledge the sort of historical link that the Minister has painted in terms of a picture. It’s no surprise that it has been a long time since this House has turned its mind to some of the issues that are addressed, or seeking to be addressed, in this particular bill. The bill itself really has two components: one is a focus on road-user charges; the other is a focus on tolling and the role within which those as tools have within the wider transportation system.
The proposed changes to road-user charges—or RUC—are generally proposals that we are quite supportive of. They seek to, in essence, modernise and bring up to speed the way in which RUC is utilised here in New Zealand—in particular, around how people are required or not required to display the fact that they have purchased their road-user charges.
The issue is that there are huge administration costs currently in terms of the current way in which RUC is administered in New Zealand. It is certainly our hope that with a change to modernise the system that consumers, households will be the ones that will, at the end of the day, benefit from that. Anyone who has a look at their road-user charge admin fees will know that there is a real issue there: there is no inconsistency in terms of how that is applied.
The change around separating the RUC provider and the RUC collector—effectively, the regulator and the seller—is one that we would like to explore further at select committee to ensure that there is no over-influence, so to speak, from the private sector, if that was the particular case that’s being followed.
We believe that this component of the bill seeks to look at ways in which technology and innovation can be utilised, and when we’re looking at the in-vehicle electronic distance measuring opportunities, they currently exist in vehicles all around the place. So being able to utilise that where it brings down the costs for households is a good thing, but we’d still like to have a look at that.
On the second issue, which is around tolls, this is something that we do have some concerns around. Yes, the Minister has made it very clear that the way in which some of the revenue opportunities will be addressed, effectively, is through tolling. Now, we come with some hesitation around this, because, of course, this is a Government that has a track record when it comes to tolling. We just look to Te Ahu a Turanga and the fact that that was a replacement road, the Manawatū Tararua Highway, yet the Government was seeking to whack a toll on that when the community, simply, didn’t want it.
So some of the questions that we will be posing at select committee will be around ensuring that those issues are addressed and considered. What is actually up for tolling in this particular proposal? It should not be purely around generating revenue. We accept that there are some considerations where tolling is an appropriate mechanism—we accept that—but that is not the case for every single road for every single community in this country. So we do have some hesitation around that.
There are some moves in there—for example, ministerial oversight around exemptions for heavy vehicles not being able to utilise alternative routes, when you think about the Saddle Road in the Manawatū and Tararua district where that was really pummelled as a result of huge numbers of heavy vehicles having to utilise that road, yet the council itself was not able to foot the bill in terms of maintenance.
So there are some things in here that go some way to addressing some of those concerns, but there is also a number of questions around the generation of revenue from tolling, but where is that actually going to go? We had similar conversations when it came to the congestion charging or time of use charging that this House previously has passed.
So we look forward to being constructive in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. We look forward to hearing from submitters around what impact this will have for them and for communities. We are hopeful that we will find some balance between road-user charges and a scheme and regime that is fair to all but is also able to be administratively not as cumbersome as the current one and also that there is a good conversation around tolling and the appropriateness of that.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Green Party policy actually supports that the cost of maintenance and new-road builds are entirely covered by road-user charges, including higher charges for heavy vehicles that have a greater impact, and this includes the introduction of tolls where appropriate. So having more direct and appropriate pricing for road use is something that would lead to better outcomes for New Zealand, but not the way this Government is doing it. I mean, currently, road users do not pay the cost of the roads—nowhere near it. The Minister of Transport, in his speech, spoke about hypothecation, the idea that fuel tax and road-user charges were entirely recycled back into the roading network, but the reality is road-user charges and fuel taxes do not come anywhere near covering the cost of the roads. And that’s particularly true with local roads.
So local roads are 50 percent—at least—funded by ratepayers. So it’s people paying rates that have to pay for the maintenance for the roads that are local. But more than 50 percent of all vehicle kilometres travelled, by light vehicles and heavy vehicles, are on local roads. So we’ve had this completely ridiculous situation where central government is taking money, from all over the country, from local roads—where people are driving, they’re paying their fuel excise duties, and they’re paying their road-user charges on rural roads in Southland and Northland and the East Cape—and money is going into the central coffers, and then the vast majority of it is actually being spent on new State highways nowhere near where those people are driving.
The most outrageous thing is, oftentimes, these roads are justified on the basis that they’re needed for freight—for example, highway expansions in Auckland like State Highway 16 east, which goes down towards the port, and the Waterview tunnel connection; oversize and heavy vehicles can’t even use that infrastructure. They’re actually banned from it. So you’ll see brand new tractors being driven on Symonds Street, right through an area of full of pedestrians because it’s in the middle of the University of Auckland, at peak time. And we’ve spent all this money on highway infrastructure that’s supposedly to facilitate freight, and it’s moving on the local roads, damaging the local roads, causing pedestrian hazards and hazards for people on bikes.
I’ve heard members opposite say, “Oh, cyclists aren’t paying the full cost of the road”—you’ve got to be kidding me. Everyone using a bike is saving the country money. Other countries pay people to ride bikes because it saves public money. If we were to truly fully attribute costs and benefits to people using the transport network, we would pay people to ride bikes because they save the country money in the health system, on the transportation system. That’s the numbers; that’s the analysis. I know the members opposite love to talk about numbers—they’ve never actually looked at them; they don’t seem to understand them.
The truth is that while the Minister may want to raise money from tolls, there’s no way they will be able to pay for the roads of national significance through tolls. There’s absolutely no way. Currently, not only do we have 50 percent of the local roads being funded by ratepayers, but we have a huge amount of Crown funding going into transport into highways that can’t even cover the current cost, let alone the future costs. This Government has a laundry list of fantasy roads that they say are going to transform the economy. They are not funded, and they will not be funded by tolls. Why can’t they be funded by tolls? Because they have tiny numbers of cars driving on them, and most of those people are not going to be willing—
Simon Court: Let’s get more cars, then.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —to pay the price that it would take to build those roads.
So if we want to have a fully hypothecated approach with good pricing, we have to stop building projects that aren’t needed. Do the tolling and the congestion pricing first, then invest in the alternatives. Actually, what would save the country money is people not having to own as many cars; to be able to move more of our goods by coastal shipping and by rail, to be able to move people around cities in buses, trains, and, yes, on bikes and e-bikes. That’s what makes economic sense.
The reason we won’t be supporting this bill is because of the very dodgy provision that allows roads to be leased to private companies for up to 50 years—
Simon Court: Yes!
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —for the purposes of providing tolling services that return a profit to private companies. And that’s where we come back to the ideology—the blind ideology—of this Government and that ACT Party member, who I know will talk about it. It’s all about funnelling public money into the hands of a small few private investors and big corporations.
Simon Court: Oh, Mr Speaker, I can’t resist that invitation.
SPEAKER: Simon Court. Do your call again and I’ll see if I recognise you.
Simon Court: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: No, no—just call again.
Simon Court: Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: Simon Court.
SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can’t resist the invitation that the member for the Green Party, Julie Anne Genter, offered to talk about the benefits of tolling and using private finance in infrastructure, but first I just want to confirm that ACT supports this bill, because it moves our transport towards something that New Zealanders have been asking for for too long—a system that actually works to fund the infrastructure, that is funded fairly, and that gets things built in a timely manner. People drive every day to work, to school, to pick up groceries; trucks come to Minister Hoggard’s farm to pick up milk. They all need roads without potholes, and that demands a funding model that makes sense, and infrastructure needs to be delivered without years of delays.
This bill helps move us towards that direction. It modernises road user charges (RUC), it will encourage competition between system providers, and it updates tolling rules so we can bring in more of this private capital and build roads faster. It enables new technology, like the vehicle telematics that the member Tangi Utikere mentioned, which should be in every new vehicle imported to New Zealand, because the systems we’re talking about are used every day in places like Sydney, in Brisbane, in Melbourne, and, of course in Japan, the United States, and Europe. But modern systems must not come at the expense of privacy—that is ACT’s bottom line.
Distance recording should mean distance recording, not building a data set of people’s movements, not GPS tracking of where people are going, not a Government file on where every New Zealander drives. Technology should make life easier, not intrude further into it. Any future RUC system must, therefore, only collect what is strictly necessary, and the regulations that flow from this bill must guarantee that telematics cannot become a back door to broader surveillance of people using the roads. Kiwis should know what data is collected, who holds it, and, of course, how it is protected, and they should be confident it is protected—because, once the State can follow you around, that’s not transport policy any more; that’s a major shift in power. ACT will not allow that drift.
This bill also deals with tolling. The principle is simple: if you use the new road, you should help pay for the new road. It is more transparent, and it is more efficient than hiding costs in general taxation, isn’t it? With flexible tolling, we get new infrastructure built years sooner, using private investment. We don’t even have to imagine how this works. In Dallas, Texas—I visited there in 2022 and was hosted by the Texas Department of Transportation—they have built, on one of the busiest corridors in the country, a series of express toll lanes to add to the existing lanes. The Spanish contractor Ferrovial built and now operates that route. The project uses private capital to upgrade the existing corridor—including the free lanes—without burdening taxpayers.
The result is faster freight movement, shorter commutes, and a corridor that keeps functioning even at peak demand. It’s a practical example of how smart tolling can solve congestion problems rather than just managing them. If the trade off is that we actually allow a competent contractor, like a Ferrovial or their equivalents around the world, to take on that responsibility, and we hold them to account in different ways through the contract, then New Zealanders should be confident that they can get better roads, they can drive faster on these better roads, and they can get to where they’re going, and paying a toll will be a small price to pay for that.
Again, modern tolling also raises the same kinds of fundamental questions about how we make sure the system works without becoming intrusive. ACT’s job in this coalition Government is to keep the Government focused on performance, not expanding its reach into people’s lives. New Zealanders want lower living costs, better roads, and infrastructure that’s not bogged down in process. This bill helps. New Zealanders also deserve assurances that a Government—this one, or any Government in the future—will not misuse technology and breach their privacy by stealth. Let’s modernise, let’s innovate, let’s fix what matters, but, as we do, ACT will hold the line. Privacy is the bottom line always.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of this Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill. As chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that’s going to be receiving this, I’m looking forward to considering this bill and hearing the submissions. I know we’ll do that diligently because it looks as though there’s going to be quite a number of technical elements to the bill.
There are two key things have been raised already in the discussion: the first one is the road-user charge (RUC) system and trying to make sure that it is modernised—if you look at all the other areas which we’ve modernised in our society, by and large, people have adopted that, and they’ve never looked back on that adoption. They want things that are effective, efficient, quick, and easy to use, but the point that Simon Court has just made around privacy is a strong issue for many of the people who communicate with us as well—not just in this area but across the board—so New Zealand First is very, very anxious about making sure that RUC systems are not an intrusion into people’s privacy and used for anything other than the purpose that they are intended for, which is to support investment in the transport system.
The second one is just to say that we have a huge transport deficit in this country. We’ve already heard, from the other side of the room, that money is taken from a lot of the regions, where it will be needed for investment in maintaining the roading infrastructure, and taken to build some of the roads of national significance. The reality is that we know that there is a big funding deficit. You can only deal with that in a number of different ways. The first one of them is to earn more revenue. Tolling is part of that, potentially, in some areas. The second one of those, of course, is to extend out the time frame in which you make those investments. We don’t want to be undermining the investment that’s actually made in the standard of the roads themselves and the bridges themselves across the country. That means probably extending out the capital programme, the roads of national significance. I think the Minister has indicated that that’s exactly what will be happening over time.
Just in terms of some of the comments that have been made around tolling, the Manawatū Tararua Highway has already been mentioned by my friend over there, Tangi Utikere. New Zealand First was also very unhappy with the idea of tolling that road as well and made that very, very clear for two reasons: one, this was not about advancing a road and getting that road built quicker, because the reality was that by the time the tolling idea came up, it was nine-tenths of the way built already. It was sprung on that those communities late in the piece. The second one was it was very much a replacement road for the Manawatū Gorge, which, of course, by that stage, failed and had been closed.
Think, in that context as well—the bill talks about this—about the need for having viable alternative routes. I do ask you sometimes to think about where there might well be a road, but if it twists and turns and goes up and down the hills, it is not necessarily a viable alternative route, so we’ve got to be thinking about that. That, probably, is one of the technicalities that there will be in this process.
The second one, in terms of this, is the private sector involvement. I think the experience so far in New Zealand has been somewhat chequered. The private sector involvement in Transmission Gully—was that a success or was that not a success? Well, there have been legal cases, the standard of the delivery and the maintenance has been somewhat chequered, and the price of the delivery has been, again, somewhat chequered. It’s not just simply saying the private sector is going to do it better and can get a return from that. I think Julie Anne Genter, in speaking, also said, “Well, don’t expect the tolls to pay for these roads.” They might well make a contribution towards them, but to think that the private sector would just, without some form of State funding—of course, that’s exactly what’s happened in the example of Transmission Gully; there’s an ongoing commitment by the State to keep on paying for that road. Without that, the tolls on those roads are simply not, by and large, going to pay for them.
An example where they did, for example, going back, would be the Auckland Harbour Bridge, but, by and large, they are not necessarily going to do that. There’s going to be quite a lot of detail to be thought through about those sorts of things. I’m looking forward very much to considering this bill through the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I commend this bill to the House.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure to rise and make a contribution on this bill. The bill’s purpose is very clear: to modernise the road-user charges (RUC) system, to update and provide the financing and funding capabilities through our tolling system. As a member and deputy chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I too, as the chair pointed out, look forward to hearing from submitters, and getting into the weeds of this piece of legislation because it is technical, and there’s already been a number of issues raised in this debate.
Actually, we’ve got a really good collegial team environment on that select committee. I don’t agree with the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s contribution about paying people to ride bikes but, other than that, she’s actually a really good contributor to our select committee. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): As has been said, Labour will vote to support this bill through to select committee because our funding tools do need to be updated, and I think we can all agree on that, but we do so with eyes wide open. There are some questions, and a couple of big questions that need to be resolved, I think, before we can have ultimate confidence in what is a final framework. That is important because it is not only important for us as a House to have confidence in the framework but obviously the public need to have confidence in how this is ging to work, as well.
Modern transport funding, we believe—and has been stated—must be transparent. It should be futureproofed, and it certainly isn’t at the moment. As I said, importantly, it has to be trusted by the public; not a patchwork for various new changes to be made without there being proper safeguards in place. So we look forward to being able to tease some of those issue out a little bit more in the select committee process.
There are two main issues that spring to mind, looking at this bill, and those have both been raised by previous contributions but if we take them as two separate items, I'd like to just talk about the tolling issue, and then of course the changes to the road-user charges (RUC) reforms. As we've heard, tolling is a sensitive issue, to say the least, and this Government certainly has some form—some recent form—on springing the concept of tolling on communities who may otherwise have not factored that into their thinking, so we're going to be very interested in how that plays out. Any expansion, we believe, must be tightly, tightly justified and obviously used sparingly for it to be worthwhile.
The new corridor tolling power is one of the biggest shifts, I think, in this bill and it comes with some real ambiguity about exactly what that means; you know, what exactly is a corridor, how wide can it be stretched, what qualifies as an existing versus a new road? They may sound like simple questions to answer off the top of our head whilst standing here in the House today, but I think there will be a lot more information needed throughout that select committee process to make sure that we are all on board and all able to clearly articulate to the communities that we need to be able to communicate with.
Using toll revenue for alternative route maintenance, again, on the surface sounds fine—certainly might be quite a big help for local councils—but it does raise some fairness questions, I think, especially for communities with no real, realistic alternatives; no routes in place in the first place. I think we will have to be incredibly vigilant about the fairness question, as we go through this process. Automatically increasing tolls each year through Consumers Price Index adjustments, again, might sound good on the surface but it's actually a significant change. We do need to understand how that's actually going to land, practically, for households, particularly households that are already under pressure.
We know that this Government's talked a big talk about fixing the economy and providing relief from cost of living issues, but so far they've failed to do that. So this is another piece of legislation that could have impacts on real-life people and real-life households, and we want to understand more about that. Transferring legal liability for tolls to the vehicle owner may very well streamline a process but it also potentially has some implications for families—people who use the vehicles for businesses—anyone using a shared fleet. So I look forward to asking those questions, as well.
With regard to the RUC, I think we generally do support that, as Madam Speaker, with regard to the right, I think we generally do support that, as my colleague Tangi Utikere has laid out before me, because it's a modernisation method—or a move towards modernisation—which is good. It is a little bit clumsy and a little bit clunky and we look forward to hearing a little bit more information about that. But we do have to be really, really cautious about that potential for over influence on the private sector, as they carve out those clear separations.
So, looking forward to the select committee process and, as always, I'm assuming it will be—the Transport and Infrastructure Committee is often referred to as a very collegial committee, and I have no doubt that's true but that doesn't mean that there's a free pass for all sorts of things to go on, particularly if we look at the shortening of bills. Nevertheless, in this particular reading, we support.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): This bill strengthens a fair and sustainable transport funding system. One fare for all users contributing in proportion to their use of the road. We have seen this with the Northern Gateway Toll Road, which has reduced congestion and shortened travelling times. The toll collected will then be invested into maintenance and safety improvements, delivering smoother and safer driving for all. By updating our revenue setting, we can bring investment forward and bring the roads New Zealand needs sooner. I commend this bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to make a contribution on the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill. This is an area that I’m not usually involved with, but I have to say, I’m sure most New Zealanders when you mention tolling to them or anything which affects their ability to get around in their car, would have a view, and a strong view probably, on this legislation. I’m no different. I support the comments made by previous speakers on this side of the House, including Tangi Utikere, who is our spokesperson in this area, who outlined that Labour will be supporting this bill, at this stage, because there is a clear need to modernise in this particular area; and, also, Tracey McLellan, who outlined our key concerns around the tolling and the road-user charge (RUC) changes that have being proposed in this bill. However, this is a bill that is quite complex. In the time that I’ve been preparing to make this contribution, I’ve been looking through the various documents that have been provided in support of this. There are a few that I haven’t been able to look at, including the New Zealand Bill of Rights vet, which, I understand, should be available now that this bill has been tabled in the House.
There is a significant number of considerations. This bill does give a lot of power to the Minister in relation to the decisions that the Minister decides to make around tolling and also around the use of roads by heavy-vehicle users. I think that it is important that we scrutinise this, and that’s why my colleagues have said that we will be supporting this to select committee. But we do have some serious concerns around this.
I suppose the issue with tolling is it will always be a contentious issue for New Zealanders. Our view is that it should only be used appropriately and where clear benefits exist for that tolling as well. We would like to see an effective and modern transport system, but we also need to make sure that equity is considered with that as well. Whenever we look to charges that New Zealanders will be forced to pay, which is one of the main aspects of tolling, we need to be sure that there is fairness associated with the imposition of that toll. There is, usually, an alternative route when there is a tolling made available in New Zealand, and this bill changes those settings, somewhat, in the sense that it may be, as I understand it, that this legislation allows existing roads to be tolled, but if there is a new route being put in place.
I think it will be very much on a case by case basis. It will affect communities. It’s going to be something that may be quite contentious. There are other important changes, in this bill, relating to the liability for tolls. One of the things that I’ve found is that every time my sister borrows my car, for some reason, a toll is incurred and that toll is sent to my house and is, subsequently, paid by myself and my husband. That is the practice in our family, and it appears that that practice will now be made law by the imposition of this, because it goes to the vehicle rather—that’s correct, isn’t it?—than the actual driver. I’m not sure if she’s aware that some of these roads are tolled, but now—
Arena Williams: But, now, we all are!
CAMILLA BELICH: But, now, we all are. I look forward to informing her of this speech and the fact that she continues to be no longer liable for paying the tolls.
Hon Mark Patterson: Christmas dinner will be interesting!
CAMILLA BELICH: Yes, that’s right. That will be very interesting.
However, we do want some more clarity at select committee. There are interesting issues here. I think, for me, the biggest issue is that people need to get around in New Zealand, and if there’s an issue of fairness or if there’s a way that people are unable to get to where they need to go without incurring significant additional costs, then, I think, that would be a downside of this legislation. I’m hoping that won’t be an outcome, but I know my colleagues who are permanent members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee will be looking into that. Hopefully, as we’ve heard it is a collegial committee, they’ll be able to land in an area where the charges that people face are fair and are accepted by the community, and what we are discussing today can be something that can assist with our infrastructure repairs and our infrastructure expansion and that will be enduring.
CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour): In defence of the previous speaker’s sister, I invite the previous speaker to step outside to the steps of Parliament where she is not protected by parliamentary privilege and make those same allegations about leaving her sister with toll bills.
It’s great that we’re here on the first reading of the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill. This, of course, amends that landmark piece of legislation, the Land Transport Management Act, which a previous Labour Government put together, and it has been amended and modernised since. Let’s not forget that we did the time of use charging third reading last week. This Government is all about enabling infrastructure to be built. This will help achieve that. I commend the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Bills
Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) 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: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 19 March 2026.
The Government is making changes—I will say, with the help of others in this House, I’m pleased to say—to the building and construction control system that will place greater responsibility on building professionals. These changes mean that it is important that building professionals can be held appropriately to account in a timely manner. This bill will make a number of changes across three Acts to ensure the licensing regimes for licensed building practitioners—or LBPs—electrical workers, and plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers are effective, efficient, robust, and sustainable.
The bill enables more efficient disciplinary processes, and here is how it does it: currently, the Building Practitioners Board must hear every complaint brought before them, even if the complaint might be frivolous or vexatious; this means that complaint processes take longer, and the board’s resources are used on maters that do not require their attention; the bill addresses this by further separating the board and registrar functions, allowing the registrar to assess and triage complaints; an investigator, then, will only be appointed if the registrar is satisfied that the complaint is not frivolous or vexatious. This will allow the board to focus their resources on complaints that require their attention and reduce the time that it takes to resolve complaints.
The bill also removes restrictions on the ability for the registrar of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, and the registrar for Electrical Workers Registration Board from initiating complaints. This means that if the registrars of these regimes become aware of poor behaviour, they can proactively initiate an investigation, instead of allowing that behaviour to continue unchecked while waiting for a formal complaint to be made.
Madam Speaker, the bill will also make information easier to access—and I knew you were wondering about that! Currently, when a licensed building practitioner’s licence is cancelled for disciplinary reasons, or they become a member of Parliament—Mr Cameron Luxton—their name is removed from the public registrar.
Arena Williams: Is it?
Cameron Luxton: Mine’s still on the register, to be fair.
Hon CHRIS PENK: Mr Cameron Luxton’s name is still on at least one register; I think it’s probably the LBP one.
This makes it more difficult for consumers to find out information about who has been disciplined and the reasons why. The bill will reverse this so that the practitioner’s name and the reasons they were disciplined will be displayed on the register for three years—ha, kind of like being a member of Parliament, again, Madam Speaker, we’re very much on a register for three years, aren’t we? This will improve transparency and help consumers make more informed choices about which practitioner to engage. This is feeling more and more like “Democracy 101”, but anyway!
The bill will help to ensure poor practitioner behaviour will be held to account—again, this is getting uncanny! Unlike licensed building practitioners and many other professions, there are currently no codes of ethics for licensed plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers—or, for that matter, licensed electrical workers. This means that they are not bound to standards of behaviour when representing their profession and the sector. This can make it difficult to hold them to account for poor behaviour, where the behaviour is not directly related to the work that they have done. This bill aligns these professions with licensed building practitioners by including empowering provisions for codes of ethics to be made for these professions so that poor practitioner behaviour can be held to account by the respective boards. This will reinforce the expectations of professional conduct and competence and incentivise practitioners to consistently deliver safe, compliant, and high-quality building work.
The bill will also reduce the administrative burden for licensed building practitioners, whom I shall just refer to now as LBPs. The Building Act requires LBPs to renew their licence every year; however, they only need to complete skills maintenance every two years. The bill will move the frequency that a building practitioner must renew their licence from the Building Act to the Licensed Building Practitioner Rules. This will allow for greater flexibility to enable their renewal period to be aligned with skills maintenance to reduce the administrative burden for both the practitioner and the board.
The bill will also promote consistent complaints processes across licensing regimes, giving practitioners clearer obligations, and consumers a more predictable way to hold them to account. These changes will provide greater consistency for consumers when interacting with these professions and systems, not just for the behaviour they can expect from the professionals they hire but the processes and experiences they have when filing a complaint against a practitioner should something go wrong.
Finally, the bill will have a staged commencement. Most of the bill will commence on the day after the Royal assent of the bill; however, some changes to the LBP regime will commence through Order In Council. This is because they rely on changes to the LBP rules being passed by the Act. 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. Labour supports this bill at this stage, and I’m going to run through why that is and, also, the questions that we will seek to explore at the select committee stage and with stakeholders, who are very engaged in this bill. It’s important to understand that many of the people working in the sector have been engaging with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and other Government agencies on these changes since 2021. A programme of work around the Building Systems Legislative Reform Programme, as it was known then, had five key pillars; they were about building products, occupational regulation—this issue—risk and liability, the building levy and, particularly, what it pays for, and offences and penalties.
This bill acknowledges much of that work and seeks to implement some of that, but it’s part of a package of reforms that is important to make sure that each part has a sensible impact on the other parts. That is why we are going to make sure that those stakeholders who are most engaged in this, particularly the people working in the sector, are able to comply with the new requirements of them and that they are getting what they think they have signed up for and a building system that is more efficient because of these measures.
I want to draw your attention to the legislative statement, because there are some big claims that are being made for these stakeholders—particularly the claim that “the bill ensures that consumers can hold tradespeople to account if things go wrong.” That is critically important in our building system, and it is not something that many consumers, particularly mums and dads who are building homes and trying to do that affordably and efficiently, can do at the moment. It is critically important that we improve that for people. As electorate MPs, I’m sure many of us have been approached by constituents when things have gone wrong or when they haven’t been able to access the complaints processes or the insurances that they thought they had bought and paid for. It’s important that we ensure that those consumers are getting a fair go in this, and this kind of improvement to the occupational licensing regime is critical to that.
To draw your attention as well to where this fits in with that bigger programme of work, the difference between what was consulted on in 2021 is relevant here. The strengthening occupational regulation regime, at that time, was about supporting Licensed Building Practitioners to do things faster and quicker. Some of these changes here come from that initiative, and those are a good thing—we support those. The supervision endorsements are something that we will be asking questions around—about why those aren’t being progressed in this—because those are important, particularly around some of those higher-risk trades, like, say, internal waterproofing, that were initially included in that programme of work. Instead, we’re seeing a focus here from the Government on a self-certification regime at the lower end of risk where you could also very helpfully for consumers advance their interests by improving the situation for higher-risk works, which doesn’t appear to be the focus here.
The industry was consulted on ensuring that non-licensed people aren’t carrying out the higher-risk work unsupervised—that’s important, and there’s an important sort of complaints aspect to that as well. It’s important that we’re capturing that kind of work for consumers and that consumers understand how to raise issues around that. The penalties are high, but that relies on proper auditing and proper accounting for the work going on, and if we don’t have well-resourced councils and well-resourced regulators, then we can’t say to consumers that that is going to be a part of what the Government says on the tin: that they will ensure that consumers can hold tradespeople to account if things go wrong.
The third thing here is around improving consumers’ access to products that spread their risk—either that’s insurance or it’s something that they pay for in their rates, either because their council is looking over it or it’s because of something that they pay for with their tax dollars because they have a regulator that is tooled up to be able to do this work. It is not fair if consumers are asked to bear extra costs associated with these changes, and it is certainly not the intention of the Labour Party to support something like that. We will be asking questions around that.
In the last 40 seconds, I want to draw the House’s attention to the Attorney-General’s vet of this bill. It’s important to me as well that we make sure that the new investigative processes and information-gathering powers are fair; that the new ability to enter into properties to be investigating is something that is well understood within the industry and doesn’t penalise the smaller players at the expense of the big ones. We want to make sure that in New Zealand’s building industry, when we back our builders, back our one-man bands, and back our people out there who are doing the job, they aren’t unfairly disadvantaged at the expense of the larger players because of some of these new provisions.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. This morning, I was on a moderating panel at the International Conference on Urban Health. I don’t know if any of the Government members are going to be attending any part of that, but it’s being held for three days at the Tākina Centre here in Wellington. There are experts from all over the world. Some of the other speakers on the panel with me are absolute experts in the built environment—two particularly specialised in housing.
They were all making the same point, which is that with all the research they do—and these are academics who do research on the real world, work with local government, central government, and the private sector, and they look at the outcomes from different things. They’re saying one of the key determinants of health and a whole bunch of other things is housing and our buildings. Ninety percent of our time these days, for most people, is spent indoors. The quality of the ventilation and of the building has a direct impact on people’s health.
It’s no mystery to New Zealanders that we have a problem with childhood asthma. We have a problem with cold, mouldy, damp, expensive-to-heat homes. This puts strain on our health system and this affects productivity. So there are all these ways in which improving our building sector can help the entire country, which is why we should be doing that.
This bill is the first of two bills—you know, obviously, the second bill will be debated directly after this—and this bill the Green Party can support, because it’s aiming to ensure that licensed professionals in the building and construction sector can be appropriately held to account through complaints and disciplinary processes that are effective. So it’s strengthening the occupational licensing regime. I think that’s a good thing. It’s far from everything that’s needed to improve our building sector.
I’m a little bit concerned that right now everyone has such a focus on bringing down the cost of building that we’re not focusing on also lifting the performance of our buildings, because those buildings last for decades, people spend a lot of time in them. If they’re not built well, they will cost us more in the long run; both in direct costs in terms of heating or cooling but also cost to society in terms of emergency admissions, and long-term chronic health problems which mean people can’t work. So it just makes so much sense for New Zealand to improve its building sector.
We have to look at whole of life costs. The answer is not getting rid of all regulation; in fact, quite the opposite: it’s having smarter, better regulations that are well enforced. We need to properly resource the people who are doing the vetting, doing the training, and doing inspections. One of the things that was brought up on the panel—and this was from an American context—was how it’s not enough to regulate the quality of the build, we need to have ongoing performance requirements around buildings as they’re being used. For example, a warrant of fitness for rental properties—something that my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick I know is very passionate about and has proposed a member’s bill on.
We can have a system that ensures that after the building’s built that we’re checking and making sure that it has a healthy indoor air temperature, that it doesn’t cost a fortune to achieve that, that it’s not damp and mouldy, and we can make sure that there aren’t unhealthy products being used in those buildings, because we are going to find out that there are a bunch of products that are really, really problematic.
Hon Member: Wool.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Microplastics—yeah, oh yes, wool. Wool, yes. The Green Party absolutely supports wool, and we support cross-laminated timber. We support using natural, sustainable products that are produced here in New Zealand, and we can do that—we absolutely can do that. So that’s an area where we could find cross-party support, potentially.
This bill, in and of itself, I think is a good step. The next bill, we don’t feel so confident about because it is expanding the ability of builders and plumbers and others to self-certify their work.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We’ll just deal with this bill at the moment.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yes. I think better regulations that actually measure the performance of the buildings, the things that we need to know are something—we have that data, it should be possible to do. It’s something the Green Party would love to work with the Government on, because it will actually help improve productivity and health in our country.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise as one of those LBPs—Licensed Building Practitioners—who are out there doing the hard mahi on sites around the country, building these houses. The thing that is driving us mental in the construction industry is the untenable delays that we face: waiting for inspections and waiting for things that building professionals—because the people who build our houses in New Zealand are professionals—know how to do. If we are going to be trusting our building professionals, they need to be held to a high account, a high account of themselves and of their industry. That’s what this bill does.
The code of ethics that already exists, I’ve had my quibbles with it. It’s got great things in there, like take responsibility for your actions and explain risk to the client; however, I’m not sure about whether a code of ethics can really figure out whether you’ve priced work fairly, whether you’ve acknowledged and respected cultural norms, or other such unmeasurables. If it’s going to be subjective, then it shouldn’t be in a code of ethics.
But the building professionals in our country want to be held to a higher standard; they want the industry held to a higher standard; they want the respect that comes with the hard work and diligence that has been acquired over years of gaining a skill; and if someone’s taking the mickey, the registrar needs to be able to deal with that. People who are impersonating LBPs need to be held to account. Something that I have seen in the industry is people using LBP numbers. That’s got to stop. LBPs have to be held to a high standard, and that’s what this bill will do. I commend it to the House.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I want us to consider what it is that we want out of our building system. The first one of those things is we want quality outcomes. That, actually, is the most important thing of all—that we have warm, dry homes that are also durable—and that’s one of the challenges we have all.
Hon Mark Patterson: Wool. Wool, Andy. Wool.
ANDY FOSTER: My colleague the Hon Mark Patterson has talked about wool, and he’s absolutely right. It’s a very fine product to use in these buildings.
We want quality outcomes that people can rely on because, of course, for most people, the home is the most important investment, the biggest investment, they will ever make, and they need to have some surety that what they buy is going to be a quality product.
The second thing is that we also want to have a quick, efficient, and reliable system that actually gets the consenting processes done in a reasonable way. Of course, it’s always good to speak on building issues after our resident builder, Cameron Luxton, because what you hear, time and time again, is that the consenting process, as it is at the moment, is really frustrating people. If you’ve got to wait for two or three or four days or however many days it might be to get an inspection at different stages of a building, that costs real money. It’s not just the cost of the consenting, but it’s the cost of the delay.
This is all about streamlining delivery processes. We should be able to expect, as we do everywhere else in life, that, if you looked at it in terms of consumer guarantees, what they provide is fit for purpose. That’s really what this is about. It’s saying that when we have somebody who is a licensed plumber, gas fitter, drain layer, or electrician, they know what they’re doing, they’re suitably qualified, and they deliver the product that they are supposed to deliver. I’m sure the vast majority do exactly that.
What this also does is it says that, if there is something wrong with something that somebody does, instead of going to the council in this particular situation—of course, for councils, it’s a bit of a nightmare anyway. When I was at the Wellington City Council, we were on the verge of handing back our warrant. At least, that’s what I wanted us to do because it was just a liability. It’s much better that the liabilities and the responsibilities lie with the people who are actually delivering the product, and that they’re doing it well.
This streamlines the disciplinary procedures and gives more powers to the board that governs those things. If you’ve got your name there and you’re registered, that means a lot more than if you’ve been deregistered. The other thing we need to make sure, as we go through this process, is that we don’t have these phoenix arrangements allowing people to get around them. In other words, it is you individually—not you, Madam Speaker, but the individual who is performing the service—who is responsible, not their 2016 version or the 2017 version or their 2018 version. It is them and them alone that are responsible for that and are held accountable for that.
Just to finish up, what we want is a really good process for holding practitioners to account, for delivering a quality product, and for them to be held to account when something goes wrong. I’m very much looking forward to considering this in front of the select committee, and I commend the bill to the House.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is one of two bills that we’re discussing in the name of Minister Chris Penk, and I just want to begin by acknowledging him and the work he’s doing to make our building and construction sector highly productive so that it produces low-quality—building homes right across this country.
This bill, as the previous speaker, Andy Foster, alluded to, is all about efficient processes for those in the sector. I commend this bill to the House.
REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) Amendment Bill. Now, we know that New Zealand needs more warm, dry, and safe homes. I don’t think there would be anyone in the House who would disagree with that statement. How do we go about it? We all have different approaches. This is an interesting bill, and Labour is supporting the bill, but, first and foremost, I think we need to keep front of mind the need to protect consumers—those people who we are building these houses for. We know that we need stronger, clearer licensing systems that can improve efficiency across the building sector, and that will give strength and consumer confidence—the kind of consumer confidence that we know we need.
Now, we’ve always talked, in the Labour Party, about New Zealanders deserving, as I said at the top of my contribution, affordable, warm, dry homes that are built to last. These need to be good quality homes, they need to be well built, and stronger licencing will help to lift that quality, but we also have to make sure that it’s fair, that it’s proportionate, and that it genuinely improves the safety of those homes. This bill does aim to introduce broader investigative and disciplinary tools, so we need to make sure that those are transparent, that they’re balanced, and that they’re not punitive for smaller operators. Again, that’s a role that the select committee needs to pay particular attention to, particularly, through the lens of how this bill can be improved to ensure stronger protections for the consumers and, ultimately, for the people who are going to live in those homes.
Now, the other thing that this bill sets out to do—and it’s great to have heard, in one of the contributions this afternoon, from a member across the way who has been a licensed building practitioner, Cameron Luxton, from the ACT Party—is that it sets out to support competent tradespeople. Absolutely, a focus that the select committee needs to give, to progressing this bill, is to how it can support competent tradespeople. One of the specific considerations that, I think, should be given ample time, and for which submissions should be sought, was on how best we can integrate some of the new technology and technological innovations that can make that process for tradespeople so much better, can speed up what have been some of the traditional administrative and bureaucratic hurdles—speed bumps, if you will—that often interrupt what should be and would be a much more efficient, much more affordable process if there was less administrative load, less burden, and less waiting time for builders and licensed building practitioners and tradespeople during the construction of new homes. Making sure that those technological advancements are investigated fully and prioritised through the development of this bill would ensure that some of the many frustrations that our very talented and very clever workforce face, as they go about building the homes that we know New Zealand needs, could be eliminated through the use of this new technology.
Now, the other thing, I think, we need to ensure in progressing this bill, which we do support, is that we don’t shift the risk down the chain. Where we look at protecting and supporting competent tradespeople, we also need to make sure that we’re not doing that at the expense of short-changing, ultimately, the people who end up owning, or living in, these homes. Again, another focus for the select committee would be to make it a very clear priority to ensure that we don’t simply shift the risk on to, ultimately, the occupier of the home.
If the bill has three aims, the first is to protect consumers, the second is to support competent tradespeople, and the third is strong consideration not to shift the risk down the chain but to, instead, lift the quality of the homes that need to be warm, dry, and safe for all New Zealanders. Thank you.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): There has been a rise in professionals in the building and construction sector who are doing a fantastic job to ensure the quality of our homes, and this bill strengthens the system that supports their work. This bill will make it easier and more affordable to deliver the new homes New Zealanders need, while putting stronger checks in place to guard against shoddy work.
It lifts accountability across the sector and gives customers a clear, reliable path forward if things go wrong. This is about safer homes, higher standards, and greater confidence for everyone. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is the second bill in a row that's going to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, so we shouldn't have been so complimentary on what a collegial committee it is, because it seems to have no end, but Labour will be supporting this bill. As almost everybody has said already, I think all New Zealanders can take pride in the fact that we have a workforce of tradespeople and professionals who pride themselves on building well and providing quality products, but we can't take that for granted. We do need to provide frameworks and make sure, in this House, that we give them the tools that they need to ensure that the final product, not just for the consumer but for the industry as a whole, is kept safe and is kept efficient and actually amounts to the types of homes that we value and that we want people living in.
We'll support this bill because clearer licensing systems, we believe, can improve efficiencies across the building sector and can certainly strengthen that consumer confidence, which is incredibly, incredibly important. For many people in this House, you wouldn't have to go back too many years to remember examples when that has gone wrong and when there have been large-scale disasters in this sector, and so we need to make sure that we're on our toes. Electrical workers, plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers just by definition operate in high-risk environments, so clear, competent standards; clear, consistent enforcement regimes; and modernised complaint systems I think are essential, and that doesn't feel like too much to ask for.
As my colleague Reuben Davidson has just said, on this side of the House, certainly within the Labour Party, we've always had at our core a fundamental belief that New Zealanders deserve—fundamentally deserve—homes that are warm, dry, and safe to live in, and that therefore stronger licensing that can help lift that quality and do anything towards making that achievable is worthwhile, but only if it's fair, if it's proportionate, and if it genuinely improves safety.
The bill introduces broad investigative and disciplinary tools, and as well as being fair and transparent and the normal caveats that we put around those things, it is important that they're not overly or particularly punitive, particularly for small operators. I'm sure that the select committee will ask those appropriate questions and play a critical role in testing whether the powers that are inherent in this piece of potential legislation actually do protect the public without creating a whole host of unnecessary burdens.
The new levies and compliance costs—as has been said, we do have to be vigilant that it doesn't just end up being someone else's problem. So I think the Government to date hasn’t really provided sufficient information or sufficient analysis on that affordability and whether there's potential for those flow-on effects, so I will be interested in hearing more about that also at select committee.
Ultimately, stronger licensing only works when regulators and the people tasked with keeping on top of how that's working are actually resourced properly to do that job, so they need to be able to act on those complaints. They need to be able to not just do things retrospectively—after something has gone wrong—but be really active in supporting the people who work in this sector to make sure that they're able to comply and monitor those competencies.
So, again, we will be keeping a close eye on making sure that the requisite information that makes that material and useful comes through the select committee process and affords us a little bit more confidence. And it does need to be a robust select committee process—
Tangi Utikere: Not four months and one day.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Not four months and one day, as my colleague Tangi Utikere is noting, which has been a common thread going through this House at the moment. It kind of makes a little bit of a mockery of the select committee process if it doesn't have sufficient time or if there's some sort of pressure from a Minister to report back on a particular day. I’m sure we'll hear later on in the rest of today's session some examples of how that's happened, so we wouldn't want that to happen to this bill. We're up for a decent, robust process that is in itself clear and transparent so that we can assess that this bill provides the clarity and the transparency required.
CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): Look, our Government is committed to building infrastructure and building homes fast, efficiently, and well. We back our builders, and we want to see a high standard of building. This bill both increases accountability and quality, which is what we want to see. We want to build warm, affordable, dry homes.
And wow! Have we got a pipeline of homes in Hawke’s Bay. I would just like to acknowledge our amazing building Minister, who visited Hawke’s Bay recently, and who is in charge of these reforms which are going to achieve a higher standard in building, but also get fast, efficient homes built. I commend this bill to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Instruction to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): I present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): No, you don’t—not just yet.
Hon CHRIS PENK: Oh. I move that the bill be referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): No—third time lucky.
Hon CHRIS PENK: I’m out!
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Report-back date—do you have a report-back date?
Hon CHRIS PENK: I move, That the bill be reported back to the House four months and one day from today’s date.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Which would be—I think my reckoning would be 19 March 2026.
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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): I, again, present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) 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 Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 19 March 2026.
Arena Williams: Do you?
Hon CHRIS PENK: I really do. Further to that, I wish to point out—as others have commented in the context of the bill that Parliament has just considered, and helpfully passed, at least by way of first reading—that this bill forms part of the same reform package to make it easier, faster, and more affordable to build by reducing the burden on building consent authorities, and moving responsibility to construction sector professionals.
This bill will make substantive changes across two Acts to improve the efficiency of the building consenting system and make better use of regulatory resources. The bill will free up building consent authorities and shift responsibility to professionals, as I have pointed out, and it's worth starting by noting that the consenting system at the moment can be slow and inefficient, causing delays and increasing the costs to build in New Zealand. Inefficiencies are caused by risk-averse behaviour and lack of capacity for building consent authorities and a system that discourages professionals from taking responsibility for assurance.
The risk aversion is understandable but nevertheless we need to understand, from a systems point of view, the effect of these incentives and think if there's a way that we can make it possible for greater responsibility and thereby having greater quality, as well as faster processes. To that end, this bill introduces an opt-in scheme, allowing approved plumbers and drainlayers to self-certify that their work complies with the building consent, without the need for a building consent authority inspection. This will save time and money for professionals and building consent authorities which I'll, from here on in, refer to as BCAs; mostly being councils and homeowners.
The scheme will be integrated into the existing consent system. Plumbing and drainlaying work will still need to be consented as usual but a declaration will be filed that the plumbing or drainlaying work will be self-certified. Inspections will not be carried out, allowing the professionals simply to get on with their work. Once the work is completed, the self-certifier will issue a certificate of compliance which confirms that their work complies with the building consent. BCAs will be required to rely on the certificate as legal assurance when issuing a code compliance certificate at the end of the building process and will be protected from liability for self-certified work. Instead, the responsibility will lie with the professionals doing the work.
The scheme will likely apply to the majority of plumbing and drainlaying work in stand-alone residential buildings, meaning that there is a massive opportunity to remove inefficiencies in the consenting system and make it faster and cheaper to build homes in New Zealand. It will also free up BCAs to focus on riskier work that should be inspected.
A key tenet of the legislation is that the bill promotes efficiency without compromising safety. That's because safeguards will ensure that efficiency gains are balanced against ensuring safety. Only plumbing and drainlaying work that meets the definition in regulations will be able to be self-certified. The bill limits this definition to work that is routine for experienced plumbers and drainlayers and presents a low risk to public safety.
Riskier work will still need to be inspected, providing protection for homeowners. To self-certify, professionals must meet robust standards, demonstrating the necessary skills and experience. These standards will be set by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board through Gazette notices, and will be based around technical competency, experience, ability to meet their new liabilities, and their administrative practices like quality assurance or QA.
These minimum standards will also give consumers confidence that self-certifiers have the right skills to meet their new responsibilities and will protect the public from defective work and the harm it can cause. In practice, I expect that most plumbers and drainlayers who hold the highest licensed class will be eligible to self-certify. Endorsed professionals will be able to self-certify work that they've done themselves and work that they have supervised. This reflects the reality that the most experienced plumbers and drainlayers often work in a supervisory role.
The bill also introduces new functions for the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, which will provide a further level of consumer protection. Certificates of compliance will need to be lodged with the board to be held on a register, parts of which will be publicly accessible so future homeowners, insurers, or other interested parties will be able to see if a property had self-certified work. This will make the scheme more transparent and professionals more accountable.
Failure to lodge a certificate will be a disciplinary offence carrying a maximum fine of $10,000, one of a number of changes to the board's disciplinary functions. The bill also extends existing offences to cover self-certification, and raises some existing penalties, promoting responsibility and accountability. The bill gives new monitoring powers to the board, including the power to audit certificates of compliance. This will ensure that the work complied with the consent and the building code. Tradespeople who do poor or non-compliant work will be caught and held to account.
This is our crackdown on cowboys, that we're fond of talking about, and I say that with all due respect to real cowboys, obviously, and cowgirls. The bill will have a staged commencement, something to celebrate, indeed. Most of the bill will commence on 20 June 2026, but provisions relating to powers to make secondary legislation, the functions of the board, and other official bodies, and other transitional provisions will commence on the day after royal assent. This is to provide time for the necessary operational requirements for the scheme to be developed. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. This is a good one. This is an exciting one for Labour to be able to support. I’m going to raise some questions with it, but we are looking forward to getting into this with the people who it matters most to: the plumbers who want to make sure that this is sticky legislation, that we get this right, and that we don’t touch the rules again, because we need to make sure that this is something that both the professionals in the sector and the people who rely on it, the consumers, can have faith in for the long term. That’s why this needs to be cross-partisan. I hope we can work together in the committee, ably chaired by Andy Foster, to make sure this works. We do have a few reservations, and I’m going to run through them. But, yeah, we’re happy to support this at first reading.
The key for the Labour Party is it will be looking for strong consumer protections and robust safeguards throughout the change that professionals will be faced with here, because we share that goal, that everyone wants more cost of safety or quality or the rights of consumers in this process, the mums and dads who are just trying to build a home affordably and cheaply in New Zealand, because cutting costs is good but cutting corners is not.
Plumbers and drainlayers already carry quite heavy professional responsibilities, and if we’re shifting, here in this bill, further liability from, say, building consent authorities on to individuals, we must also ensure that these standards are very clear and that there’s access to the appropriate insurance products and proper support for those regulators who are tasked with ensuring that the system is working.
The industry, at select committee, will, rightly, ask us “Why is liability being put on these individuals and not on, say, the businesses themselves?” It’s important that we understand, here, what’s being asked of these professionals who haven’t had this sort of liability before and whether the appropriate person, legal person—in this case, natural person—is being regulated here or whether it’s appropriate for the business to regulate instead. Why is it that businesses aren’t being regulated under this? Well, simply, Madam Speaker, I would suggest to you that it’s because the programme of work that the Government has long advertised around phoenix companies and around companies in the building and construction sector going under or going out of business and, then, popping up perhaps the next day, perhaps six months later in a new corporate form is a practice that we must stamp out because it really impacts on those consumers, but that hasn’t been done yet and it does not look like the Government will progress that. That’s a problem if you then have the little guy, the new plumber, done his apprenticeship, got his qualifications, now suddenly faced with liability for his large employer that he would reasonably expect was being managed within a corporate setting and a corporate structure. That doesn’t seem right or fair, to me, to the little guy here.
We also want to think about when councils reduce oversight, consumers must still have sensible and simple and reliable pathways to get defects fixed. The natural policy response to this would be insurance—either a compulsory insurance scheme, or a State-backed insurance scheme; schemes, like the ones that Australian consumers have enjoyed for many years, they work pretty well in their markets, there is a range of them to choose from, from the big gold-plated consumer-friendly scheme in Queensland, to the slim-lined schemes in, say, New South Wales. We have none of that and yet we are building a policy response as if there is an insurance product in the market that does not exist already, and so we need to make sure that that risk spreading is going to be able to happen for also these companies—you know, when we think about the little guy, we need to make sure that he’s got access to something that will help him when things go wrong for him, as well as the consumer who he’s working for.
The only other question I’d add in my last minute is to make it clear that we should be thinking about the scope of this work. You know, when I think of, say, the corner bakeries in the electorate of Manurewa—the best bakeries in the country—I think why don’t they also—
Hon James Meager: Aww!
ARENA WILLIAMS: —the best bakeries in the country, Mr Meager—I think about making sure that they have access to a sensible and quick regime where standard plumbing in their shops can also be covered by what is a quick and efficient regime. We should be asking the questions about who is in scope here, because that would make sense to me.
Finally, just on the report-back date: what a grinch this Minister is for not letting the plumbers, the hard-working New Zealanders who want to have a say on this, not submit in the full time frame. They’re being forced to over Christmas. “We want our plumbers out plumbing. Go fix up some kitchens. Go work hard, as you are doing. Don’t have to come back to select committee.” But, unfortunately, that is what they are being faced with here.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. As I outlined in my earlier speech, the Green Party is not supporting this bill at first reading. We absolutely understand what it’s aiming to achieve, but the truth is that New Zealand is lagging so far behind other developed countries in terms of having a level of accountability and oversight over building and construction work that we need to do a whole lot of other things before we start reducing oversight and accountability of our professionals.
I mean, it’s very difficult to trust this Government when so many of the steps that they have taken are actively making things worse for consumers, for residents, and for citizens. When I think of just some of the recent changes they’ve made, they can’t seem to differentiate between good, effective Government regulation that lifts productivity and protects people—that’s the purpose of Government. It’s to protect and empower people, and when we don’t have those systems in place, people get screwed over.
I was talking to a constituent in my electorate not that long ago who had really just wanted to tell me about the experience that he had had with purchasing his first home at the top of the market. He was going to do some basic works which he’d planned on and had budgeted for, and he was finding out that there was a whole lot of very serious structural problems with the building, which was only about 20 years old, and these were due to deficiencies in our building techniques. He has no one to go to. The people who did the building work are long gone, and there’s like no record or accountability of it. He’s got a very large mortgage, and his interest rates had gone up because he happened to buy at the top of the market. He’s a young person, trying to get his first home—
Hon Member: Thanks, National.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —and not—yeah, so I wouldn’t say “Thanks National.”, because the guy is in serious financial difficulties now because he found out that the building had serious problems with it, which now he has to send a whole lot of money to—
Dr Hamish Campbell: Did he get a building inspection done?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yeah, he did get a building inspection done. But when it was the top of the market, he was under a lot of pressure because it’s a sellers’ market, and so the people who are trying to buy start lowering their standards and have less money to get the work done.
This is the whole problem—it’s like that’s the point. What this Government doesn’t understand is that the Government is here to protect and empower people, and we work together to do that. That’s what a democracy is for, and we do it because it works—we’re all better off when we work together to get better outcomes. But for several decades we’ve had a race to the bottom in New Zealand of successive Governments who have cut really important rules, regulations, and investment and funding to different parts of the public system, which has led to the leaky building crisis, and that cost local councils billions of dollars. I mean, it was hugely costly to enable those changes and reduce oversight, and, at the time, Treasury was just like “Oh, they’ll sort it out in the courts.” Well, actually, that’s a very theoretical position, because when people can wind up their business, declare bankruptcy, and then pop up somewhere else and not be held to account, that’s a problem, and, ultimately, it is the public that picks up the cost, one way or the other.
Look, I’m all for better regulation. In my observation in both the building sector and urban planning, there are a whole lot of regulations that are doing the exact opposite of what we need them to do. But just getting rid of that and trying to speed up or simplify the process without actually lifting performance and accountability and without investing in oversight means that there’s a real chance of there being problems down the road that will end up costing us all.
So I think there are very good and clear reasons to not support this bill at first reading. We will see what the select committee process turns up, but with the fast-track process and with the changes to the clean car standards—which are going to be rushed through in urgency later this week—it’s a perfect example of the Government doing what’s good for business or for corporates when that’s actually bad for the country. It’s bad for consumers, it’s bad for households, it’s going to cost us more in the long run, and it’s bad for the environment, because they don’t care—they clearly don’t care. I mean, they’ve made it very clear that they don’t care, at all. If it’s good for the donors, if it’s good for the big lobbyists, and if it’s good for the overseas interests, they’re all for it.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise once again as a licensed building practitioner (LBP) speaking on a bill that addresses real issues in the construction sector. Currently, if a sparkie or a gas fitter wants to sign off some work and say, “Hey, it’s behind a wall. I don’t want to hold up the progress of this building. It's perfectly sound, I can certify it myself.” That’s allowed. But a plumber running pipes or a drainlayer running drains cannot do the same thing. It makes no sense.
I’ve been on building sites where there have been massive holes in the ground waiting—waiting for someone in a high-vis from the council to turn up and tell us “Don’t worry. You can fill in that perfectly good hole. I’ve only been”—this is an inspector speaking—“in the industry two years, but you, you 30-year veteran of the drainlaying profession, you cannot be trusted to make sure that your pipes aren’t going into the sumps, into the septics, and into the soap pits that you have been doing for decades.”
This is addressing a real problem that holds up sites. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s a greatly important thing. Along with allowing a new LBP scheme to do with internal waterproofing—that’ll deal with the waterproofing issues that might come up from allowing people to assess their work. But with drains and pipes, this is not complicated stuff. These professionals know what they’re doing when they’ve been trained; they can do it, they’re licensed. Let them at it.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, as I said in the previous debate, the most important thing that we want out of our building system is that we get good outcomes for the people that end up with the end product: the houses, the homes that people live in. This bill, though, is about trust. It’s about trust in the competence—the trust in the competence—of our professional drainlayers and plumbers, as you’ve just heard from our licensed building practitioner.
This allows professional plumbers and drainlayers to self-certify and to certificate their work, and it brings them in line with other building practitioners. This sets up a regime where the board—the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board—has the power to endorse plumbers and drainlayers. Doesn’t mean it has to; has the power to, which means that they can say, “Well, look, are these people competent to do the job that they are doing to the level which is required to be done so that they can self-certify?” It doesn't mean that they will self-certify everybody, because, obviously, when you start doing that, if people are not doing the job properly, it comes back on them as a board, saying “What are you doing certifying these people?” So they will do that, I expect, with care and attention to make sure that they are certificating and endorsing the right the right people to make sure they do the job properly.
Also, it is about self-certifying certain work, so set by regulation. Doesn’t mean every piece of work; doesn’t mean the really, really complicated pieces which you might have a third party have a look over. It means self-certifying certain work. This also means that the self-certification then relies on—in many areas of construction, we already have these producer statements, which, in fact, often councils as the building consents authority farm those out—it might be to an engineer or whoever it might be—and says, “If they’re happy with it, then we’re happy with it.” So, effectively, they’re already doing that in so many complicated areas of the business.
Two final points to make, because we’ve heard these in the debate already. The point’s been made about making sure that if something goes wrong, there is a process and a way in which the homeowner, the recipient of the end product, can actually get satisfaction from somebody who can put it right. In Wellington, the phrase “It’s the putting right that counts” will be familiar to many people. That is absolutely essential.
Finally, I had a lot of sympathy for the point that Arena Williams made about phoenix businesses. We don’t want the situation where people can wind up the business—the 2024 version of a business creates a 2025 version or 2026 version. We want the individual to be responsible for the work that they do so that if they do it wrong and they don’t put it right, then there is a consequence on them so that I’m sure that they will, as professionals, do the job properly. I commend this bill to the House.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This is the second bill under the name of Chris Penk, and he’s doing a great job as building and construction Minister. It is all in the name: self-certification for plumbers and drainlayers. What a great bill, and it’s getting bipartisan support in the House.
Just to expand on my colleague, that—
Tom Rutherford: Apart from the Greens.
DAN BIDOIS: Except the Green Party.
But to expand on what “good” looks like, it’s about an efficient, effective, and low-cost system for consenting. That’s what this bill’s all about.
I look forward to hearing submitters, hearing from people in the public at the coalface in this industry, and about how this will work in practice. I commend this bill to the House.
REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand to take a call on the second building and construction bill, this being the self-certification by plumbers and drainlayers amendment bill. We do support this bill but with reservations. As speakers from this side of the House have taken the time to talk about, this bill needs to see robust safeguards and needs to see consumer protections because speed cannot compromise safety, quality, or consumer rights. Another simpler way of putting it is that fast and efficient can’t become quick and dirty, because that’s not what we want in our construction sector.
Now, we’re very proud, on this side of the House in the Labour Party, that we’ve always said that New Zealanders deserve homes that are affordable and that are built to last. When it comes to making sure we can do that affordably and to cutting the costs to do that, that’s all well and good, but it can’t be at the expense of cutting corners. We know that our plumbers and drainlayers—our good tradies—carry very heavy responsibility and liability for the work that they do, so we need to make sure that the standards and the access to the appropriate products are there for those professionals to be able to do the work that they need to do, to be able to do it quickly, but also to have the protections there for them.
Now, I have a story I want to share from an installation that I had at my home where I decided to install gas to have a gas facility in my kitchen for cooking. I brought a professional installer in, and—
Andy Foster: Didn’t you hear about the oil and gas ban?
Grant McCallum: But you cancelled the gas.
REUBEN DAVIDSON: This was some time ago. The professional installer came to my home and installed a gas hob in my kitchen, which worked beautifully. I was able to cook fantastic food and have a perfectly functioning gas hob in my kitchen. But what happened when I went to do the washing up was that I pulled the plug out of the sink, and the sink drained, and all of a sudden across my kitchen floor, there was a puddle of water coming from under the skirting board in the corner of the kitchen. This had never happened before. It was a very puzzling situation for me. Now, what had happened was that the water waste pipe from the sink ran diagonally through the wall at a surprising angle—surprising to the gas installer, who had managed to drill the gas pipe directly through the water waste pipe and safely install gas to run to my hob. What this meant was that I could safely operate my gas hub, and I had an airtight, perfect gas installation, but I had a leaky waste pipe draining the sink under my kitchen bench.
Now, luckily, I spotted it pretty quickly, and, luckily, the professional tradesperson took it very seriously and came round and remediated it immediately. But it did make me think: what if it had been the other way round? What if the water pipe had gone through the gas pipe? The result would have been quite different. Now, the point of that story is that we do need to provide very clear protections for our tradespeople but also very, very strong protections for us as consumers in our homes if we are building or carrying out renovations and people are going to be self-certifying their work. We owe it to our tradies to get this right. That is why the support that we bring for this bill does have reservations, because during the select committee process, we need to make sure that the owners or people who will live in homes that will be built under these changed and amended regulations are going to be living in homes that, if they have been self-certified, are safe. But we also need to make sure that, for our tradies—many of whom own their own businesses and are working really hard to make it all balance and make it all work—there are protections in place for them so that they don’t get caught out and get caught short and lose their businesses as a result of carrying this further administrative burden. It is with reservations that we support this bill. Thank you.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): It’s very simple: if electricians and gas fitters can self-certify their work, then of course our qualified plumbers and drainlayers should be trusted to do the same, as well. This Government is here to back them up. An open self-certification scheme is a stroke of common sense. Less red tape, stronger accountability, and the same high level of safety. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. I’m happy to tell the House that I don’t know a whole lot about—
Tom Rutherford: Anything.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —plumbing and drainlayers. Well, thank you for that interjection. I think it says more about the person making the interjection than myself. But I will say that I’m happy—happy—to say that I don’t know a huge amount about plumbing and drainlaying. This is important because I have had the opportunity to employ plumbers and drainlayers. It’s been important to me to be able to rely on their work and also the certification of their work, so that I know that the house that I live in, that I was lucky to be able to have the privilege to be able to build, is safe. It is important for me as a consumer, and for every other consumer out there who has not studied plumbing and drainlaying. We want to be able to rely on the certification by those that know more about these things.
So I picked up this bill and thought, I wonder what sorts of jobs will be able to be self-certified by plumbers and drainlayers under this bill? It turns out it’s not that clear, and that is because of the mechanisms of the bill. I want to go through those, briefly. You’ll see at clause 4 the definitions of what are self-certifiable drainlaying and self-certifiable plumbing. This is the kind of work that is defined in reference to regulations. We don’t see those regulations here and I’m not sure if they exist yet. It’s important to note that the regulations are where those types of work that I don’t know a whole lot about will be defined.
It is important to note that there are some thresholds for what might be in those regulations. We see that at clause 45 of the bill, and that is where section 172C is amended to insert section 172C(1AAA). These are the “Requirements before making certain regulations”. The Minister may only make the recommendations about these regulations if the Minister is satisfied that the plumbing work will be “(a) … routine work for an experienced drainlayer or plumber;”—so an experienced element is relevant to that threshold. At (b), it “is not complex drainlaying or plumbing”—I presume that the people who know about these things will be able to discuss what is or what is not complex. At (c), it “poses a low risk to the health and safety of the public.” I would hope that there the health and safety of the public is also of the consumer or of the person who’s in the house where these plumbing and drainlaying works might be.
I raise that point because the regulations here are an important part of how this bill will operate. I very much hope that the select committee will spend some time looking at what those regulations may or may not include. I’m assuming that there will be submissions on this particular topic by the people who do know about plumbing and drainlaying. Of course, this bill has to be reported back within four months and one day, I think—so we’re avoiding a debate in the House on when that shortened time frame is. But I do note, like my colleague Arena Williams, that this does mean that the plumbers and drainlayers, the people who know what might be in these regulations and saying what sort of work this bill will apply to, will be making submissions over the Christmas break and that is far from perfect.
As you’ve heard, though, Labour is supporting this bill and will look, at the select committee, for strong auditing requirements, mandatory record keeping, fair and transparent fees and levies, and clear remedies for homeowners when work fails. It is important to note that this is supposed to be part of a package that also includes insurance and liability, and we do need those settings to be right. If they are not right, then it will cost everyone a whole lot more.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): I commend the bill to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is, That the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Instruction to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee
Instruction to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) on behalf of the Minister for Building and Construction: I move, That the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 19 March 2026.
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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance): I present a legislative statement on the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
There is a view of the world that people across the seas are somehow bad or venal or out to get us, and that we should put up barriers and try to keep them out. That when they try to invest in New Zealand with their ideas and their capital, they are out to get something and must be regarded with suspicion.
There is another view, which is that when our friends around the world choose to bring their ideas and their money to our country and make voluntary agreements with people who own property here—whether they be New Zealanders or other overseas investors—that trading of value for value makes us stronger together. That when you see people from overseas who have a better way of doing things or a different way of doing things, investing in a business and bringing those ideas, we’re all better off. People can be paid more, people can have more interesting jobs, and we can export more interesting and valuable products overseas.
There’s a great movie, from my youth in the 1990s, that summed it up: it is the circle of life.That’s why I’m very proud to be commending this amendment to the Overseas Investment Act, because it carries on the work that we have done to ensure New Zealand is a place that welcomes investment from across the seas. It’s actually the entire history of our country to do this. The history of our country is a history of foreign investment. There was no foreign capital in New Zealand, once upon a time. Then, Kupe showed up with a waka hourua and a few kunekune pigs, and New Zealanders have been importing capital into our country ever since, and we’ve been all the wealthier for it. That’s why, so far, this Government has halved the time it takes to get a consent on overseas investments into this country—we’re very proud of it. And that’s why we’re bringing this bill to the House, which will ensure there is a revised purpose statement for the Overseas Investment Act that acknowledges the benefits of investment in New Zealand. We’ve never done that in our legislation before—it’s well-past due.
We will introduce a new national interest test. That, for most consents, will mean that people will be able to get a consent within 15 working days, within three weeks. All this, while maintaining the breadth of what the Overseas Investment Office screens, and intensifying the focus on overseas investment—some of which really is a threat to our way of life, and that means a focus on national security and public order. That is, in short, what this bill does.
It is a vote of confidence in New Zealand when people send their money and their ideas here. It’s when they take it out that you should be worried. Just ask most South American countries what that experience is like when the politics goes wrong—I’m looking at the Green members.
I would like to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its consideration of this bill—including considering 3,504 submissions—and for making a series of mainly technical amendments that improve the bill. I look forward to the later stages in committee and the third reading of this bill, should it proceed that far, so that it can make New Zealand a place that stands confidently and proudly in the world, welcoming business from our friends and allies—not afraid, ashamed, or repelling it but rejoicing in stronger connections that allow all of us to trade value for value and grow stronger, wealthier, and more interesting together.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on this, the second reading of the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I, too, like the Minister, want to acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their thorough review of this particular bill and also to the numerous officials from Government agencies, namely the Treasury and Land Information New Zealand, who supported the select committee during this process.
I'm going to take quite a methodical step through a number of the submissions, as well as some of the changes and the reasoning for there being some changes which were not agreed to by majority in the select committee. I think that's incredibly important because, for a number of members in this House who are lawyers, if you've ever worked on a litigation case, you know how important it is to do due diligence and look at the Hansard in relation to what Parliament's intention was when passing legislation. I've had to do it a number of times in my career and it has been so valuable to go back through the Hansard to understand Parliament's intention.
I want to go through Parliament's intention today in relation to some of the changes in this bill and the submissions and the reasons why, by majority, the Government members did not accept them, but also some of the reasoning, which is in the actual officials’ advice, because I think it will be helpful for the litigation cases that are coming in the future in relation to this specific piece of legislation.
I also want to acknowledge the Minister’s acknowledgment of the number of submitters who submitted on this bill. The committee received 3,504 written submissions in total—3,450 of those submissions were from individuals and 54 were from organisations. I do want to acknowledge our officials, who supported us in making sure that, one, they coded those submissions, but two, they also analysed the themes that were coming through out of those 3,504 submissions.
What was incredibly important is that, very similar to another bill that the Minister has enacted very recently, the Regulatory Standards Bill, the majority of submissions were opposed to this bill—92.7 percent were opposed to this bill, with 0.6 percent supportive and 6.7 percent unstated or otherwise unclear. The opposed submissions included concerns around the potential for negative impact on the environment, particularly freshwater and forestry; the impact on iwi Māori and the desire for explicit Treaty recognition in the Act; the lack of consultation before the bill was introduced or a desire for specified consultation during consent processes; concerns about foreign investment going offshore—there were about 84 submissions which actually spoke to that or similar concerns; a perceived lack of accountability in decision making under the Act—there were 963 submissions on that point alone; and the potential for international obligations to mean that changes are irreversible—there were 183 submissions on that.
There were a small number of submissions from law firms and industry groups providing nuance and supportive feedback on the bill, and I just want to make sure that I put that on record. Businesses and industry groups were broadly supportive, but several expressed a desire for more substantial change. For the future lawyer that has to do the due diligence in the litigation, have a look at the Treasury officials’ report on the submission. There's a whole sector at the back of that which actually sets out what those material changes should be, but they were ruled out of scope for the purposes of this bill.
One particular summary from the submissions was on the removal of new section 19C(1)(a), inserted by clause 15, which states that one of the mandatory factors for a national interest assessment is the purpose statement. The reason why the committee agreed not to change this—again, this is for the Hansard, for those future litigation purposes—is because it is not necessary to have the purpose as a consideration factor as the purpose statement is something statutory decision-makers will consider when determining the national interest, so that is an important point for future litigation. If for any reason you are litigating against the Crown, you can use that, because it should be considered by the statutory decision-maker when considering determining the national interest.
One of the major submissions that came through—and it was from a lot of individuals and, for example, from the Māori Law Society, Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa—was on the impact on Māori. Their response was on the removal of the benefit test. There was a strong environmental theme in submissions for Māori and iwi. Many responders suggested the need for foreign investment screening to continue to provide, enforce, or support environmental standards.
Now, the important part for those future litigators—and I'm hoping that this will save some billable hours in the future—is that the advice that was received by officials, accepted by majority members on the Government benches, and will be the reason why this bill goes through was that benefits will continue to be considered within the national interest test. So, again, going back to that earlier point, I talked about new section 19C. That is an important point for iwi Māori and for the Māori Law Society whenever they come to the future litigation against the Crown. They can look to the national interest test, because that's Parliament's intention, so therefore that's where you can find the windows of opening, and I think it was really important that I put that on the Hansard.
The officials continue to say, “The test will first assess whether a risk is contrary to the national interest before considering whether the benefits of the transaction offsets these risks. Māori interests may be considered as part of this consideration of risk.” So there you have it, iwi Māori. There is your gap in order for you to be able to litigate this in the future, because the advice accepted by the majority of this House when this bill was enacted, and therefore the advice that was accepted by the select committee, ensures that your considerations will be as part of that national interest test. I just wanted to save you some billable hours for the future.
Another issue that was raised during submissions—and this is, again, really important because it was a factor that kept coming up through submissions—is the watering down of decision making from no longer being at the primary legislation level, but going down to secondary legislation with the regulations that could be made. There were some comments here from the Regulations Review Committee, but actually almost to a tertiary level of legislation, which is around a ministerial directive letter, and that's in clause 22 of the bill. Again, the Regulations Review Committee was concerned that in the absence of a definition of national interest in the bill, substantive policy decisions would be left to the discretion of the Minister to determine by way of secondary legislation, and it sets out why that was.
The advice received by the Government and by the select committee, and which they will be approving through majority in this House when this bill becomes an Act, is that all transactions that require consenting currently can be called for a national interest test. We know that. But the main thing was that the Government wanted to provide some flexibility and it aims to provide additional transparency and certainty via setting out that expectation in the ministerial decision letter. The use of the ministerial decision letter should shape decision making in a set of factors that must be considered when determining national risk. That is under the new section 19D, which sets out a variety of factors to be considered by the regulator or the Minister when determining the national interest. When you go to litigate this in the future, that is your third door to ensure that the ministerial directive letter is where you can go to.
I'm going to leave it there, because I'm pretty sure a number of our members on the Opposition benches—in particular, the Green Party, who had quite a substantive minority view. I'm sure they will go through some of these openings to where the Government have basically allowed for loopholes to be seen, and that's why I'm putting them on the Hansard today. But the Labour Party considers that this bill shifts the balance of overseas investment away from the principle that investment in New Zealand is a privilege and it undermines the scrutiny of applications. I’ve just shown you some of the doors you can walk through. We consider that removal of the character test and reliance on the ministerial directive letter puts New Zealand at risk from inappropriate foreign investment. It doesn't have the secure safeguards that we need in this bill, because investing in New Zealand is a privilege. And never once did I hear the Minister ever utter four letters, “jobs”—none.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I have to say that it’s very telling that the Minister in charge of this bill is David Seymour, a person who has extremist views that do not represent the values of most New Zealanders. He’s one of the two tails wagging the dog of this Government. Somehow there are two of them. But, clearly, New Zealand First is missing out because they’re voting for this bill. I think we won’t be able to call them New Zealand First anymore. It’s more like “Overseas Corporates First”. That’s what this Government is about. It’s a right-wing playbook that has been used time and time again. I think the public would be very familiar with it, and we just have to call it out and explain what’s going on here.
What is going on here? They get in, and they say, “We don’t have any money. We don’t have any money. We’ve given it all away to landlords. Tax breaks for the rich. Tax breaks for tobacco companies.” Then they say, “Oh, we need money from overseas investors, those very kind, benevolent overseas rich people who are going to come here and build our infrastructure for free.”—no, no—“Believe us; it’ll be fine. We’ll just sell off our strategic assets. We’ll sell them off, and we’ll be fine. It’ll be jobs and productivity.” They just make this stuff up. It’s actually embarrassing to see the Government backbenchers consistently say things that are absolutely ridiculous. They live in a dreamland where wealthy benevolent investors come and sprinkle their fairy dust and make us all richer. Actually, the truth is it never makes us all richer. New Zealanders lose sovereignty and control of our own natural environment, of our water, of our air, of our forests, and of our whenua, and who benefits? Well, the overseas investors and maybe—maybe—a few wealthy New Zealanders here benefit as well.
By and large, this is not going to be something that delivers for our country as a whole. That’s why we will not support it, and that’s why the overwhelming majority of submissions were opposed. There are some extremely lengthy, well-informed submissions that I would recommend anybody look at and read. Of course, the Government members won’t. I’m not sure they’re capable of reading anything other than their talking points, and they’re probably not capable of understanding the economics. Well, maybe a few of them are, but they’re willing to compromise on their knowledge and principles for this job that they have.
Here we’ve got summary and recommendations from some very well-informed submitters to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I’m absolutely serious. People should read these submissions because they’re thoughtful submissions with references, with evidence, and with analysis to support them from people with PhDs in economics. One of them is from Geoff Bertram, who has a doctorate in economics from University of Oxford. He taught at the School of Economics and Finance at Victoria University for more than three decades. If you read his submission, you will see he makes a very strong argument as to why this bill is mistaken in its overall objective and how it’s weakening the tests of what is actually good for New Zealand. A big part of this is that where overseas capital funds new productive activity that would otherwise not have been developed and the income generated by that activity is retained within the local economy, there could be a case for inflow, but, by and large, that’s not what has happened over the last 30 years. We can see this most strongly with the overseas Australian-owned banks.
One of the main reasons why our current account deficit, like our balance of payments, is negative is because we have overseas ownership of our debt. That means that the profits just go offshore. I highly recommend the submission from Bill Rosenberg, who also has a PhD in economics. He made the point that, firstly—and this is what’s happening over and over again—there’s very poor process and that things are being rushed through in short time frames without due diligence. But, of course, due diligence doesn’t support the aims of this Government. The aim of the Government is to ram as much stuff through as possible in a short time frame—this is particularly the aim of David Seymour—to undo the role that Government plays in protecting and empowering people.
This is a person, our Deputy Prime Minister, who does not believe in public good and whose entire political career is dedicated to removing the oversight of Government and removing the possibility of empowering those who are not doing as well. I don’t know if he believes in his bizarre ideology or if he just says it because he’s repping for some very strong vested interests, but, either way, the result is the same: New Zealanders will miss out and will lose control, profits will flow to a smaller and smaller number of people, and our natural environment upon which we rely to live good lives and to have a productive and thriving economy will be eroded.
I’d love to quote from Bill Rosenberg’s submission, paragraph 10, “The economics”: “The main objective of the bill is ‘to make New Zealand a more attractive place to invest by speeding up consent for low-risk investments’ based on a concern that New Zealand is not getting enough [foreign direct investment]. 11. … not all foreign investment is … beneficial, even if it’s confined to low-risk investment. A more selective process for [foreign direct investment] is needed … [that] is increasingly being used internationally. The quality of [foreign direct investment] in Aotearoa New Zealand has been low … It tends to be concentrated in non-tradeable sectors and in areas which provide market dominance such as in banking and insurance (which together made up 43% of FDI stock in 2024 according to Statistics New Zealand), and supermarkets.” The very sectors where foreign direct investment is concentrated are sectors where we don’t have good competition and we have excess profits, and that’s where any productivity gains here in New Zealand are being sucked out by organisations and investors that are not contributing at all to that productivity. It makes us poorer as a country, but that suits these guys because they’re just here to enable the very richest to get richer. That’s what they’re all about.
A frontier-firm strategy to raise productivity—as recommended in the Productivity Commission report, New Zealand firms: Reaching for the frontier in 2021—where development in particular areas led by a large productivity frontier firm depends on selecting a few large firms with the required record and characteristics. What is being proposed in this bill is not going to enable that. Bank profits constitute a very large part of the investment income deficit. Only in the pandemic where trade was severely disrupted did that pattern change. We’re actually losing income as a result of foreign direct investment that reduces our own sovereignty and ability to invest and get the benefit of those investments. This is incredibly well researched.
Obviously, I can’t read all of these submissions, but just as an example, here’s a 14-page submission with excellent graphs and citations, and we compare that to the ideological rhetoric of David Seymour, who says, “Just trust us. Just trust us, mate.” We know whose interests David Seymour is looking out for, and it is not ordinary everyday New Zealanders, it’s not future generations, and it’s not the natural environment. That person is so disconnected from people and the environment that he has no idea what is really going on, but what he does do very well is dismantle systems that we have set up to protect our country and our long-term future. That’s what Government is for—protecting and empowering.
A pretty good example, in one of these submissions which I read, was about how they’re getting rid of the provision around water bottling plants and treating water bottling plants differently on the claim that they there haven’t been that many proposals for foreign water bottling plants. Well, there’s one thing I can tell you: it’s that New Zealanders do not want foreign companies coming here, taking our water, and then making a profit off it and selling it back to us or to anyone else. Water is life. Water is essential. The people who think that big corporations are here to make our lives better really haven’t been paying attention to the last few decades, where corporations have systematically sought to concentrate power, have reaped excess profits, and have eroded workers’ rights, usually through lobbying to politicians. It’s a very old playbook. I’ve seen it all play out in the United States when our democracy is crumbling. It’s just a dire situation because of decades of an ideology like the one that these people represent, which is let the rich get richer, destroy Government services, sell it out of the private sector, sell it off to foreign investors, destroy the environment, and remove regulation. Those are not the values of New Zealanders. I look forward to when we get a chance to vote and get a new Government.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call the next speaker, the inanity and quality of the interjections will often be reflected in how much leverage a speaker on the other side of the House might get. Everything is a balancing act. I might just ask everyone to reflect on that.
CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour): What a lot of Green garbage, what a lot of Green waste, and, dare I say, what a lot of Green manure. Let’s get back to what this bill actually achieves and seeks to achieve. This bill simplifies the screening process for less sensitive assets by introducing a streamlined national interest test. The Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill maintains current screening requirements for investments in farmland, the fishing quota, and residential land, recognising the unique sensitivity of these assets. Unfortunately, New Zealand has one of the most restrictive foreign investment regimes in the OECD, and so this updated system brings New Zealand up to speed with other advanced economies, cutting compliance costs, reducing processing time, and restoring confidence that New Zealand is open for business. I commend the bill.
Hon MARK PATTERSON (Minister for Rural Communities): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of New Zealand First, I rise to support this bill. Look, New Zealand First, without a doubt, has always had a degree of caution around overseas investment—open slather overseas investment. We’ve got plenty of examples where it hasn’t worked to our advantage, the banking sector being one and its massive profits that are being sucked out of New Zealand. So we go into these bills with our eyes wide open, not from an ideological point of view.
We do have a woeful record of flogging off State assets, but we are not North Korea. We are pragmatic. We do realise that we do need balance if we’re going to turn this economy around. We do need injections of capital, and some of that will be foreign capital—particularly useful where it’s bringing in new investments and new jobs. We’re seeing it down in Otago, particularly, at the moment, in the mining sector. We are bringing expertise, bringing capital, and opening up massive opportunities. They will be very high-paying jobs, and they’re high-paying jobs in New Zealand rather than in Australia, where many of our people are going to the mining sector. They can now come to Otago, which of course is a much better place.
In terms of the scaremongering that’s going on around this, I just want to reiterate that there is a national interest test in this. We’ve made sure that that remains. There is no change for farmland, for fishing quota, and for the residential property considerations. We have held firm on those things. They’re really important to us. As you know, within a coalition there’s a range of views on this stuff. But I think we’ve struck a balance, and we’ve used our proportion of influence to make sure those things are protected through the select committee process and the high interest that was there—3,500 thousand submissions.
This is something that matters to New Zealanders. There’s a certain portion of New Zealanders that represent us that would want to see us protecting those core values that we hold, and we believe we have and have got balance within the wide spectrum of views within this coalition. With that, we continue to commend it to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): A five-minute call, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As my previous speaker the Hon Julie Anne Genter mentioned, the Green Party will not support this bill and there are very good reasons for that. I think, when we hear the Minister who is in charge talking about how we are unkind or we’re not welcoming to foreign investors, that’s not necessarily the case. But where we are unkind and not accommodating to foreign investors: those who come to Aotearoa New Zealand with ill will, with the idea of exploiting our country, and especially those projects that have been rejected in other countries, particularly some of the other OECD countries. I want to point out that while one of the previous speakers mentioned, you know, we have a more stringent requirement than other OECD countries, that particular member also could not name a single one.
So when we are looking at this bill, let’s talk about a couple of things that the bill does address and, I think, some of the submitters during the select committee process have explored reasonably well. In clause 8, we do see some of the changes that we’re looking at in terms of the investor test. I think, as the submitters pointed out and we see some changes that have been made as part of the select committee stage, the investor test will no longer seek—particularly with regards to sensitive land—background checks on some of these investors, particularly when there are investors who may have a criminal record or may have projects or investments in other countries that are illegal, for lack of a better word; some of those adjustments have been changed as part of this legislation. There is a concern that if they do change aspects of the investor test—I acknowledge that some of them have retained things like around farmlands, things around coastal areas; however, there are still sections that remain a concern in terms of the removal of some of the sections when it comes to an investment test, particularly in terms of the oversight of sensitive lands, forests, and water resources.
I think this is one of the issues we are seeing with the weakening of the environmental safeguards, particularly when it comes to water bottling and extraction. This was something that was a huge problem maybe about eight years ago that we saw this play out in certain areas. Water is—fresh water, in particular—a taonga, and we do need to look after our own resources.
In those kinds of cases, while a lot of people say “Oh, look, investment is good. Investment creates jobs.”, we also haven’t clearly heard the Government side concisely articulate exactly how many jobs they expect it to create as a result of this. We do see a lot of sound bites being created but not a lot of tangible evidence to say, “Look, we are going to be seeing 4,000 jobs in this area, therefore we’re going to be seeing X number of jobs.” At least in the Green Budget, for example, it clearly articulated we’re going to be creating 40,000 jobs, but we haven’t seen some of that being played out by this Government and in this particular bill.
But, also, when we are looking at some of these areas in terms of this particular piece of legislation in conjunction with other legislation that has also gone through the House—for example, the Invest New Zealand Bill that was going through the House under urgency without even a select committee process, where we have already said that if we do continue and change the settings to the way we look at overseas investment and things like the national interest test and other matters, we are going to be seeing that Invest New Zealand will, essentially, function as a real estate agency that sells off New Zealand piece by piece. Again we do ask why certain political parties that presume to put Aotearoa New Zealand first do not look at this bill with a more critical lens.
Finally, I think some of the submitters, particularly Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey has raised a number of really important questions around the interaction with the free-trade agreement, and particularly when we’re looking from a forestry perspective and how that will affect, in terms of the ratchet clauses that we’re seeing, an ability to relook at forestry and into sort of native or alternative land, as well as certain interactions that we saw with ISDS—that’s the investor-State dispute settlement process.
So, all in all, we are seeing that this bill is being put across without any sort of genuine understanding or genuine, well-thought-out argument to say that this is something that will benefit Aotearoa New Zealand. So, at this stage, we cannot—actually, we probably won’t support this bill at all. We are going to still be asking some questions at the committee stage.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It was only two days ago that I was speaking to a lady who has got property on the edge of our city, and it’s ripe for development. She wants to offload it, but no local buyers will take it. She’s been dealing with the Overseas Investment Office. It’s too hard and she’s been pulling her hair out. She said that lawyers want tens of thousands of dollars. This bill is all about streamlining and making it easy, and instead of that going on and on for up to 70 days, in some cases, it limits it to 15 working days. It’s a no-brainer, and I commend it to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m no longer on this wonderful committee that we have—the Finance and Expenditure Committee—but I remember my time on it fondly. I absolutely gained deep respect for the work that my colleague Barbara Edmonds did on that committee at the time when she was the chair.
I picked up this piece of legislation, and it’s actually been one of those moments when I look at a piece of legislation and really worry. I worry partly because of the kinds of comments that I heard from the Minister presenting it but also from Ryan Hamilton, who has just stood up. Now, he said very little in that speech, but he did heckle one of the other members when they suggested that some formidable economists had been concerned about this legislation. He said in his statement across the House “Did those people run a business?”, and I thought, well, did David Seymour run a business?
What I am concerned about is that ideology is front-footing this piece of legislation when, in fact, this is the very sort of legislation that we should tread carefully with. I looked at the regulatory impact statement and my concerns grew. In the regulatory impact statement, it says that “While the potential benefits of attracting more international investment are clear, there are also risks that need to be managed. New Zealand is facing a fundamentally more challenging security outlook, and an enduring screening regime is required to manage risks to our national interest that emerge over time.”
We are living in unprecedented times. What we are doing in this piece of legislation is easing up the scrutiny that we have on foreign investment, and that’s a very dangerous thing to do. It goes well beyond the skills of running a business, but it is also of concern to those who do, and it’s of concern that that report goes on to talk about the evidence for this and it looks at how there is some evidence from developing countries, but very little from countries like ours, if we do this, in terms of the benefits of it. That was from Treasury, and I am particularly concerned.
Some of the submitters are people I really admire, who have been very worried about this piece of legislation. One is Dame Anne Salmond, who is a national treasure. She’s one of our deepest thinkers, and she stands very much independently. I don’t think that she is a member of any party, but she is particularly concerned about the impact that it will have on iwi, and I share that concern.
What we have here, and have had here until now, are safeguards, and it’s so important that when we look at those things, we don’t look through an ideological lens. We’re trying to balance interests here. Yes, there’s nothing wrong with some foreign investment. In fact, that’s a really good thing, and Labour has put up a proposal to have a future fund so that it can attract that investment but keep it onshore. But it’s a very different thing when we tip that balance and concentrate all the power in a Minister’s hands about where those decisions will lie.
I am concerned about that, and I go to the Labour Party view first here. They have a differing view that they spell out in the report back on this piece of legislation. The members who were representing us, including the Hon Barbara Edmonds, said that “The Labour Party considers that the bill shifts the balance of overseas investment consent away from the principle that investment in New Zealand is a privilege, and undermines the scrutiny of applications. We consider that removal of the character test and reliance on Ministerial directive letter puts New Zealand at risk from inappropriate foreign investment.”
That’s a pretty serious thing to do—to shift that balance—and I have made that point right at the beginning of my speech. I’m particularly concerned about shifting that balance right now, because we have a very different world from the world we had even 10 years ago. We have the conglomeration of power and a lot of autocracy, and, actually, those big, big countries that are not necessarily democratic—they want in to other people’s economies, and that is, in fact, something that we should worry about. We should make sure that we keep control of our land.
In this country we’ve been really, really streets ahead in our reconciliation for what happened when we colonised in this country and for the damage that was done. We have had a reconciliation process that’s ongoing, and we have had a lot of iwi ending up with a lot more of the resources than they have had. It is pitifully little, really, given how much they’ve lost, but with those resources, there has been investment in New Zealand, and we have a skyrocketing Māori economy. The businesses that Māori are running in this country are remarkable. It is one our most growing areas, and what we are doing here is we are opening the gate to foreign investment, with very little regard for that.
The reason I’ve been most worried about that is that it’s not the only thing that this Government has been doing. It’s been undermining all the value that there has been in recognising the principles of the Treaty. It’s been undermining that very development, and so this is a worry to me. It’s a worry at a foreign interference level, it’s a worry at a “lack of control by New Zealanders” level, and it’s a worry in terms of a burgeoning economy that is based on, really, a Māori renaissance of economic power.
So this is of extreme concern to me, and I was very interested to hear the comments from the Green members when they stood up. I look at their contribution to this report back, and they are talking about things that matter. They are talking about the centralisation of power, they are talking about the weakening of environmental and public safeguards, they are talking about the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori interests, and they are talking about the public and expert concern which rallied against this bill by an overwhelming amount.
Those are all things that we need to hear in this Parliament. Even if the position that the Government takes is different, they don’t need to be dismissed as views that are somehow extreme, because they are not extreme. Those are logical concerns that we should all share, and I don’t have to be a member of the Green Party to share those concerns and to listen to those points of view.
We are supposed to be a mature Parliament. We should be able to listen to views on the other side and consider them, and consider a changing world in light of them. Those things that are raised here in the Labour differing view and in the Green different view—I am worried that those chickens will come home to roost in this area. It is time, not to get up and make a 30-second speech and not to get up and say a 30-second line, but to get up and actually think about this legislation and make a contribution. Even if the Government members disagree with the Opposition, it would be good to hear about the balancing that’s gone on and the checks and balances that are in place.
Now, I’ve heard some of that contribution today, but I haven’t heard enough of it. What I have heard is a lot of people whipping through the agenda and getting this put through with very little scrutiny at all. So it is important to me to actually make the point that on this side of the House, the Opposition is doing its job and it is competent in doing it. That is why those views will stand the test of time, and it is very important that they are not dismissed and they’re not seen as being somehow completely radical when, in fact, the position that has been taken is a pretty reasonable one in a changing world. We should be concerned in this country about losing control over our assets. They’re precious to New Zealanders. We’ve made those mistakes before, and we shouldn’t be making them again.
So I am for the Future Fund. I’m for doing these things in a way that keeps assets within New Zealand and which grows our own autonomy and control and power over those assets. That’s where we put our energy, and we keep the safeguards and we’re cautious—we’re cautious and we’re savvy—about the world we now live in before we give up those powers to other people. Thank you.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): This bill is all part of the Government’s plan to go for growth. This is all about growth, and how do we get growth? We get it by investment, and either it’s domestic investment or, in this case, foreign investment. You can’t just say you’re all about growth and then not be prepared to actually welcome foreign investment. Countries like Estonia, South Korea, Switzerland, Ireland, and Singapore, much wealthier countries than New Zealand, have all said, “Come, foreign investment.” This is what this bill is about: making it easy and simple to invest in this country, so that we can go for growth. I commend this bill to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare,
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[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.
Last week it was my privilege to receive a petition from Bevan O’Connor of Ngāti Kahungunu to withdraw the Regulatory Standards Bill, a bill which received 0.7 percent support of submitters. Here we are again, pushing through a bill that only 0.6 percent of submitters supported. What does that tell you, Aotearoa? The Government are deaf to your whakaaro. They want to run the country, they want to run it with you in it, but they will not hear your views on it.
We hear about the amazing success of the Māori economy. We know the Māori economy has got an asset base of $126 billion and contributed $32 billion to GDP. Now, how did they do that?
Grant McCallum: Isn’t there foreign investment in the Māori economy?
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: How did they do that, expert on the Māori economy? They did that by recovering, retaining, and protecting assets for the growth not only of iwi, hapū, and their descendants and the ability to stay on their whenua and grow communities, like those you proport to represent. That’s how they did it.
Now, this Government is disregarding that and making statements like, “These are dealing with less-sensitive assets.” What is a less-sensitive asset to an uri of Aotearoa, an uri of hapū, and an uri of iwi? When a woman is pregnant, the child takes sustenance from the placenta, which we call whenua. When we’re born, we continue to take sustenance from the whenua. That’s why we know its value. Then we identify ourselves with our maunga, our awa, and our whenua. That’s its value. A perfect example is the beautiful whanganui: ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. I am the river, and the river is me. It sounds like the local MP would be happy to hock it off.
Hoi anō rā, we are talking about less sensitive assets. Once again, this shows a disregard for Te Tiriti o Waitangi. How often do we sit in this House and say, “We all support these Treaty settlements.”? We look up at people who have been disenfranchised from their whenua. We hear about the disgraceful impacts of that. We all say—including that side—“We are so sorry. We’re so sorry we’ve taken that away from you.” Yet, here we are again, willing to take that risk. The other reason the Māori economy is going so strongly is a point that my esteemed colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds pointed out. It’s that we understand it is indeed a privilege to invest in Aotearoa.
I just want to acknowledge the people throughout Aotearoa who submitted on this and many others. Sadly, because we’ve got a tone-deaf Government, people around this country have had to become experts on writing submissions, just for them to fall on deaf ears. People like Te Hunga Rōia, some of the most impressive minds in this country, were completely disregarded, and people like the Māori Women’s Development Incorporation, who have been directly responsible for contributing to the growth of not just the Māori economy but the overall Aotearoa economy for the investment they make in growing skills.
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I reinforce our opposition to this, but I just want to, again, reinforce Labour’s vision for the growth of Aotearoa, a vision, like the New Zealand Future Fund, that will not only ensure economic growth; it will ensure it here in Aotearoa, by Aotearoa, and for Aotearoa while not closing our doors to the world but making sure that the world knows what we stand for, and that is kaitiakitanga, not just growing the pūtea. Like I’ve said, our kaitiakitanga is forever.
CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): To grow our economy, we need to attract overseas capital investment. New Zealand currently has one of the most restrictive foreign investment regimes in the OECD. This has cost us opportunities and jobs. We need to speed up decision making and improve certainty for investors and say New Zealand is open for business. This is what creates jobs and opportunity. I commend this bill to the House
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): It’s a line of one of my favourite songs: “Once it’s gone, baby, it’s gone.” Once those assets are gone, it’s gone. It’s probably a bit more modern to many of the members on that side, but I know members across this House have driven by ports around New Zealand and have seen our logs sitting on ports raw, undeveloped, harvested—but certainly not produced through our mills—and simply going offshore. And what value does New Zealand get from that? I can tell you: bugger all. Eventually New Zealand will go to other countries where these logs are sold and buy that produce back to this country. That was the outcome of asset sales of this kind that went unchecked, unregulated, and now sees the vast majority of our forests in this country owned by offshore investors. That’s not the New Zealand for the future.
When I was a trustee on our tribal forest trust, it worked because of the reasons my colleague here, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, espoused to the House. One, we were never going to sell our land or give it away. Two, when we grow those resources on our land, we need to make sure that those resources produce outcomes for the people who benefit from that land. That means jobs, wealth, income, and opportunity. When you sell those assets, they’re gone.
Now, I’m looking this way for a certain reason, Mr Speaker, because New Zealand First, I know, believes in this. New Zealand First knows that selling off our assets is a bad thing for this country. Yes, of course we want foreign investment. In fact, when the Government held their foreign investment symposium earlier in their tenure of this term, who were the ones that the foreign investors wanted to talk to? Māori. Why? Because Māori have a 100-year strategic view. They’re not flogging off the asset for a short sugar hit; for an income hit that will help them develop their community. No, these investors are saying to Māori, “What you’re looking at is strategic. Let’s work together to make sure that everybody benefits from this.”
From the speeches we’ve heard from the other side of the House, all I’ve heard is, “Let’s get rid of them to the people we like so that we can grow our economy.” That’s just not good enough. The submitters on this bill were very clear; my colleague made it clear that very few people supported this bill. In fact, some of the smartest minds in this country have made it very clear that this bill going unchecked, without the kind of recommendations that could provide a strong platform for foreign investment into this country, have been completely ignored. Those particular amendments that could have been included, I think will come back and bite this Government in the backside.
We know when we hold our assets, when we develop them, when we invest in them, it works out well for this country. There was a motto that was heard bellowed in this House in two previous terms by a member from New Zealand First, who would always say “Billion trees”—“Billion trees”. For those of you who are in this House, you’ll know who I’m talking about. That made it very clear that the strategic goal of the Government at the time was to grow those resources for this country. Why? Because we knew we had a housing shortage, we knew we had an infrastructure shortage, and we knew we could produce the vast bulk of those resources to meet those needs. And trees were one way to do that.
The National Party and the ACT Party, though, saw it as an opportunity to say, “Oh, they’re getting rid of farmland; they’re turning it into forestry, etc., etc.” Sure, they gained the platform through the election by doing so. However, now what we have is fewer forests in New Zealand hands. Those trees that were planted in and invested in to grow carbon credits in this country have, for the most part, been sold off. We also know, too, that when we were in power, Labour invested in making sure we could process that wood and that timber. Sadly, that’s all gone now. Now, we go back to that time I mentioned at the start of my contribution. We drive past ports with raw logs sitting there waiting to be exported to other countries.
The National Party and the ACT Party say, “Look at Singapore. They rely on foreign investment to get going.” Well, guess what? Singapore don’t have forests. Singapore don’t have valuable conservation land. Singapore don’t have all of the resources that we are blessed with in this country. I’ve been to Singapore. You can run the length of that country. Well, I can; some members in this House, Mr McCallum’s one—I suspect he won’t be able to do that. But none the less, the point of it is this: they were strategic in their time to make sure that their investment invested in their own human capability. That’s why they have such high technology avenues. That’s why they have such a productive economy: because they invested that way. What this, sadly, does, though, is it continues to—in a concern for all of us—lower thresholds to allow more people to come in and to invest and to buy up assets in this country.
Now, what it also does is something that we’ve seen time and time again from in particular the ACT Party, where democracy means nothing or means very little. It’s putting the power in the hand of the Minister of Finance to go, “Nah, today I feel like this and I might do that; or tomorrow—nah, I might not let that one go through.” Now, while I accept that a ministerial post comes with huge responsibility, when we’re talking about the country’s strategic assets, I’m of a mind that those matters should be debated here in this House—somewhere where we can have a full democratic process that says, “These are the views our country have towards the strategic assets that we have either on the market or off the market at the moment.” Now, I think that that’s reasonable. When we continue to marginalise the voice of many and put the power into the hands of so few, I have a problem with that—and we’ve seen it far too many times on this bill.
I’m always concerned when we look towards the erosion of Treaty rights—and there have been a number of legal cases that have been won, hard fought for, through the high courts in this country, through the local court, through the District Court, and onto the High Court and the Supreme Court, that have continued to reaffirm Māori rights in this country. I’m not just talking about customary title; I’m talking about actual rights to areas that were confiscated by the Crown over many years.
Yet here we are, continually eroding that voice and that part that Te Triti o Waitangi offers protection for this country, not just for Māori. It offers protection for this country; for all citizens in this country to say, “These are important assets to all of us, so let’s look after them. Let’s look after them for the benefit of the majority and not for the benefit of the few.” Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not the enemy here. In fact, it is a gateway and I said earlier that the symposium or the conference that the Government held looking for foreign investment look towards Māori to ensure that long-term investments were the way that everybody wins—and you get that through to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
One of the things I’m proud of when this House does its settlements is when we return strategic assets, we look towards allowing iwi to grow that asset for themselves. My colleague Cushla Tangaere-Manuel sat here and went through the numbers. But I can tell you 30 years ago when Waikato-Tainui settled the first settlement under Jim Bolger and Doug Graham, that it’s taken a long time to grow that pie. A long time—30 years. That’s called having a strategic view. Elections in this country are every three years and we’re looking for a sugar hit.
Instead, we need to be taking a longer-term view just like Waikato-Tainui have, just like Ngāi Tahu have, and so many other iwi now. Some iwi—and I know a small handful have looked towards their strategic assets and how they might be able to leverage off them, and some of them have indeed either leased them or sold them. That’s OK; that’s their right. They can do that. However, they’ve continued to maintain an ongoing welfare mechanism; an ongoing outcome mechanism for their descendants and those who have registered with those tribes. Ultimately, though, that supports New Zealand’s economic growth.
Now, if we look towards smarter investments into the future, yes, let’s do what Singapore does. Let’s look towards an economy that is about not just looking at our natural resources, but the greatest resource in this country, which is our human capacity, right? That’s what Singapore did, and look what they were able to do. That’s what other countries have done, and look what they were able to do. Instead, we keep coming back to this fight for assets in this country, and I beg the New Zealand First Party to make sure that they stand by what they keep saying to our community: protect our national assets.
I say to the New Zealand First Party that it’s not too late. They’ve got an opportunity through the urgency that we’ll all be going through over the next three days to make it clear that we stand together on protecting national resources of significance and making sure that it produces outcomes not for the rich overseas, but for New Zealanders.
NANCY LU (National): New Zealand has had one of the most restrictive regimes for investment in the OECD countries. This legislation is balanced, pro-growth reform. I commend the bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe—this is the Te Pāti Māori call.
Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour):
[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
I’m sure Te Pāti Māori would want me to talk about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which I’m pleased to do. This bill, to me, is a sign of a weak leadership, of a weak Government that’s trying to look for a shortcut for better outcomes. I’ll give you an example around Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It was the New Zealand Māori Council that took the Crown to court over forestry, and it went all the way to the Privy Council. They won, and those lands were put aside for the purpose of Treaty settlements. Imagine today, with this bill, an act that, if this bill was in place then, probably wouldn’t have happened—so a shortcut doesn’t always give the best outcomes for all New Zealanders, because what that did was give an opportunity to grow the Māori economy that my colleague Cushla Tangaere-Manuel spoke about and that my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare spoke about. I speak about that now as a warning, and I support what my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds said, who gave some pathways forward in her foresight of what’s about to go wrong with this bill. It’s incumbent on this House, actually, to make sure it’s listening to all of those voices. Shortcuts don’t always mean the best way forward. Mr Speaker, thank you.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Mr Speaker?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Sorry, there are no more calls on this bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage next sitting day. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the meal break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.
Urgency
Urgency
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded to the first reading and referral to select committee of the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill; the remaining stages of: the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill; and the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill; the third reading of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill; the remaining stages of: the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill; and the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2); the first reading and referral to select committee of: the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill; and the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill; the second reading of the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill; and the remaining stages of: the Statutes Amendment Bill; the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill; the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill; and the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill.
We are going into urgency today to get through legislation before the end of the year. None of the bills progressing this week will skip their select committee process.
The Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill is having its first reading today to send it to a select committee and open up submissions before the end of the year.
The Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill is being passed to mitigate the risks of strikes over the summer break which would require Parliament to come back early.
The Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill is passing its remaining stages this week, which will allow changes proposed in the system reform bill to make more sense.
The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill and the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill are going through their remaining stages; both are part of the Government’s quarter four plan, and this will achieve our commitment to pass them this year.
The Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) will pass its remaining stages this week to complete a commitment that the Government made about the clean vehicle standard, notably to reduce the charges for 2026-2027.
The Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill is being sent to select committee; this bill is closely aligned with the Telecommunications Amendment Bill which had its first reading last week, and the select committee will benefit from being able to consider both bills at the same time.
The Statutes Amendment Bill is going through its last two stages this week; there are minor and technical changes in this bill, including for the anti – money-laundering regime, which will ease compliance costs for reporting entities.
The Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill is having its second reading; we want to progress this bill to get us closer to making the rules around herds of special interest clearer.
The Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill is being sent to select committee in order to begin the process that will provide a single authoritative voice in the case of future weather events.
The Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill is going through its remaining stages, which will improve the integrity of the immigration system.
The Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill and the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill are completing their remaining stages and will give effect to Budget 2025 savings.
A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I would intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 30 April 2026.
It’s crucial that New Zealand has a world-leading education system that encourages every young person to reach their full potential, and the bill introduces a set of fundamental, system-level changes that strengthen the structure and accountability of our education system. The bill establishes a new Crown agent, the New Zealand School Property Agency—“the agency”, I’ll refer to it as—which will have a key focus on maintaining and building the school property portfolio.
Last year, I established a ministerial inquiry into the Ministry of Education school property function. This inquiry was launched after we inherited a school property system that was bordering on crisis. The inquiry found that the current system for delivering school property was not fit for purpose and needs overhauling to give the right level of focus and accountability, improve the decision-making process, and provide transparency.
Since then, we have taken a phased approach to address the inquiry’s findings. Clear focus and accountability are essential to ensure efficient delivery and good investment and asset management approach practices. This bill proposes to establish the new Crown agent, the New Zealand School Property Agency, with a board that has the expertise needed to achieve these priorities for the school property portfolio. The agency will be responsible for delivering growth requirements set by the Ministry of Education and will also have the autonomy to plan and deliver maintenance across the property portfolio. This will allow the Ministry of Education to focus on delivering essential educational outcomes for students.
I consider this model provides the right balance of flexibility, transparency, and ministerial direction, while creating leadership and board oversight that supports commercial discipline. This bill progresses a package of changes to reform the regulation of the teaching workforce and help ensure graduate teachers can be confident in the classroom.
The latest report from the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International survey shows that 62 percent of graduate teachers and year 1 to 10 students were not confident their initial teacher education (ITE) had prepared them sufficiently in teaching content of all subjects they needed to teach; 54 percent weren’t confident ITE gave them the knowledge they needed about pedagogical approaches on how to teach. This reflects earlier evidence from a 2024 Education Review Office (ERO) report that showed only 50 percent of new teachers found that their ITE—their initial teacher education—was effective. The Royal Society of New Zealand’s 2021 report also noted that nearly half of all year 4 teachers were only moderately confident in teaching any strand of mathematics and statistics in the curriculum.
That is a failure of the system. Initial teacher education is not properly preparing our teaching workforce. The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand oversees setting teacher standards and setting requirements for teacher training, and it is clear that it’s not working. This bill proposes to shift the responsibility for professional standard setting, and those functions, from the Teaching Council to the Ministry of Education. This includes responsibility for establishing and maintaining the standards and criteria for teacher registration, initial teacher education, ongoing practise, and the code of conduct.
I consider that shifting these functions to the Ministry of Education will allow for better alignment of policy and standard-setting functions and improve overall system consistency and coherence. Separating functions also creates better tensions in the system. This is in line with occupational registration settings in other jurisdictions, such as England and Singapore. The Teaching Council will continue its responsibility to quality assure all ITE programmes. Currently, the Teaching Council has no legislative powers to properly monitor ITE programs. This bill provides it with new legislative powers to power them up—the Teaching Council—to place conditions on new or existing programme approvals and remove approvals following consultation with the Secretary for Education, and monitor and review teacher education providers’ delivery of approved programmes, with the power to require specific information from providers as part of these processes. It’s a new legislative power.
Under these proposed changes, the Teaching Council will continue its responsibilities for registering and certifying teachers, and competence and conduct processes. To support the council’s new scope and ensure it can stay focused on its core functions, the bill will strengthen the council’s role in quality assurance of initial teacher education programmes with these new legislative powers; remove its professional enhancement and leadership functions, as these are system-wide functions supported by multiple agencies; and reduce the size of the council from 13 members to between seven and nine members, with a total of three elected members from the sector. I consider these changes will help to ensure the council operates effectively and efficiently and that it’s focused on its core role: providing good governance and improved initial teacher education and services to teachers.
Quality teaching must be supported by a high-quality curriculum. The curriculum hasn’t been updated consistently over time, which has resulted in infrequent wholesale reform every 20 years. The proposal for curriculum areas to be reviewed and updated regularly over time in an iterative way will keep them current based on evidence and avoid these large, disruptive overhauls we have every 20 years. This has been long been the case in high-performing jurisdictions we compare ourselves to. Additionally, the proposal combines the separate curriculum statements into one, making the requirements clearer for schools.
The bill also replaces a requirement for schools to consult with their community about the delivery of the health curriculum, with a requirement to inform. Last year, the Education Review Office reported that the requirement to consult, often unfairly, places schools in the middle of wide-ranging community views, and managing this is very difficult. With the introduction of a new age-appropriate, detailed, and clear health curriculum, year by year, schools will provide parents with better information about what is taught and how, so parents can make informed decisions on whether their child should be involved in Relationships and Sexuality Education or not.
Roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities across the education system can be at times unclear, fragmented, and have confusing overlaps. This bill proposes to transfer the full set of regulatory functions for registering private schools and licensing hostels from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office. This will help reduce duplication between agencies, clarify the role of ERO, and strengthen the approach to keeping service providers and education accountable. In line with best practice, the Ministry of Education will retain the standard- and criteria-setting functions for both private school registration and hostel licensing.
The bill also aims to clarify the current complementary roles of ERO and the Ministry of Education in identifying and supporting schools deemed to be of serious concern. It sets out detailed reporting requirements with clear time frames for both agencies. The bill also provides for the Ministry of Education and the Minister to rely on ERO’s judgment and information when determining whether the thresholds for statutory intervention are met. ERO will be expected to provide review reports with the evidence needed to guide the ministry’s approach to supporting a school of serious concern, including the most appropriate intervention under section 171 of the Education and Training Act.
Raising achievement starts with showing up to school. The bill’s aim to clarify expectations and strengthen accountability is also supported by the proposed changes to tighten how exemptions from school attendance are currently used. Under the proposed changes, principals will only be able to exempt attendance on the grounds prescribed in the rules set by the Secretary for Education. The new rules will provide specific requirements for the duration of any exemption that may be granted and the types of evidence required to authorise an exemption. The bill also repeals the attendance exemption relating to the walking distance between a student’s residence and their school.
Finally, the bill makes a number of other changes. A high-performing system relies on good-quality data and evidence to guide decisions on how best to meet the needs of the students. This bill requires schools to participate in studies that monitor the performance of our schooling systems, such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA. Currently, the assessments are opt-in, which creates real challenges in ensuring the data is robust and representative. Low participation rates currently put us at risk of not meeting the threshold for inclusion in this and other international studies. Making these assessments mandatory will help with ensuring the participation load is evenly shared amongst schools and we get a truer picture of the state of education in the system, as, at the moment, that load falls on a few schools who always say yes.
The bill addresses a gap by enabling NZQA to include micro-credentials in the reporting requirements for education providers, ensuring the completeness of a student’s record of achievement. The bill also supports the next stage in the charter school model by enabling multi-school contracts and creating more certainty for converted charter schools by providing a pathway to close and open as a new State school under circumstances.
This bill delivers a comprehensive package of system-level reforms that clarify roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities, promotes consistency, coherence, and efficiency, and ensures our system is set up to support all students to succeed. I commend the bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve had some terrible bills in the education space in recent times, and yet here we have another one.
Glen Bennett: But wait, there’s more.
Hon JAN TINETTI: That’s exactly right: wait, there’s more. We’ve got an education profession at the moment that is just disbelieving of how low things are getting in the sector and can’t see that anything’s going to lift anytime soon. This bill is yet another ideological attack on teachers and the education system as a whole. It undermines the independence of the teaching profession.
I want to actually start right now by saying a future Labour Government will repeal this bill. This is a fundamental shift about who has control in education and about who has the power. Guess what? It isn’t the teachers, it isn’t the parents, and it isn’t the kids. The kids who should be at the centre of the system are certainly not at the centre of this particular bill. This is a fundamental shift that puts the power plainly in the Beehive and into the hands of people that know little about the education system, but have reckons on what it will be. Just listening to that speech by the Minister, there wasn’t one piece of evidence, not one piece, that backed up that particular speech that would show a difference within the sector that would raise achievement in our kids. This is, yet again, as I said, another ideological attack on how schools are supposed to operate. The implications for all who are involved in the schooling sector are huge.
Let’s talk really plainly here about what is at stake. Perhaps the most troubling things that the Minister talked about were the responsibility of the teaching standards, the registration criteria, the practising certificate criteria, and even the code of conduct moving from the Teaching Council to the Secretary for Education. No longer do we have a professional body that is being designed and co-designed with the sector themselves and working within their own professional realm. That has been taken completely away. What does that mean? That means that teaching standards become political instruments. That means that registration criteria can shift with the ideology of the Government of the day. Rather than being independent as they are now and being sought over and seen by the Teaching Council, they will be at the whim of the Government of the day. People on the opposite side can shake their head, but all they’re shaking their head on is their own reckons, not on one single piece of evidence at all.
The education system that we have held so strongly in this country and that, I will say, particularly in the indigenous area is being held up as a gold standard around the rest of the world is at real risk, under this particular bill, of actually going backwards. That is a heartbreaking day to see what this Government is doing to our education system, purely based on their ideological reckons.
Curriculum control under this bill shifts directly into the Beehive. No longer do we have a curriculum, according to this particular bill, that will be standardised across the country, because it talks about a differentiated curriculum based on school size, school location, and school type. What is that about? That doesn’t even make sense to what we’ve known in this country for so long. It has obviously been informed by people that know very little about education, full stop. The work that the Minister talked about, taking help and informing parents, is not co-design; that’s being done too. It’s not aligned with anything that we know in this country about curriculum, full stop. It is completely a backward step. This is centralised prescription dressed up as efficiency. Once again, I say that a future Labour Government will repeal all in this terrible, terrible education bill.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): It seems like the Minister of Education has not learnt anything from her mistakes, and the mistake that she has made these past weeks is on exactly what it would be like if you piss off the education sector. It seems like we have a Minister who doesn’t understand that the very basis of education is that you learn from your mistakes and you don’t repeat them again. Yet, here we are, having this bill, the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill being introduced to the House. I love the fact that suddenly everyone in this House is a teacher. I would love to see your teaching qualifications. Show us some qualifications! Otherwise, please be quiet.
Carl Bates: And what are your qualifications?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I actually think that having spent years teaching in a secondary school in an international school and also in a university would be sufficient, Mr Carl Bates, because, frankly, that is sufficient.
You know what? If you don’t like it, get a doctorate. I think they’re great. In terms of this, we have heard from the fact that the Teaching Council is going to have their power removed. We have seen already in the previous bill that the balance of scale is tipped towards ministerial appointees, but, now, we’re seeing that has been further reduced from 13 members to between seven to nine members, with only three being from the sector. Most of them are going to be appointed by the Minister, and that is going to politicise the teaching profession. You could dress things up by saying, “We are seeing that things aren’t performing.” We are seeing the Minister using reports like TELUS 2024. Yet we also have a Minister who likes to cherry-pick information. She never highlights the actual issues in some of those reports but will only use certain data so she can push her own political agenda.
She is someone who, again, like I said, has no background in education and has never set foot in front of a classroom yet thinks that she is better than everyone else. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: it is sheer arrogance.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: And, now, we’ll come back to the bill because we’re getting a little personal.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: When it comes to this bill, there are also other things. We have the New Zealand School Properties Agency. Now, the problem we’re finding with the School Properties Agency—and this is something we will be looking into in the select committee stage—is the fact that the School Properties Agency will come to your school and will make all of the changes and then bill you for it. We are not seeing the Minister increasing the operational fund for schools as a response to this. We’re not seeing the Minister addressing the systematic and the longstanding deficit in the funding we’re providing, so schools aren’t able to do that. If you’re interested, the operational fund this year was only increased by 1.5 percent according to the Budget, yet inflation is at 2.3 percent. Therefore, you’re not actually increasing the operational funding; you’re in fact reducing it by 0.8 percent, and that is according to the Government’s own Budget.
The School Properties Agency is going to do all of this, yet we are not seeing them addressing the root cause of some of the issues. We’re seeing this open slather allowing the corporatisation, even more than what we’re seeing now, in terms of charter schools. We’re seeing that the Minister can make even more directions around things in the curriculum so that you don’t even need to consult the parents when it comes to health. Well, relationship and sexual education is facing some serious issues because, again, the Minister is being led by other political parties on how they are changing that particular curriculum. We’re seeing an overreach going on with an even more punitive effect being done in terms of the Education Review Office. We’re seeing with attendance that schools can’t have the flexibility of knowing when people are not attending schools. Instead, there is a really prescribed way that you can mark when they are not attending.
I’m sorry, but I’m really glad that the Minister comes from a community that doesn’t have instances where a child is not attending school, because their parent is dying from cancer in a hospital three towns away and that’s why they’re not attending. I’m really happy that the Ministers from East Coast Bays and Epsom are not facing those kinds of challenges we’re seeing in rural schools and rural communities. But these are the facts when you’re talking to some of these schools on why students are not attending.
Lastly, just to finish, the Minister wants to use the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), but do you know what? You can do all of that, but 75 percent of people don’t take PISA seriously. Students don’t take PISA seriously. It is not a good measure. The Greens will not support this, because it’s not robust.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I was just listening to that speech, and there’s a lot I could say, but the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan seemed to think it was a problem that the Minister is influenced by other parties in coalition. Now, think about this for a moment: the whole premise of the member’s political party is that one party can influence another in coalition. This shows how a person can be very smart and very stupid all at the same time.
As for his personal attacks on Erica Stanford, our Minister of Education—
Carl Bates: Shameful.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —really quite shameful. But let me say this: Erica Stanford is reforming education for the better in this country and being more effective than that member ever will be.
Back on this bill. Changing school attendance exemptions is one of the things it does. It ensures that if a principal wants to exempt a student from attendance, they have to do it under guidelines set by the secretary, because the number one thing you can do to improve education is make sure that students are at school. This Government is serious about it. We have significantly improved educational attendance in the time we’ve been in office, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Shanan Halbert: You just cut our service—you just cut it.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Then there’s—oh, Shanan Halbert says “you just cut it.”; actually, we just increased educational attendance funding by $140 million. Now, for a guy who thinks the solution to every problem is throwing money at it, I would have thought he’d see that as an improvement. But we’re doing more than that: we’re changing the rules, we’re getting people focused, we’re putting in place the Stepped Attendance Response system, and we’re ensuring that students are actually at school.
We’re making more improvements to our wonderful charter school model, which is announcing innovative school after innovative school in order that those who convert to charter standards have a pathway back, because you should be able to choose and the choice should work both ways. I think that is an exceptional improvement.
I’ll make a couple of comments about the property management changes. For too long, there’s been a conflict between managing an education system and managing property within the Ministry of Education. Anyone who’s an electorate MP or takes an interest in their community will know how bad that problem can get. Having a separate agency with the objective of managing the property portfolio, it creates a tension that is natural and sensible.
There are changes to the Teachers Council to make it properly aligned with the objectives of the Government, on behalf of the people of New Zealand. As an electorate MP who has had people blocked from being teachers on spurious grounds, to the detriment of the community, these changes can’t come fast enough.
Finally, this bill transfers functions for private school and hostel regulation from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office. However, later this evening, the committee will consider the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, and these two bills together will ensure that the regulation of early childhood education is also moved to the Education Review Office in line with the findings of the Ministry for Regulation’s early childhood education sector review, designed so that we will have a proper tension and separation between the policy shop, which is the Ministry of Education, and the regulator, which is the Education Review Office.
This is a very positive set of changes that a busy Government that has the hearts and minds of New Zealand children front and centre in its agenda is making to ensure that we fix what matters for New Zealand. I just hope that the member on the other side, from the Green Party, can think a little bit about that, rather than his tawdry epithets that belittle him and this House.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Education began by saying that it is essential that we have a world-leading education system. In fact, we've just seen that this House has just passed a piece of legislation to say that is now the pre-eminent objective of our education system, and New Zealand First completely agrees with that.
But the problem is—and we've heard the opposition coming from the Opposition benches, effectively a defence of the indefensible, a defence of the status quo. What we know at the moment is that our education system is failing. It's failing our teachers, it's failing our students, it's failing their parents, and it's failing our future. That is a real, real problem and we need to do something about that.
New Zealand First has always believed that education is a fundamental right and that every child should get access to quality education and also support. We heard from the Opposition benches that no more money's gone into the education system. What was it—$750-odd million went into support for the students that actually needed support. That is a significant investment that teachers have been crying out for, and you can bet your life that parents have been crying out for that for years.
Education needs to ensure that our young people learn the skills that they need to be able to inquire, to be taught how to think, but not to be taught what to think. Education needs to prepare young New Zealanders for life, for work, and to be first-rate citizens, not just of New Zealand, but first-rate citizens of the world—something that we can be proud of, that they can be proud of.
The Minister has talked through the details of the bill, so I'm not going to go through those at the moment, but I'd really strongly encourage both the Opposition and the people who are going to make submissions on this bill to look in the mirror, to think about this, and to think about our young people, to think about their future, and to think about the future of this country, because at the moment our teacher education is failing. The Minister has laid that out very clearly. Attendance levels are poor.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: What’s the evidence for that?
ANDY FOSTER: Still, they're improving—great work is being done by the Minister, Minister Seymour, over there. Student capabilities are failing as well.
Oh, and then, of course, when it comes to property management, how much more efficient now is property management already under this Government to what it was under the last Government? We are making progress. Those are systemic issues, Dr Xu-Nan, that we are working on making improvements to.
So the status quo as it is indefensible. We don't believe that the status quo should stay. This Government and this Minister are making excellent progress and I look forward to submissions. I hope they are very considered submissions on what is good for the future of this country and our young people. I commend this bill to the House.
ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): E te Pīka, tēnā koe. I'll get straight to it. The Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill does more than mess around with systems; it reaches directly into the whakapapa of our tamariki and mokopuna. Now, there's a proverb in te ao Māori that goes like this: “Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro, nōnā te ngāhere; ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōnā te ao.” In English, that translates to: “The bird that consumes the miro berry, theirs is the forest; the bird that feasts on knowledge, theirs is the world.” Our babies’ access to knowledge determines the world that they will inherit.
That is why I must speak clearly and courageously to all New Zealanders about the consequences this bill holds for Māori futures. The Minister and this Government claims that this bill is about improving the education system, but those in the sector—the whānau that we've been speaking to on the daily and those who are succeeding in the current education model, especially Māori—say otherwise. When we look closely, it is obvious: this bill tightens rules, centralises power, expands privatisation, and pushes Māori voices further to the margins. It claims to strengthen education, but for Māori, it strengthens the barriers.
One of the first changes they talk about is strengthening attendance expectations. That might sound simple, but we all know what this means for our whānau: more pressure, more monitoring, and more judgments. Our whānau are not keeping kids home because they don't value education. They are dealing with unstable housing, multiple jobs, overcrowded homes, transport costs, mental health pressures, disability barriers, and schools that often have no reo, no tikanga, and no cultural connection. Supported by research, tamariki attend and succeed in education when they feel safe, recognised, and valued. Attendance is a symptom, never the cause. But instead of supporting whānau, this bill leans further into punishment. Once again, Māori become the target and not the priority.
Another major change is the creation of a new national property agency to control school buildings and land. Most people will skim over this, but Māori providers—including kōhanga reo, puna reo, iwi-led learning centres—know exactly how significant this is. Property access is already the single biggest barrier for Māori early learning. Our whānau struggle to secure buildings, to make compliance, to upgrade facilities, because the system was never designed around Māori needs. Just ask Te Kura Kaupapa Māori ā Rohe o Māngere, who are still waiting for their support and finances to renovate their buildings.
Property access, as I said, is already the single biggest barrier for Māori and early learning. Instead of empowering Māori to own, grow, and protect their own educational spaces, this bill creates yet another layer, another gatekeeper, and another Crown-controlled body that stands between Māori and the land we need to teach our kids. For us, a learning space is not just a building; it is a tūrangawaewae, it is whakapapa, it is identity, and this bill shifts that power even further away from our hands.
Last week, the Government removed Te Tiriti o Waitangi from our education system. They put profits over the wellbeing of our mokopuna with their ECE reforms, and passed the Regulatory Standards Bill to sideline Te Tiriti o Waitangi from all future legislation. What we're seeing here is a staged approach to the roll-out of the Regulatory Standards Bill in education by targeting the most vulnerable—and who are they? All tamariki.
Te Pāti Māori believes that the role of education providers is to educate—not to operate a business, clipping the ticket on the future of our mokopuna, based on right-wing ideology. We know that true success begins with knowing who you are, where you come from, and standing proudly in your reo, culture, and whakapapa. Te Pāti Māori will repeal this bill and will centre Te Tiriti o Waitangi in all aspects of our education system here in Aotearoa. All tamariki deserve high-quality education wherever they go to school, for them, for their future and for all of our mana motuhake. We oppose this bill. Tēnā koutou katoa.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. For parents and caregivers and whānau listening at home, one of the things that they ask, that teachers ask, that principals ask when I go into schools is “Can we make education non-political?” Watch this, this evening, Madam Speaker, and you can understand why we can’t, because we have an Opposition that, regardless of the quality that we put forward, stand up to oppose. Māori education this year got $60 million for property development from a National-led Government.
For two terms, the Opposition couldn’t sort out initial teacher education. We have 62 percent of teachers coming out of initial teacher education saying they don’t feel equipped to teach. Did they do anything? No, they didn’t.
It is a National-led Government, once again, that is fixing education in this country. It’s about time the Opposition got on board. I commend the bill to the House.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I think we might just turn the volume and the tone down a wee bit.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Might have to ask the man in the box!
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Ha, ha! Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to just make a few comments about the approach that has characterised this Government’s stewardship of education in the two years that they’ve been in office. This bill has a lot in common with a number of other reforms that we’ve seen come through in recent times. It signals a shift in approach in our education system, from local control, to centralised decision-making; from a system that is led by the teaching profession, by educationalists, to one that is led by politicians and the public servants and policy makers who report to them; from a system that is flexible, to one that is highly prescriptive; from a spirit of partnership, to one of compliance; from public, to increasing privatisation; and from a value base of wholistic wellbeing, to increasingly one of measurable outputs.
It’s very clear from the education policies of this Government that they regard teachers and the education sector as their ideological enemies. They are implacably hostile to the people who run our education system and who teach our children.
The effect of what the Government is doing with these reforms goes far further than centralisation. I’m not someone who always instinctively argues for decentralisation; in fact, I’m probably more—and have been—of a centralist than most people in this Parliament. But the effect of the provisions in this bill and a number of other reforms that we’ve seen from the Government recently are not just centralisation; they veer towards politicisation, and I’m not sure that this country wants to see the education system that’s responsible for teaching our kids increasingly politicised where politicians are designing our curriculum, where politicians are setting the standards for how our children learn and what they learn. I think that is a dangerous road for us to go down.
No one in this House pretends that the education system is perfect. Yes, there are challenges. We probably differ on what the precise challenges are and what the solutions are. But we have benefited enormously from a public education system in this country that is led by the experts, the people who do the work, the people who get up every day and go to school or university or polytechs, or any other educational institutions, who teach for a living and who love teaching and who feel passionate about creating the best learning experience for our students. The philosophy that has underpinned our system for a long, long time is that they are the ones to be trusted and empowered to make the best decisions they can for our system.
This bill, like so much else that we’ve seen in this House recently, has the opposite philosophy. It is pulling key decision-making into the bureaucracy of central government, and, in a number of cases, into the Minister’s office. I don’t think that is something that the people of New Zealand generally want to see.
This Government’s approach to education more and more resembles a kind of Punch and Judy cartoon where the Government vilifies teachers, and paints itself as being the defender of the interests of parents in the system. It is a gross distortion and oversimplification. I would really urge the National Party members to think twice about these kind of reforms, because I don’t think they are taking our country’s education system where we want it to go.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill. There are many elements to this bill that have been well traversed. The thing that I am so excited to see is the property changes because, in my own electorate, I’ve seen how long it can take to advocate for the right kind of property that’s needed. Thankfully, thanks to a listening Minister, we now have 14 more classrooms coming to Cashmere High. I’m very pleased with that, and I commend the bill to the House.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s disappointing, tonight, to have to speak again on another education and training bill that doesn’t achieve better outcomes for learners. In the politicisation of Minister Stanford’s approach to mātauranga education, at every step along the way, tamariki ākonga learners have not been at the centre of the debate in this House. Whether we look back to last week when, suddenly, Te Tiriti was removed from board of trustees to charter schools. In fact, when the Government says that they’re all about achievement, their approach to education and training and legislative change does not achieve the outcome that they’re talking about.
This is a Government that talks down our education system in this country. We have a great education system. Yes, we have areas that we need to improve, but anyone who thinks that our education system is at fault is actually factually incorrect. When the Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour, says that the way to raise achievement is to get our kids back to school, what does a community like mine do when in fact this Government just cancelled our attendance contract? It just cancelled it.
The behaviour that we see from Government members tonight really shows that this is a Government under pressure. They’ve got their backs up against the wall. I’ve never seen a Government that hates teachers so much that they would take away their powers, that they would take away the rights, the acknowledgement of the profession, the capability, the evidence that educators provide, and say to them, “We know better.” Not only is it “We know better. We are going to change legislation to take it away from independent organisations, like the Teachers Council, and we’re going to put it more into the Beehive.” More decisions in our education system will be made by the Director of Education and by the Minister of Education, not by the profession themselves.
This is a Government that has taken away localism from our education system. This is a Government that removes the relationship and sexuality guidelines that schools asked for, to create safe and inclusive schools for children that need that support and communities that require it. I have to say, tonight, I am very clear that I will do everything that I can to ensure that Labour repeals this bill. It is an absolute attack on the profession, an absolute attack on the teaching profession. It is ideological, it is politically motivated, and it does not have learners at the heart of their decision making, nor does it have any evidence.
In fact, in the regulatory impact statement (RIS), if Government members take the opportunity to read the RIS, it clearly says that there is a lack of evidence to support what’s been put forward in this legislation—a lack of evidence. There’s no information there. There hasn’t been any time for anyone to confirm and provide information to say that this is going to achieve the desired outcome. To the Government of Ministers, why are you rushing? Why are you not bringing the sector with you? That is very clear. In their heads and in their approach—they’ve demonstrated it tonight—they think National knows best.
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take the final call on the first reading of this bill. I think that we just need to remember who the education system is actually there for. It’s not there for the teacher unions, it’s not there for teachers, and it’s not there for parents. It’s there for the students. What we’re here for is to help provide an education system that delivers for the students, and I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.
Bills
Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): I move, That the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
I’d like to thank Tim van de Molen, chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and, indeed, the entire committee for their careful consideration of this bill. After careful deliberation, including a review of 37 submissions, the committee has recommended that the bill be passed with no changes.
The committee raised some important points in their report, which I will address in a moment. But first, I would like to remind the House of the reasons why this bill is needed. In a deteriorating strategic environment, New Zealand needs a defence force that can respond quickly and with agility; a force that is combat-capable, interoperable, and ready to do whatever is asked of it, whether that be to respond in the aftermath of a natural disaster or to deploy offshore with our partners. To do this, we rely on the Defence Force’s hard-working, highly trained sailors, soldiers, and aviators, who together make up the armed forces, but we also rely on the New Zealand Defence Force’s (NZDF’s) professional and skilled civilian staff. This is a common-sense bill. Its focus is on ensuring national security and the delivery of core defence outputs is maintained if civilian staff in the NZDF take industrial action.
This bill makes two sets of changes for two different groups. I want to be clear about these differences in order to avoid any misunderstandings. The first set of changes relates to when the armed forces are used to conduct the work of NZDF civilian staff—that’s their colleagues within the Defence Force itself. In this area, the bill makes the more substantive change. When the NZDF civilian staff take industrial action—which they are entitled to do—that can cause gaps and pressures which can stand in the way of the Defence Force, as a whole being, ready and able to deliver whatever New Zealand needs whenever it needs it. The Defence Act 1990 allows the Minister of Defence to authorise the armed forces to conduct the work of striking NZDF civilian staff, but the current mechanism is too limited and impractical. The current mechanisms do not account for the breadth of tasks that NZDF civil staff undertake and the potential impact on New Zealand’s defence and security if these activities are stopped.
The bill amends the Defence Act 1990 so that the Minister can authorise military personnel to conduct the work of striking NZDF civilian staff, but only when (a) there is industrial action taking place, and (b) there are reasonable grounds to consider that an authorisation is required, either to avoid prejudice in national security or the ability to deliver core defence outputs, or (c) where necessary because of health or safety. The Minister must specify in writing the period of the authorisation, which cannot extend beyond the period of the industrial action. To support parliamentary scrutiny, Parliament would be notified that an authorisation had been given and the reasons for giving it. Effective members of civilian staff and their union would also be informed.
The second set of changes relate to when military personnel are used to conduct the work of Public Service employees outside of the NZDF. This provision already exists in the Defence Act 1990, and the bill makes only procedural changes. Clause 4 amends the Defence Act to increase the number of days an authorisation for military personnel to perform the role may last, from 14 days to 30 days. An extension beyond this would still require a resolution of the House, and so the opportunity to debate that extension remains. A minor amendment is also made to ensure that if an authorisation expires when Parliament is not sitting, it will automatically extend to the next sitting day, when Parliament is able to consider whether an extension is merited.
Now, I’ll turn to some points considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. Firstly, the committee considered whether the changes would reduce Parliament’s oversight. The bill does remove the requirement for the House to debate the extension to an authorisation when the military personnel are conducting the work of NZDF civilian staff. I do not shy away from this. I consider this as akin to the process of an employer being able to use other members of their own staff to cover the work of striking colleagues.
Members of the armed forces and the NZDF civilian staff work alongside each other every day, working together on the common goal of protecting and defending New Zealand. I do not know of any other employers that have to go through the hoop of parliamentary approval simply to use one member of staff to conduct the work of another who is striking for an extended period of time. It is simply not necessary for the House to have a role in approving extensions of this kind of authorisation. It is not a good use of limited House time for something which in any other organisation is routine.
I accept that some members may continue to hold strong views about this, and so I want to reiterate that the bill does maintain parliamentary visibility of authorisations and to do this by requiring the Minister to notify the House if an authorisation is given and the reasons for giving it. Members will have the information they need, should they wish to raise this with the Minister of Defence at oral questions or to bring it to the attention of the House in another way.
To clarify again, the bill maintains the current role of Parliament in approving an extension to an authorisation for the use of the armed forces to conduct the work of Public Service employees. This is important because the use of the armed forces outside military settings should never be taken lightly, and so maintaining an approval role for Parliament here is appropriate if the armed forces are undertaking this work for a sustained period.
Secondly, the committee considered whether the bill should define certain terms, particularly “national security” and “core defence outputs”. I will discuss these in turn. Defining “national security” would be inconsistent with our existing statutory approach. New Zealand has typically adopted an approach which aligns with many of our closest partners, who also do not include a definition in legislation so as not to constrain the ability to respond to new or emerging threats. Instead, we take the view that the interpretation of “national security” should rely on formulations that sit outside of legislation in key strategic documents, such as the New Zealand National Security Strategy.
The committee also considered the criteria of “core defence outputs”. This criteria stated in full is “to avoid prejudicing … the ability and/or readiness of the Armed Forces to perform specific operational activities that are integral to core defence outputs;”. This contains multiple elements that must be satisfied before it can apply. This could include activities essential to maintaining the NZDF’s ability and readiness for deployment or operations, such as responding to expected or unexpected events in New Zealand or overseas requiring military capacity tasks under security treaties or UN agreements, or emergency management.
Finally, the committee considered whether the bill would negatively impact the collective bargaining and industrial action of the civilian staff. Let me be clear: industrial action by members of the civil staff absolutely has an impact on the NZDF, now and in the future. Using armed forces to conduct the work of civil staff means that they are not able to perform their regular duties. The Chief of Defence Force does not have enough staff to take these decisions lightly.
I know that the NZDF will continue to work hard through negotiation discussions to avoid industrial action coming about in the first place, but if it does occur, let there be no doubt that any disruption imposes a cost to the NZDF. This bill does not prevent industrial action. What it does is balance the right of NZDF civilian staff to take industrial action with New Zealand’s very much defence needs.
Separately, the bill makes minor changes to the existing process for allowing the armed forces to undertake the role of striking public servants. It safeguards national security and operational readiness. The Chief of Defence Force needs the flexibility to manage the NZDF workforce to ensure that those core defence activities can continue to take place where necessary, even when parts of its workforce are taking industrial action, and the bill makes sure that when the military personnel are required to take on essential tasks during industrial action, provisions are practical and fit for purpose.
In these increasingly challenging times, we need to make sure that legislation that supports our soldiers, sailors, and aviators to protect and defend New Zealand’s interests is sensible and pragmatic. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I start my contribution in this second reading of this bill, the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill, by acknowledging our New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel here and abroad who continue to work hard, represent our country well, and serve the communities here and around the world. They do a fantastic job, not only in the day to day operations that they involve themselves in but also flying the flag for New Zealand as ambassadors of our country and ambassadors of a highly reputable New Zealand Defence Force in our communities at home there. So I want to start by acknowledging our NZD personnel.
I want to make very clear that we can do this while also continuing to represent the clear views of the Labour Party, which is around the rights of the worker, which is around making sure that those people who work in the civilian roles—as highlighted by the Minister; the crucial civilian roles—continue to have the opportunity not only to take civil action in representing themselves through making sure that they receive a fair go, if you will, but also in making sure that they can continue to be acknowledged for the important work that they do do with the NZDF. And we are the Labour Party; we stand up for those people. We want to make sure that those people can have that opportunity, and the Minister has set out a few matters that I'll come to throughout the entirety of my speech and understand that we will be going through the process of the committee of the whole and into the third and final reading of this bill.
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, a very good and hard-working committee, generally look at the vast majority of its work in a very multi-partisan way. We all tend to try and be rather collegial and look towards making sure we advance the best interests of this country, so I want to acknowledge the committee. The Minister did rightly point out that we in the Opposition offered a number of opportunities or avenues for the Minister to consider. That might be a way of making sure that we continue to work together on something so important but also trying to be helpful and making sure that we can strengthen this particular bill moving forward.
I want to be very clear. When this Government signalled its public service cuts, we asked not just this Minister but this Government whether or not those cuts would have a significant impact on the NZDF and its operations. At the time we were told no, yet here we are amending a bill, making it very clear that the Government is looking for a get out of jail free card, a plan B if you will, to say “Oh well, we'll change the law to make it easier”, just in case industrial action is taken not only by those NZDF civilian staff but also by the wider public sector who, as we've already seen, have continued to protest many of the actions of this Government. We've had a number of bills already in the House looking at our teachers. We know our health sector is under pressure and on its knees and have continued to protest against the actions of this Government. And now what we're doing here today in this bill is saying that certain parts of those sectors who do take industrial action, it'll be OK for the NZDF to backfill those roles.
Now, let me just remind the House again, we asked this Government whether or not it would have an impact—we were told no. And yet here we are changing the law, making it somewhat easier, or the process easier, for those decisions to be made. I made a contribution earlier in this House too, today, about one of the things that we're always keeping an eye for on this side of the House, which is to our view, minimising democratic processes. We're very clear when there's a reason for matters such as this to come back to the House, for the House to have an opportunity to debate these matters. It's there for a reason. It's there to make sure that for such an important sector in our country, such as NZDF and the civilian staff that support them, this House gets the opportunity to debate that. It gets the opportunity to continue to make sure that we are all in support of the crucial role that our NZDF people play in our country and how they might be able to support this country's aspirations.
We're also very clear, too, as the Minister pointed out in her speech, that there are some areas where we talk about the national security interests, also health and safety. We were quite clear on the side of the House asking the Minister and members of the committee, “If we know what those provisions are, and we're very clear on what they are, let's make sure we are clear on that” so that it isn't just an open door to be able to allow them to backfill in positions or in roles that actually they shouldn't be doing.
We've got a number of amendments that we’ll look towards putting for the House's consideration during the committee of the whole House, to make sure that it isn't just a carte blanche approach to making sure that NZDF personnel can just backfill any old position. We've heard the Minister speak towards national interest and health and safety. We want to explore that a little bit more and be very explicit about saying, “OK, that's fine, but make sure that they can't do what would otherwise be termed as clerical or administrative roles.” So if that's the purpose of this bill, to make sure that we can continue to remain operationally ready, we can continue to support health and safety, we can also continue to support the national security interests of this country, that's fine. We support that too. But we want to make sure that it isn't just pushing people into administration or clerical roles, because we don't believe that for the most part that is in the best interests of the NZDF personnel or this country.
We also will be promoting a number of other amendments that will speak to some other more smaller, minor, technical bits that the Minister has spoken to in her speech. But I want to make very clear that on this side of the House, we do support the rights of workers. We are the Labour Party. That's who we stand for. And those who did submit, those unions that did submit on this particular bill were very clear about that. They were very passionate about making sure that those rights continue to remain. Let's be very clear, it was their view that the rights of workers right across this country have been beat down, have been kicked in the guts, and been taken for granted by this Government. They made that very clear in their submission, and we sat through those submissions. We engaged with the unions. I want to point out that the NZDF in the consideration of this particular bill did not proactively engage with the unions. In fact, it says it in their report here. And they give a reason for it in the report, saying that it wasn't in the interests of those who might consider taking industrial action. To my view, that's just not good enough.
We know that these people are represented by unions, have been for a long time and in fact those unions, for a number of years, even in my time as a defence Minister were keen to engage with either the Minister or other members of the House, and in particular the NZDF leadership. So we've seen already that those submitters could only find their voice during this particular process. One would have thought that in order to support those important NZDF civilian roles that we've heard the Minister speak of this evening, they might be a bit more open to engaging with the union on important matters that affect them.
We do oppose this bill, and I can say as a former defence Minister, having looked across the wide scope of what it is that the NZDF does, one of the other concerns that I do have is it was raised with me and, and a number of my predecessors that the Defence Act of 1990 is like that beach bach where you keep putting a lean to on a lean to, on a lean to. And all of a sudden you think that it's going to cater for everybody, and then there's a leak. And so the point of that is the Defence Act does actually need, in my view, a considerable overhaul. We can't keep just making these amendments or these, you know, changes to the Act just here and there. As I said, it's just putting a lean to on a lean to. And before you know it, it's leaking and the carpet's wet, and we've got a bigger problem.
That's something I want to leave on the floor for the Minister and this Government to consider—
Glen Bennett: On the soggy floor.
Hon PEENI HENARE: On the wet carpet, if you will, to make sure that we have a look at making sure that legislation is fit for purpose. There are lots of things that have changed, but what we do know about the NZDF in this country is they always stand ready to serve. They serve our communities well, even when it's unexpected, such as the weather events and other matters, such as COVID, that impact this country. The NZDF have always served our country well. So let's make sure they can do that with an Act that supports them well and isn't simply just a piecemeal approach to supporting them in the important work that they do.
We oppose this bill. We will be putting forward some amendments for the Minister and this Government to consider, and we look forward to the next stages of this bill in the House.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill. I think through the journey of this bill as it came through the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, there were a lot of learnings that I personally had—and I think this committee as a whole had—as we began to understand exactly what the conditions are of the workforce. I think a number of us were surprised at the number of civilian personnel that are employed in these roles; I think the numbers were around about 3,000 and around 1,000 of those are unionised workers.
It’s important that is understood: that when they’re doing civilian roles, that’s civilian work and they should have all the rights that everybody else has when they’re doing those civilian roles. Different if you’re in the military personnel as well. If you’re in the military personnel, as expected—you’re working for the army or you’re working for the air force or whatever—therefore there’s a strict hierarchy that you have to go through because that’s what you signed up for. I mean, that is clearly understood as well.
I think it’s also really important to understand the genesis of this bill as well. Not only was I surprised at the number of civilian personnel working in our armed forces, but also the roles that they did and the expectation that if you do those roles that you should be able to have all of the other rights that other people have, like the right to strike, for example. In 2024, Public Service Association (PSA) members, in particular in the NZDF civilian staff roles, when they were negotiating their pay, what they were offered was a zero pay offer. That’s what they were offered.
We all understand we’re living in the cost of living crisis, right? This House talks about that all the time. Everybody’s feeling the pinch, especially workers, and we just look around this country, the unprecedented number of strikes that we’re seeing. There’s firefighters, teachers, nurses, support staff as well. We know that everybody is feeling the pinch and that people are offering pay increases below the rate of inflation. So if you show up to the bargaining table and the offer is zero pay, you look around for the different options that you have to be able to—as your right—find different ways to make action. That’s what these workers did. At the time, the Minister of Defence responded by using her powers under section 9 of the Defence Act 1990 to authorise the use of the armed forces to provide services at these NZDF sites.
This is the situation that we’re finding ourselves in. It’s an attempt to stop the ability for workers to be able to access their rights, and I think this is what should be of great concern to this House. We’ve seen that with the partial pay strikes. We’ve seen that with the fair pay agreements going out the window. We saw what happened with the 33 pay equity claims as well. So I think it’s important to see this bill in the context of all those things as well.
At the heart, this bill weakens the right to strike by allowing striking civilian staff to be replaced with uniformed personnel, not just when there is a risk to health and safety, when there is a threat to national security, but effectively in any circumstance. Workers engaging in lawful strikes are entitled to take effective industrial action and it is an important bargaining tool and a legitimate expression of the industrial power of working people.
Just to remind people: we’re hiring these civilian people to do these, as civilians; they deserve all of the rights that they have. Workers engaging in lawful strikes are entitled to take industrial action as an important bargaining tool and a legitimate expression of the industrial power of working people. The ability for the Government to replace striking workers with uniformed personnel will always be controversial and should only be used in the rarest of occasions, if ever. That is why the law currently provides for clear limitations and democratic guardrails, including parliamentary approval for extended use of uniformed personnel to fill the civilian roles during industrial action.
There were a number of submissions that came to the select committee, and I think as a select committee we work relatively collegially. I think generally the other side of the House will say something, I don’t agree with it, we agree to disagree and we kind of work our way through it. As opposed to some other select committees, where we don’t agree with each other and it’s all on. So I do appreciate being able to agree to disagree, and in this case we are disagreeing.
Tim Costley: I agree with that.
TEANAU TUIONO: He’s agreeing to disagree with my agreement.
There are a number of themes that submitters brought to the select committee. One of them was around concerns about removing parliamentary oversight, and I do note that was talked about by the previous two speakers.
There were concerns that the bill would enable the military to encroach on civilian life. One of the submitters—and this is the PSA; I think that a really, really, good strong submission. I would encourage the public to go out there and to read that. I remember part of that submission; they said that they had talked to military personnel who, of course didn’t want to be identified in any way, were worried that this would cause friction in the tearoom, right? We can say these military personnel are going to do these civilian roles, but what does that practically look like? When you’re going into the morning tearoom, you’re going to have people that are doing your jobs or this other sort of thing. Some of these people actually spoke to the union; this is part of their submission that said that this would create an awkward situation, this will create friction as well. I think that’s something for this House to be mindful of as well.
I think it’s important that the workers in this particular case were using all the legitimate tools that they could find. They were offered a zero pay offer. These were the actions that they were able to take as well, and they took effective action and they won. Winding back those rights, I think, is the wrong thing to do.
A couple of the other submitters brought up potential breaches of New Zealand’s international obligations. Submitters raised concerns that the bill would undermine or frustrate or breach New Zealand’s obligations under the International Labour Organization conventions 87 and 98, which relate to freedom of association, the right to strike, and the ability to organise and collectively bargain.
Just noting the contribution from the Council of Trade Unions, who commented that the right to strike should not be disturbed unless there are clear and good reasons for doing so. They cited the Employment Court judgment in Secretary for Justice v New Zealand Public Service Association. I think that’s an important point, because we get the arguments around our national security; the arguments around emergencies as well. But there was another component that is part of this legislation which also involves core defence outputs, I think it is. Maybe one of the other side could correct me on it—no, it is core defence outputs as well, which is basically anything.
Previously there’s an argument about what national security is and I think that’s an important discussion for us to have: what is in the national interest, what isn’t in the national interest. Let’s discuss what that is and whether we should be withdrawing the right to strike from those particular workers as well. Emergency situations; I can understand that as well. But what is actually core defence outputs? Well, it could be anything, actually, and that, I think, is a problem. So I think we should have discussions about that through the committee of the whole House stage as well, to really figure out, what does that actually mean? Is it clerical work? Is it—who knows? That was one of the other core concerns that submitters brought up as well.
Submitters have also talked about how this would negatively impact morale and the effectiveness of the NZDF as well. Because who wants to be a strike breaker? You’ve got your mates that you work with, civilian or military. I mean, those are the labels that we give them, but if they’re all walking down the same hallway, the next thing you know: “Well mate, I’m just—they’ve given me a zero offer here and I’m trying to feed my kids, to keep the lights on, and you’re not going to allow me to do this strike.” It puts them in an awkward situation. That’s what this does as well. I think this is what the House needs to turn its mind to.
Therefore, on that basis, the Greens will not be supporting this bill. This bill is another example of strike breaking. It is an example of this Government not taking workers seriously. It fits right into the context of all the work that they’ve been doing undermining workers’ rights, whether that’s getting rid of fair pay agreements, bringing back 90-day trials. The workers can see that for what that is, not to mention all the mucking around with the Employment Relations Authority as well. This bill is not a good bill and I do not commend it to the House.
LAURA McCLURE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Tim Costley: Hope this is better.
LAURA McCLURE: Oh, thank you.
I would also like to give a shout-out to the men and women in the Defence Force that do an excellent job at keeping us safe. Really, this bill is about keeping us safe. It’s very sensible that we would expect our sites—our Defence Force sites—to be secure and safe. In no way, shape or form does this actually stop the ability for industrial action. Anyone at home might think that may be the case, but that is not the case. Any type of industrial action is actually highly disruptive to the Defence Force; there’s a lot of planning and time that goes into that. So that alone is still there, and there is still an ability for people to take that action. It’s a really small change; it’s just extending the time frames for the Chief of Defence Force and the Minister to make sure that we cover periods when this House isn’t sitting. It’s really sensible, so I commend this bill to the House.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs): I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in favour of the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill. I thank the member from ACT who brought us back to reality around the fact that this is not removing the ability to take industrial action, and perhaps we need to repeat that again: it does not remove the ability to take industrial action. It is very simple that we have—particularly in the current climate; a highly volatile global environment where we expect Defence to be able to do its job at all times.
For those of us who have worked with sworn and non-sworn personnel, there is no conflict. There is a common goal. There is an ability to work together and understand differences, and to take industrial action does not undermine the relationship between Defence personnel and civilian personnel. They have a common objective, and they work for Defence because they believe in their common objective of serving their country. So to suggest that this bill would in any way undermine the relationship between civilian and Defence personnel is just a total fantasy. This is about ensuring that New Zealand can continue to protect itself, allow civilian action to be taken when they need to take it, but at its core it is about ensuring Defence can continue to do its job.
Defence personnel don’t want to fill civilian positions, but they will always and ultimately put the defence of this country first. That is what we need as a nation, and this is a practical, obvious step to ensure that we can do this. As the Minister of Defence has pointed out, any other organisation has the ability to shift staff around to manage through industrial action. It is common practice. It does not undermine the ability of any organisation to have industrial action taken. This is exactly what this bill is doing: it is allowing Defence to do exactly what every other organisation does in times of industrial action.
It is a practical common-sense piece of legislation. It will ensure that our Defence facilities and our borders and our personnel can remain protected and looked after, which is a priority along with our assets, our expensive Defence assets, being able to be protected no matter what the situation with industrial relations. It is absolutely disingenuous to stand here and say that we really stand up for our Defence personnel and we thank them for the wonderful job they do and then deny them a tool to actually continue to do what they do in the period when there’s industrial action. It is just disingenuous to say that we’re standing up for Defence personnel but we’re not going to let them defend their assets or defend their staff or defend their personnel or defend their functions in times of industrial action. This is a quick and easy remedy to resolve that situation. It does not remove any opportunity to take industrial action and therefore New Zealand First commends the bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call—Ricardo Menéndez March.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. You know what’s disingenuous? It’s Government politicians thanking the New Zealand Defence Force for their work, while at the very same time pushing forward legislation that literally undermines their bargaining power when it comes to their paying conditions.
The reality is that this bill is about undermining bargaining power for the New Zealand Defence Force, particularly civilians within it. While the member prior to me, Hon Casey Costello, may have said that this is not about preventing those civilians within the Defence Force from striking, the bill does take away one of the most effective tools when it comes to workers fighting for decent pay and safe working conditions, which is the withdrawal of labour. Effectively, the Government is creating a tool, with less accountability for them, to put military personnel in place of civilian staffers in the Defence Force when they often will be seeking better pay and conditions.
I think those Government politicians defending this bill may want to query as to whether the civilian Defence Force, that have raised issues in relationship to their pay and their conditions, were wrong. And it’s quite different to say, “Well, there may be a bargaining process that needs to be undertaken.” And, sure, we recognise—even in the Greens, who are often out there supporting striking workers—that those decisions to strike are not taken lightly. It’s different to say that, you know, we have a process for those workers to fight for decent paying conditions. To then go and push forward with a bill that—effectively, what it does is that it removes a democratic check on decisions by Government to basically have the military Defence Force fill in those civilian roles.
I took part in the debate, not that long ago, when the Minister of Defence chose to extend the period in which the military Defence Force would be filling those civilian roles as a result of industrial election. What was clear to me is that it is important, in our democracy, when we have military personnel filling civilian roles, that we actually take the time to (a) debate it, for the public to be adequately informed, and for those checks and balances to be put in place.
I also want to raise the issue, in the current context, that the civilian Defence Force does play a really important role in protecting us when, for example, natural disasters strike. And the reality that we have right now—
Tim Costley: They can’t deploy.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: They can’t what?
Tim Costley: No, they don’t. You don’t understand what the Defence Force does.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: OK. Well, I’ll wait for the member who made famous YouTube videos on it.
Hon Judith Collins: Civilians don’t deploy.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: But they don’t necessarily—did I use the word “deploy”? No.
Tim Costley: How are they going to help if they’re not deploying?
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Well, according to the National member, they don’t seem to help at all, so I’m looking forward to the member talking about the contributions of the civilian Defence Force and how important they are.
Effectively, what this bill does is that it allows the Minister to have one less level of accountability in Parliament. I think what was really telling, as well, throughout the debate, is that members could not identify the problem with the status quo; they just talked about how this is a common-sense bill. But, for example, the member prior to me was not able to articulate what the problem is with having an adequate parliamentary check for when the Minister chooses to extend the time in which those roles are going to be filled with military personnel.
We did hear from the unions and the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee about their concerns of how this would undermine the bargaining process, and I think that is an incredibly fair point. I think the Government members, in this House, who seek to actually justify this bill need to explain how exactly this does not undermine—in any way, shape, or form—the ability for civilians within the Defence Force to actually bargain for better pay and conditions.
The other issue that we have, as well, is that if the Government wasn’t ramming through so many pieces of legislation via urgency, I don’t think they would find the current processes that we have in place so onerous or such a big barrier. The reality is that in terms of time in Parliament that these most debatable moments take, it’s not huge or substantive. And if the Government wasn’t seeking to ram through so many pieces of legislation through urgency, it would not take such a huge proportion of time within Parliament.
The reality is that this bill only seeks to undermine workers, and it’s part of a trend of Government actions that have sought to undermine the pay, the conditions, and the bargaining power of workers across the country; the latest ones to be affected by a piece of legislation are the civilian Defence Force. I commend the words of my colleague Teanau Tuiono, who explained, through his participation in the select committee, as to why the Greens are not supporting this bill.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think anyone watching this will realise that was a typical Green Party contribution where the wokeness comes through. They dislike the military being able to do military functions and would rather have them disbanded until it comes to the point where they actually need some support and then they’ll be crying foul and wanting help. And that member’s contribution showed that he was clearly out of his depth in terms of the content of what he was talking about. In fact, he’d be out of his depth in a car park pothole, I suppose. Ultimately, it’s quite clear that this bill makes simple changes to ensure, primarily, we can maintain national security at all times, a critical function of our defence force, and, indeed, to ensure that operational readiness is maintained as well.
I want to take a moment to thank all our current serving personnel in the Defence Force for the work they constantly do—turning out day in and day out. Now, this does not take away the ability to strike. We’ve heard that; we’ve covered it in detail. Ultimately, it’s a practical change that ensures we can maintain national security. That is the critical factor here. The rest of it is just garbage. I commend this bill.
Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just like my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare, I’d like to take the opportunity, in the start of my speech, to acknowledge our New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) members both here in New Zealand and overseas, and the fantastic work that they do to support us and to support our national security. We are very fortunate to have a well-thought-of defence force in this country, who are pretty world-leading in many respects, for the work that they do, and it would be remiss of me if I didn't take the opportunity to acknowledge that.
As my colleague has pointed out and said here earlier, we as the Labour Party find ourselves in a position where we won't be, at this point, supporting this bill. There are so many grey areas that are in the bill as it stands at the moment. I've read through the bill, and I know it's only a short bill. It seems like it's only a few pages. Maybe that's the problem; that it is only a few pages long and that it hasn’t actually highlighted enough what some of the phrases mean within the bill.
Those people that have read it from the other side of the House and other parties on this side of the House might think that they know what is in there and what it's talking about, but from our perspective, we might have a different viewpoint and it's really important that we actually come to the same conclusion on what some of those phrases mean. I know that my colleague has, as he said to the Minister of Defence in his speech, some amendments that he will be putting forward in the committee of the whole House stage for nothing other than to actually clear up the grey areas that exist in the bill at the moment.
I read through the departmental report from the select committee process and, as this is the second reading of this bill, it would, again, be remiss not to talk about what happened in the select committee. I do acknowledge the work of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, giving the analysis and looking at this bill with the seriousness and the depth that they did. I noticed that they had 38 written submissions on the bill. Three submissions were received from non-governmental organisations and 35 were from individuals, which I thought was a pretty amazing ratio, there, of individuals to organisations. Out of those 38, one submitter supported the bill and 35 submitters opposed the bill. One submitter expressly stated that they neither supported nor opposed the bill, and one submitter did not provide a clear view about supporting or opposing the bill. So that's come directly from the departmental report, and I thought that we haven't actually heard that here this evening, but seeing as we are talking in the second reading, it is important that we do bring this up.
Some of the reasons why so many submitters did oppose this bill have been outlined by other speakers here this evening, but some of the ideas that came through were about the restrictions that could be put on civilian members and their right to strike. As my colleague has already pointed out, we are the Labour Party, so the name is on the tin. We do actually stand up for workers and we do hold very, very clear to that, so we need to make certain that is not being taken away and that is clearly something that is of right, and that the backfilling that happens in those areas by the defence force is authentic and that is not something that is happening because of job losses that have happened.
As my colleague pointed out—we've asked the Minister multiple times—when there were job cuts, would that have a meaningful impact on the NZDF personnel to either deploy or to do their job? The Minister said it wouldn't, but now all of a sudden the Government's trying to backfill those civilian roles with NZDF personnel to make sure that they can continue the very basics of those functions. So those are things that we will be prosecuting through the committee of the whole House stage as well. I know that's something that we haven't had a clear steer on in the select committee process, so it's really important that we make certain that we discuss that.
But one of the areas that I was really concerned about when I read the bill coming through from the select committee was when I talked about those grey areas earlier. It talked about areas such as, you know, the most important roles of the defence force, but what does that mean? Maybe that's the people that are in the civilian areas and it’s important that they're working to deploy the ship, but what are those roles? They're not being highlighted out. It's really important that we know exactly what they are because there'll be others in there that aren't quite so important, but it's kind of been left up in the air as it is at the moment in how it's been written in that particular bill, so it's really important that those are the sorts of things that are highlighted.
Then it goes on about backfilling when public servants from other areas outside of defence go on strike. One of the areas that has been used as an example in this is Corrections, but it doesn't narrow it solely to Corrections. It actually could be anything within the Public Service. We've got people in the defence force that would be crossing that picket line of any of the areas. It could be teachers. It could be health workers. It could be any of those roles. I heard a member say earlier that the civil side of the defence force and the active service people don't stand against each other, but actually you could be putting them up against public servants overall, so those are areas—
Tim Costley: No, no—section 9.
Hon JAN TINETTI: —that we would like to prosecute during the committee of the whole House stage. I do hear the people on the other side saying, “No, no, no.”, but that’s what the committee of the whole House is for, to actually prosecute that. I would hate to think that they were undermining the democracy within this House, because the democracy in this House says that we have the right, as Opposition, to actually prosecute this bill a bit more. It would be a very unusual and upsetting day if we had that side of the House thinking that we couldn't do that. It would be a sad day in this House, overall.
The other aspect around this is—and it is actually the second piece of legislation that I've spoken on this evening that I do have concerns about—where we are narrowing the power down to a very narrow group of people. It seems to me that this bill is giving far more power to the Minister and the Chief of Defence Force than what we've seen before. Those are areas that I would like to prosecute when we do get to that committee of the whole House stage because again, it almost feels like in several areas here that we're starting to narrow to the Beehive solely, and I don't think that's very good for this country. I feel that there needs to be a much wider and broader view here. So that is something that, again, we would like to take forward.
Just going back to when I talked about going into other Public Service areas such as education, such as health workers, you know, that is something that we saw over COVID. Again, like my colleague, I acknowledge those defence force people who supported our country over that time and did an amazing job. But the Minister herself said then that being deployed into civilian roles such as providing security to managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities is not what they signed up for. She said, “I don't think the COVID MIQ duty made many people in defence that happy and I think people just wondered if this is what they are going to be used for.” So, again, this is something that they seem to be saying on one hand is a bad thing, but on the other hand, this is what this bill is enabling this to do. Again, those are areas that we need to prosecute further because it feels like those are questions that we still have after this bill has come back from select committee.
Again, I want to acknowledge our defence force. I want to acknowledge the work of the select committee team who brought this back. But I do look forward to the committee of the whole House stage where we can ask those questions to make sure that the rights of workers are upheld across all areas in this country.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): If this is the level of illiteracy that we’re going to see in the Opposition—not just about this bill but about what the military does—you know, I feel sorry, on the one hand, for one of the members who spoke earlier, who I actually think would like to support the Defence Force. But they stand there with their crocodile tears: “Oh, we acknowledge what they do.”, and then they just want to oppose anything that’s going to help the military to do their job.
I thought the unions were terrible when they came to select committee. They didn’t even understand what civilians do in the military; that they guard main gates or bases. They did not understand that military people who normally do that—we used to do this. Like, how fundamentally can you not understand your job? Then the Green Party stood up, and if you thought the unions were woeful, listen to Ricardo Menéndez March—absolutely awful, this kind of anti-military rhetoric we hear.
It didn’t get any better with Jan Tinetti, as she stands up and says, “Oh well, you know, the military had to help in managed isolation and quarantine.” That’s right, uniformed personnel had to do it. That’s not the job that they wanted to do; this is people doing the job they would normally do, and military security force personnel filling a civilian role. They don’t understand it.
It's a good bill, I support it, and I commend it to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The Hon Phil Twyford—five minutes.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): It wasn’t that long ago that a National Government got the troops out and deployed them to keep the ports operating during a major industrial dispute in New Zealand. Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel were used to load and unload cargo on the wharves to keep essential goods moving. Troops, effectively, were used to replace striking watersiders on the docks to guard strategic infrastructure and goods, and the ports were, basically, militarised during that dispute. It was highly controversial at the time. The country was divided.
It was clear at the time that the National Government of the day got the troops out on the streets and on the ports as a way of framing the dispute as a challenge to State authority, rather than it being just an industrial conflict; much in the way that Donald Trump has been getting the National Guard out on the streets of major American cities for his own political purposes. That dispute on the waterfront in 1951 was an unprecedented level of State coercion in 20th century New Zealand industrial relations. It's worth remembering that—
Hon Simeon Brown: That’s a long time, Phil.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It may seem a long time ago for some people—the 1951 waterfront lockout—but, actually, in the world we live in right now, that sort of undermining of democratic norms and democratic institutions is happening all over the world as we speak at the moment. That's what is most disturbing, actually, about this debate: that this bill is, essentially, a charter for State strike-breaking. That's what it is. By loosening the parliamentary and the democratic oversight that for a long time has been a cross-party consensus in New Zealand—a recognition that from time to time, it may be in the national interest for the uniformed armed forces to be used to provide essential services during, for instance, a prolonged public-service strike. The consensus has been that that is something to be done very sparingly, very carefully. If misused, it is, potentially, a threat to our democracy, and that is why we have careful parliamentary oversight.
What this bill does is that it loosens that oversight so that in the case of the defence forces being used to break a strike in the public service, the Minister doesn't have to come and get a resolution of Parliament—no; and the time periods are significantly longer. In the case of armed forces personnel and uniformed personnel being used to break a strike by the civilian employees of the defence forces, the details are slightly different, but the effect is the same: it removes parliamentary oversight and gives the defence Minister sweeping powers to deploy the armed forces to break strikes. Now, New Zealand has been a party to international law for a long time, provisions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) that preserve the legal right to strike. It is a very important part of our democracy.
I'll say to colleagues that it's really distasteful, actually, when Tim van de Molen and then Tim Costley got up and, really, responded with abuse when people like Ricardo Menéndez March, quite legitimately, pointed out that this bill is undermining important democratic norms and protections in our system; and for doing that, they are accused of hating the military and not understanding what the defence forces do. I say to members on that side of the House: you should be better than that. Have a proper debate—
Hon Member: Oh, cheer up. It’ll be ok.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Have a proper debate. This bill is about strike-breaking; there's no two ways about it. It is about breaking industrial action, and defence members of the defence forces will be asked to cross the picket lines of striking workers. That is not the way we've done things in New Zealand for a long time, and there's a very good reason. No evidence has been provided that gives any sort of justification for the changes in this, other than some perfunctory reference to a deteriorating strategic environment.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think it is important to bring it back to reality. This bill does not mean that no one can strike in the Defence Force—in the civilian workers in the Defence Force. They’re still entitled to strike. This bill continues the ability for the Defence Force to carry out its vital activity in the security of our nation, and anything to the counter is just absolute rubbish.
Hon Tama Potaka: Gobbledegook.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK: It really is gobbledegook. This is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): How do I respond to that speech? That was outstanding. I think the summary of that in its entirety was: “That was gobbledegook, and this is a good bill.” I think you could say that about anything, really—but, never mind, we’re here to discuss this piece of legislation, which is a direct consequence of the cuts that this Government has driven right across the public sector and right across New Zealand’s front-line services. This is yet another one that’s being cut.
We asked the Minister multiple times if cutting civilian roles would have any meaningful impact on New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel to either deploy or to do their job. The Minister said that they wouldn’t allow it, but then, all of a sudden, we hear that the Government’s trying to backfill those civilian positions that we’re discussing today to make sure that NZDF personnel can continue to do those very basic things of their work. That is a real concern on this side of the House, and we’ve heard some strong arguments in terms of why this doesn’t work well. This Government has a long track record of assaulting workers’ rights, right from the get-go of when they took office, and this is yet another notch—
Tim Costley: Tell us about assaulting workers.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —on the list of what’s happened in terms of workers’ rights. Those members opposite might think it’s funny that workers’ rights are eroded; they might talk about this being a two-stage economic recovery, but the reality is that all New Zealanders know it is two-stage—one’s for them, and the rest of it is for us.
These workers who are trying to pay their rates and their insurance and their weekly grocery bills and their rent and trying to put clothes on their kids to go to school all day don’t think it’s funny. They’re not cracking a joke, Tim Costley, because they’re struggling every week to pay for bills, and people in the Defence Force are no different. They’re struggling to be able to pay as well, and by you coming in here and assaulting workers’ rights and having a laugh about it with your mates is just insult to injury to the New Zealanders out there who know that this Government has well overspent its time, and it’s about time that they took a check on what’s happening out there.
It is undermining those taking industrial action to protest the Government cuts, and it’s making it even harder to bargain for fair pay and fair working conditions. It is actually quite disgusting that we have this elitist mentality to laugh at people who are struggling and are struggling for their rights. The Act currently requires the Minister to take the decisions to Parliament for debate and resolution, but this bill gives that power to the Minister directly. She has said herself that New Zealand Defence Force personnel being deployed into civilian roles and providing security to places like managed isolation and quarantine facilities is not what it was designed for, but we stand with civilian staff undertaking industrial action, and that is the point of difference.
We’ve seen coverage in the media in terms of the perceptions of what this bill does; it hasn’t been picked up as much as we potentially would have liked, because it is quite important that we have fair working conditions right across the Public Service. Restricting the right of civilian defence force workers to strike is completely unjustified, and it represents an escalation of this Government’s undermining of fundamental workplace rights. We think this is yet another slight against workers in New Zealand, and it’s completely unacceptable. There’s no doubt about it: this legislation will make it harder for defence personnel and their families to be able to achieve fair pay and to be able to pay their weekly bills and afford things—like many other New Zealanders right now.
Last year, we saw that Public Service Association members in the defence force were offered a zero pay increase and were only able to achieve a better offer by, in fact, taking strike action. Strike action is an incredibly important tool for workers to be able to stand up for those rights, which are currently under assault. It is absolutely no coincidence that introducing this legislation at the same time is restricting public sector workers’ rights to strike for better pay and better conditions—and that’s not fair. That’s not fair for people who don’t have that right to fight back. It’s taking advantage of having power, and it’s making those in a weaker position suffer more, which is emblematic of the actions and the legislation that this Government has put into practice from day one.
We know that many, many of those who are in the military will be quietly uncomfortable about being required to cross picket lines if civilian staff take action, and these kinds of divisive tactics by the Government within the defence force really undermine morale in general. It’s not right. Public sector workers face exactly the same rising costs as everyone else, so instead of restricting their fundamental democratic right to strike, the Government should show them some respect and pay them fairly. Instead of giving tax cuts to landlords and tobacco companies, you should be paying the people who work hard every day for the State. Instead of calling public servants “wasteful” and “a waste of time”, we should acknowledge that they give their lives and their careers to serving our country, and that is an incredibly important role. These people are public servants who deserve that recognition.
I think it’s important to put on the record that we have a Government that has completely disrespected the value of public servants, not just in Wellington but up and down the country—people who choose to take a job that, quite often, pays less than one they could get in the private sector, but they do it because they believe in New Zealand and they want to build a country that we’re proud of, where we work hard and we look after each other. Acts like this—taking away a basic right to strike for fair pay conditions—undermine the fabric of what New Zealand is. It stops people from having that ability. Public sector workers face the same rising costs as others, and that is completely unfair. When we have members opposite speaking for 32 seconds and saying, “Your arguments are gobbledegook, and this is a good bill”, it’s absolute rubbish. This is an absolute direct consequence of those choices to cut Government spending and not to pay people what they’re worth. We know that it provides the ability for that Minister to have additional powers when that’s not required.
We know, from the ministerial statement provided by the Minister, that the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill means the Minister of Defence will be able to authorise the Chief of Defence Force to redeploy uniformed personnel to carry out the roles of New Zealand Defence Force civilian staff. Currently, the Defence Act allows the Minister to authorise the redeployment of uniformed personnel in situations where health and safety is compromised or if work is not carried out by the armed forces. We know that this is not a good move for the New Zealand Defence Force. We know that they’re worth more than that, and it’s unfair of this Government to actually subsidise their cuts into other areas by causing this to happen. We do not support the bill.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): My son is a 19-year-old in the Defence Force. He was one of the youngest to graduate, as an 18-year-old, last year. He would be ashamed of hearing the ramble, the Labour lies from the left-hand side right now. This bill takes away the vulnerability of the status quo. It takes away the—
Hon Ginny Andersen: Can he make a minute? Do one minute. I dare you! Do a minute! Come on!
RYAN HAMILTON: Longer doesn’t mean better, Ginny. You think you would have learnt that in your career by now. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Glen Bennett called first, so Glen Bennett for the Te Pāti Māori call.
GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker.
Tim van de Molen: Point of order.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): You’re not disputing my call, I hope. Don’t dispute the call.
Tim van de Molen: I’m seeking clarity on the clear Standing Order that makes it specifically clear that it’s not about who’s first to their feet. It’s about the proportionality and who get the call in that instance, which is the largest party—the National Party.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The Chair will make the decision. The Chair has made the decision. Do not challenge it.
GLEN BENNETT: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon Simeon Brown: Terrible.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Who said “Terrible.”? Who was that? Was that you, Mr Costley? Who said “Terrible.” then?
Hon Member: The other side of the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): No, no. Someone there said “Terrible.” If the member who said “Terrible” doesn’t—
Hon Simeon Brown: I withdraw and apologise.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Leave the House. Basic rule: do not comment on Speakers’ rulings here. Leave the House, Mr Brown. You should know better; you’re a Minister.
Hon Simeon Brown withdrew from the Chamber.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Right—Glen Bennett.
GLEN BENNETT: Kia ora, Mr Speaker. As with the New Zealand Defence Force, this is around rules and regulations and what a sworn member of the New Zealand Defence Force should be able to do and shouldn’t need to do.
I heard a comment just before from the previous speaker, Mr Hamilton, in regard to his son. I considered this as I was looking through the notes and having a flick through this piece of legislation and spending the evening listening to the debate on all sides of the House. As I reflect on this, I think of my husband, who joined the New Zealand Defence Force many years ago. The reason he joined was not to not to fill gaps when it came to civilians within the New Zealand Defence Force striking. He came in to serve his country, to be a peacekeeper around the world, to do his part whether it be a disaster, whether it be a rescue situation, or whether it be serving internationally, which he got to do and he was proud to serve New Zealand as a peacekeeper on several tours of duty. As I said, the reason he joined was not because he thought he would have to jump in and deal with issues around civilians within the New Zealand Defence Force taking strike action. He joined to serve and to make a significant difference.
As I’ve listened to the debate tonight, as I’ve listened to the short and long contributions, it’s become very clear to me that again we have to look at this legislation not just as one piece as we go through the process of the House. We’ve got to look at it in the context of other legislation that comes through or that has come through and has changed it.
Todd Stephenson: No—on the bill.
GLEN BENNETT: I am on the bill, thank you very much.
Todd Stephenson: The context you guys are giving is totally wrong.
GLEN BENNETT: You haven’t listened to any of my arguments, so if you’d just listen up, Buttercup, that would be really cool.
This is around our workers, and this piece of legislation is around our workers, and that’s why I bring that up. Look at things that have come through around the pay equity challenges, around the introduction of pay deductions for partial strikes. What this Government has done against our workforce is why we stand up against this legislation this evening. It feels like the bigger picture you look at is an attack on workers. We need to make sure we stand strong and make sure that our New Zealand Defence Force are standing up and doing the work that they must do as those who have been trained to serve our nation and to serve our world.
What I find interesting about this piece of legislation—and my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare, who was a Minister of Defence and a very good Minister of Defence—
Hon Judith Collins: Ha, ha!
GLEN BENNETT: We get a laugh from across the floor there, as we always do, and we really appreciate the laugh track in Parliament.
This is around the fact that this bill provides for the Minister to authorise part or parts of the armed forces to perform the work of the New Zealand Defence Force so the civilian staff can take industrial action. Actually, the current legislation requires the Minister to take the decision to Parliament for debate and for a resolution. In this legislation that we are debating tonight, the amendment gives the Minister that power directly without having to come to this House and say, “Hey, I’ve got an argument why we actually need the New Zealand Defence Force to be stepping up and stepping into these spaces.”, because there is a reason and a need for it.
We cannot support this legislation. We stand as a Labour Party with our civilian staff in the New Zealand Defence Force. I just want to finish in reflection on what was said by the Public Service Association: that members of the defence force were offered a zero pay increase and were only able to achieve a better offer after taking strike action. They were offered a zero pay increase, and so they took strike action because it was an embarrassment and we need to support our workers.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill.
In Committee
Clause 1
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House in committee on the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill. We come now to clause 1. Clause 1 is the debate on the “Title” clause. The question is that clause 1 stand part.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Speaking to clause 1, there were a number of matters that were raised by my colleagues, and certainly this side of the House, with relation to, actually, what is the true intent behind this bill, looking towards whether or not this is simply just as it says on the tin, or something far more sinister; something that actually does detract from the rights of workers. Something more sinister than that actually goes towards looking towards using the New Zealand Defence Force in places where they’re probably not best suited to be used, yet leaving the door open, leaving the bill naturally grey enough to make sure that there’s wriggle room for this Government to shoot their needs.
I suggest then, perhaps, that there could be a better title for this particular bill—something along the lines of “Denigrating Workers’ Rights Bill”. Something like that; that is very clear, it’s quite poignant, it makes out exactly what we believe on this side of the House this bill actually does. If we look towards the title, it seems innocuous in so far as it says it’s just a workforce amendment bill, but, actually, what’s happening is more far reaching. It isn’t just the workforce in the Defence Force; it’s actually the workforce across the public sector. That’s where we believe that the name of this bill probably doesn’t match, actually, the intent of the Minister or this Government.
So we would recommend—and I’m sure that there will be suggestions from others of my colleagues about how this might be better labelled so that those out in the public can understand at least some of the comments made from Government benches about what they believe Labour or the Green Party might think about this particular bill.
So I will leave that one as a starter, just to make sure that those out in the public know exactly what it is that this bill does.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I rise to speak on this bill, in particular, looking at Clause 1, the title of the bill. I do take the points made by the Hon Peeni Henare that perhaps we should consider having a more accurate label on the tin. We look at the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill, and of course, as we heard throughout the discussions of the second reading debate, which were wide-ranging and there were wide-ranging concerns and of course differences that were highlighted between civilian personnel and military personnel. So, the question is, how does this particular title encompass the differences between military personnel and civilian personnel?
I do make the point around some of those differences as well, which I think should be more accurately featured in this title, but it doesn’t—that is, with civilian personnel you should have the right to strike. You should have all those abilities to do all the things that you do in civilian life in the same way that other public sector workers are able to do as well. It’s different if you’re working as military personnel: you sign up for a particular role, there’s a hierarchy, you can’t just get up and leave, because that’s deserting. You can’t do particular other issues as well that you could do within the civilian sphere because that is what you sign up for and that’s understood and that’s appreciated.
I know that many people across the House, including myself, have relations that are in the Defence Force who have taken that role, have been recruited, and who understand what it is that they are doing as well. But it is different in this bill because this bill actually focuses on the civilian personnel. So, I think there is an argument that we should be having around whether the label on the tin is as accurate as it as it could be, because we look at it and we think, “Well, actually they must be all talking about the same workers. The workers that are military personnel must be the same as the workers that are civilian personnel.” And that is clearly not the case.
I think it’s important to also highlight a number of questions that actually came up in the select committee around why there were so many civilian personnel. There’s around about 3,000; around about 1,000 of those are unionised. Is it a cost-cutting exercise that we’re actually bringing in civilian people to do what many of us would have assumed that military personnel would have done instead? Having that clarity, I think, right at the top in clause 1, as part of that label on the tin, I think would go some way to giving some clarity about what this bill is actually about.
Those differences, as we learnt and as we explored in the select committee, are actually quite profound there. There are actually some differences there as well. I did mention that in round one of the submissions we heard that if you are in the military personnel, you don’t get to mouth off, you don’t get to do or say certain things, you just follow orders. But if those orders mean it is you taking roles and preventing a civilian colleague from being able to exercise their right and to actually strike in the fullest sense of the word, then I think that needs to be accurately described in the title.
So I did take the point from the Hon Peeni Henare in his suggestion that the title be the “Denigrating Workforce Bill”—a bit harsh, but if he does put it down as an amendment, it’s probably something that we could probably support as well. But I think it could be more accurate to describe it as the “Impacting Civilian Personnel (Workforce) Bill”. That might be, I don’t know, a nicer way to put it instead.
So, this opening debate on clause 1 is an important debate because it sets the tone about what we’re actually talking about and having to make sure that we have those differences laid out. I don’t think those have been laid out very clearly in the title. I’m open to hearing other suggestions, which would help to, you know, at first glance, when you look at this thing, be a lot more clearer about what it is. We did hear a number of speeches from this side of the House around strike-breaking, the concerns from unions, and the concerns from workers as well, while finding a way to be as respectful as possible to the military personnel. We’ve got to find ways to make sure that civilian personnel and military personnel could work together.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, there’s nothing wrong with this title to the bill. It’s accurate and it doesn’t have all that emotional rubbish that I’ve just been listening to. I think it’s very important to understand that the Defence Force is somewhat different from what it was in 1990, when the original Act was first brought through. One of the differences is that there is a higher proportion of civilian staff now than what there was in 1990. What we’ve seen is a drop in the number of uniformed staff and that is because of the decisions over the last 35 years, particularly around civilianising parts of the Defence Force. Those decisions were made for reasons that, no doubt, seemed sensible at the time, but what it has done is that the Chief of Defence Force has fewer people who he can choose to deploy on overseas and other activities.
I take you back to the fact that the New Zealand Defence Force tries very hard to make sure that civilians and uniformed staff are treated in a decent and good manner and that they work together wherever possible. The point is that everyone brings something different to their roles. But it is important that the Chief of Defence Force has more say over where his people are deployed and what they’re doing, and to be able to make sure that he doesn’t have a situation as we had around this time last year when we were looking at the Christmas break in Parliament lifting for the year, with the possibility of the civilian staff, or the union that was representing them, the PSA, deciding that they were going to lift the people who were guarding the armaments supplies. That was something that, I felt, showed a real lack of appreciation by the PSA union: that they would leave armament supplies unguarded at a time when anyone could have gone in there—not only health and safety, but national security issues. We do not live in a benign strategic environment. We do have people who, unfortunately, will steal those sorts of things. It is totally unacceptable. And for the Chief of Defence Force to be powerless to actually put in uniformed staff over that Christmas period when Parliament had risen, and we couldn’t actually come back to get Parliament to vote again, was outrageously unacceptable and we’re not going to have it again. I want to make this really clear: mess around with our national security, you’re messing around with something that this Government takes very seriously, and we will take it seriously.
So the title is exactly as it as should be. It is clear, it’s unambiguous, and it deals with the fact that the Chief of Defence Force has to be able to look to his whole workforce and to use them the best that he can for national security reasons. Think, also, of the other work that defence does around civil disasters that we have here, whether it’s volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, cyclones, and everything else. He’s got to be able to deploy people into those sites, in those areas, and he’s got to be able to have the uniformed staff, who are supported by and the civilian staff, to help make that happen. It just doesn’t all happen overnight. It’s not just one person who does it; it’s a whole team. The workforce needs to be a team, and it’s incredibly important that we take a responsible situation.
The Chief of Defence Force would be the only employer in the country who has to come to Parliament to get permission to make decisions about who he has working somewhere. That is truly a difficult position—about the only person who does. And to have the Opposition that voted against all the attempts we had last year to give the Chief of Defence Force the powers to have his ammunition supply areas guarded, to have camps guarded, to take those measures—how dare they turn up tonight and say this is about workers’ rights. They put the country in a situation by not supporting the Government then; they’re not going to do it again.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just before I take the next call, I just have to say it’s very difficult to insist on the Opposition keeping very narrowly to the point of the clause when the Minister, basically, gives a general debate speech.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. You’re spoiling my fun. I thought that the Minister of Defence gave a very emotional and heartfelt speech, and I was going to give the Minister a nice response to that. But I will stick very closely to the first clause, thank you, Chair.
In terms of what the Minister’s referring to, I think my colleague Teanau Tuiono has a good point in terms of whether the “workforce” is actually the best term to use in this case, because while we do see workforce happening if we see subsequent clauses, all of that is referring to “use of Armed Forces” in specific circumstances. So I want to check with the Minister if she would consider my amendment, which is “Defence (Use of Armed Forces) Amendment Bill” which is more in line with the subheading and the crossheading of clause 4 and 5 of this current legislation.
In terms of another potential amendment—and this is something that my colleague Teanau Tuiono hasn’t spoken on, is one of his amendments on the title, because as the Minister mentioned that the main reason that we’re bringing this bill into the House is around instances where there is a strike action. But I also agree with the Minister that, you know, when you are looking at why people are striking in the first place the Government, as the Minister puts it, also has the ability and the responsibility to settle any sort of negotiating, etc., so that way staff don’t have to resort to strike. I’m sure the Minister is well aware of the fact that people will strike with a lot of processes and in extreme and dire circumstances where there are no other options remaining.
Finally, just to the Minister: considering that this bill is more about preventing or undermining, as some would say in the select committee stage, the ability for people to strike, I wonder if, quite appropriately, the Minister would consider the title by my colleague Teanau Tuiono, which is “Defence (Counterstrike) Amendment Bill”.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): I’m concerned that the bill has a title which we look at and we simply can’t actually tell what the bill does. It's not particularly descriptive of the bill's activities, no matter which way we look at this. I appreciate that the Minister comes from a very different point of view from the Labour Party on this, but even the Minister must accept that the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill tells the public nothing. It doesn't inform them.
We have here a bill that takes a group of workers who sign up to the military to do a job—they are actually our bravest people—and they're coming in on one basis, and their labour is being forced to be redirected in another direction. I've had several volunteers who have been in the military, and I think about their commitment to the values of the Labour Party. I think about their commitment to issues around industrial labour and striking and it looks to me like, here, those very people would be forced to take up a role while another worker is striking. It's not a military role; it's a very different kind of role that they're being forced into. So they're not defending the country as such.
Now, I appreciate there's also the issue of the extension of the powers not to bring this back to Parliament. I presume that's why Parliament was there: it's the check and balance. In a difficult situation—and I appreciate life is messy—it's a check and balance that this Parliament put in place because this is a difficult situation, because we sign up our young men and women to do military service, and we redirect them into something that they didn't anticipate being part of. It does have a political impact, because if you are replacing civilian workers, that is a political act for many people. That is why you have heard such passion tonight, Minister—sorry, for the Minister’s benefit: that is why the Minister is getting such a passionate response from the Labour Party and the Green Party, because it goes against the values of a lot of the people on this side of the House to replace the work of someone who is legitimately using industrial tools, which are narrow anyway. They're not something that they can do outside of the law; they are restricted enough as it is. So it takes away the balance that's already been built in.
I do wonder about this title, and I'd like a real answer on this: does the Minister really think that this title tells us what this bill does? Is there a possibility of coming up with something neutral? Now, I might not come up with something neutral. I might come up with something which actually talks about the forced labour of the military—and forces them into civilian occupations, and I might do that. But actually, even if we pared it back emotionally, I do think there is a need to get the bill aligned with what it does, in terms of its title. I just simply don't think that happens.
I'd like the Minister to assure me that she thinks this title—Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill—tells the public what it needs to know, and what does she have to say about the forced nature of the labour moving across into the civilian areas? What can I tell my young volunteers who are in the military and have signed up for the sake of their country? What do I tell them about their obligation to cross the picket line and do the work of a striking worker, given that they've joined the Labour Party because they believe that these principles are pretty important? Can they tell from this title what this bill is actually going to make them do when they sign up? Thank you.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Chair. Speaking on the “Title” clause, we’ve heard a number of impassioned speeches—one from the Minister of Defence as well—so I’m not planning to use any emotion here, Minister, you’ll be pleased to hear.
But coming to this bill for the first time—it’s not one I’ve looked at before—I looked at it and thought, “Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill; oh yeah, something about workforce.” But having listened to these debates, it does very much seem that this is about uniformed staff or armed forces doing the job of civilians—civil staff—when those civil staff are taking some strike action. I’m happy to be told by the Minister that my listening to the debate is wrong somehow, but I really think that something along those lines would be a much more accurate description of what this bill does.
We will look later, when we come to clause 5—which I’m very interested in—about this relationship to those strikes, with the reference to section 97 of the Employment Relations Act, which is all about striking. So I would like the Minister to answer my question about whether or not she would consider some change, to really be clear about what this bill does. From listening to the Minister, and from those very, very brief speeches we heard in the second reading from Government members, it does seem that they’re very much in support of this bill and think that it’s very simple. We heard in the second reading that people who were disagreeing with the Government—we’re told that they are illiterate. So I want to help with the literacy of everybody in this House, and suggest that the Minister respond to me about why it is called the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill, when it would be be much better called the “Defence (Armed Forces Doing the Jobs of Civil Staff When Those Civil Staff are on Strike) Amendment Bill”.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. And thank you to the Minister of Defence for her earlier response because it did spark a question that I didn’t have in my head before, and she spoke about the framing of the problem or the genesis of the problem being striking over the summer months when Parliament isn't sitting.
I went back to the Defence Act and I'm just looking at section 9(8)(b), which I'll read out. So these are the exception provisions which say, “Any authority given under subsection (2)”—this is the one we're amending—"or subsection (4)”—that's an existing power relating to helping the police—"shall lapse on the expiration of 14 days after the day on which it was given unless— (a) the House of Representatives passes a resolution…” We know that; we've talked about that. Subsection (b) says “or (b) if Parliament was dissolved or had expired before or after the authority was given and has not been summoned to meet before the authority would lapse, the Governor-General, being satisfied that it is necessary to extend the authority, extends it by Proclamation approved in Executive Council for such period as is specified in the Proclamation.”
Just so that we are all clear as we start this discussion as to what the problem statement is, it doesn't feel to me like there's an absence of power. There is a power there for those authorisations to continue over a summer period. The issue is how that happens and perhaps it's duration of time, perhaps it's the burden of getting the Executive Council together at a short notice. Perhaps it's certainty. I'm sure there may be some of those reasons that have factored into the Minister’s thought process in terms of the need for this, but I don't necessarily see the need for the power.
Of course, the power is coupled with other things, including the extension of that period that it would apply to, so the 30 days instead of the 14. But it would seem to me that the power is already there and so I’m very curious about the Minister’s rationale as to why that was not sufficient. I think the value of having a proclamation-type power is that it does hold the right to strike in high regard, and it feels like there would be a high bar threshold to deciding whether it was warranted to continue that or not.
However, that’s still precisely why we have proclamation powers in New Zealand.
Tim van de Molen: Which clause?
VANUSHI WALTERS: Section—it's not in the bill; it's in the original Act. So you just need to go to the Defence Act 1990, section 9(8)(b). So section 9(8)(a) you'll all be familiar with—section 9(8)(b) is the one I’m referring to.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): The existing provisions only cover a situation where the House of Parliament was dissolved or expired. There’s no current provision for when the House is adjourned, and the bill addresses that.
The other question about the workforce amendment bill, and the title, which is what this debate is about. All those other suggestions seem, to me, completely out of line. The bill itself “introduces a new process for the Minister of Defence to authorise the Armed Forces to conduct the work of NZDF Civil Staff taking industrial action when there are reasonable grounds to believe that—an authorisation is needed to avoid prejudicing—national security; or the ability and/or readiness of the Armed Forces to perform specific operational activities that are integral to core defence outputs; or it is necessary for the work to be performed for reasons of [health and safety]:”. So it’s not just people striking; it’s all these other things having to be in place.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to the title replacing “Workforce” with “Use of Armed Forces” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Teanau Tuiono’s tabled amendment to the title replacing “Workforce” with “Counter Strike” is out of order as not being an objective description of the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 9 a.m.
Debate interrupted.
Sitting suspended from 10.03 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)
TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025
(continued on Wednesday, 19 November 2025)
Bills
Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill
In Committee
Clause 2 Commencement
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the committee is resumed on the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill. When we suspended last night, we had concluded the debate on clause 1. We now come to clause 2. This is the debate on the commencement of the bill. The question is that clause 2 stand part.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a couple of questions on this particular clause. Last night in the Minister of Defence’s contribution, she spoke specifically to an instance, at this time last year, where there was the fear that it would carry over into Christmas. From what I could see, and what I understand, is that actually didn’t eventuate, and this is one of those stopgap precautionary measures, if you will, to make sure that, during that time, there’s still an ability for the Chief of Defence Force and even the Minister to play their role to backfill a number of those positions should there be industrial action. My question to the Minister is, put simply: is that correct?
She’s mentioned the specific instance—her words, if I recall correctly; I’ve got them written down here—was about this time last year. I’m just curious: if that was the case this time last year, we’ve now gone through a full year, and here we are, in urgency, going through three stages of this bill—I want it just to be clear from the Minister if it was indeed that instance this time last year that has, one, caused this bill, and, two, meant that it’s the wish or the desire of the Minister to make sure that this passes before Christmas. Thank you very much.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): In terms of the commencement, just following on from the Hon Peeni Henare around the commencement date, there are things—as we heard from the second reading and select committee stage—that are concerns. Particularly, I think we’ll explore this a little bit more and it’s more appropriately under clause 4, but I just want to flag that there are also interactions with other parts of the principal Act, section 9 as well, that I think deserve a little more teasing out in terms of the implementation.
I think it would be good to check with the Minister of Defence if the Minister would even consider delaying it or potentially, as we see in one of the amendments from us, consider that the date, rather than being the day after Royal assent, be a date set by Order in Council—just so that we’re able to tease out some of the fish-hooks in this bill regarding how that’s going to work and the issues that will create, also noting that this bill also has implications for the House of Representatives, as we see in the later clauses as well. I wanted to check with the Minister if it will be prudent to delay the commencement date or consider, like I said, one of our amendments, by Order in Council.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister of Defence for her responses last night. Of course, the commencement date is tied to the fact that we’re hearing this bill under urgency. That brings us back to the identification of the need for the bill and the gap that it’s filling. Last night, the Minister really helpfully responded to my question about section 9(8)(b) of the Defence Act, which allows the Governor-General to step in by proclamation and rectify the situation, but only in cases where the House has already been dissolved or expired. That was a really useful clarification from the Minister last night.
I had another question related to the identification of the problem, which is that current sections 9(2) and 9(4) give the Minister powers to make these authorisations. I can’t spot whether there is a restriction on how many authorisations a Minister is able to make or the duration between authorisations. The reason that’s important is that it would seem to me that, if there isn’t a restriction on the power of the Minister, the Minister could, under section 9 as it currently stands, issue a new authorisation. It would just require that the Minister turn her mind to the circumstances there are on the expiration of the 14 days.
Now, to my mind, that is not a negative thing. It is what we require in terms of many of the delegated powers that are provided to Ministers. I note that there has been a trend over different Governments over the last several years to increase the scope of discretionary powers, and so it is something that the House must be mindful of and ensure that, when we are choosing to do that—so elongating the period of the days—we’re doing that purposefully.
But, if there isn’t an actual gap, in this case because the Minister does have the power, once that order looks like it’s about to expire, to then make another order that also lasts for the 14-day period, and if there has been an assessment of the likelihood of two 14-day periods taking us through a summer break—to allow Parliament then to sit and to then potentially extend the second order, if you like, using everything that’s in the current Defence Act, as opposed to any need for us to make these changes.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you. I could just answer those questions, thank you, Madam Chair. As we’ve said before, this bill has already gone through a select committee process. When I hear all these cries about urgency, we’re talking about a second reading, committee of the whole House stages, and a third reading. It’s already gone through a full process. There were around 30 submissions, and they’ve been carefully listened to.
This is not an issue that’s only arisen last year; it’s actually an issue that’s been top of mind for the Chief of Defence Force: the inability to deploy his own staff, particularly where there are situations around, let’s say, the safety of the country, health and safety—as I said yesterday, even when we had ammunition supply dumps, as we call them, or supply areas that were going to be unguarded for an hour a day, that would be, I think, totally unacceptable, and the Chief of Defence Force needs to have the ability to deal with that situation. It’s not just putting uniformed staff into roles currently undertaken by civilian staff; it’s actually about where there’s health and safety issues, where there’s national security issues, where there’s an urgency, and where there’s a deployment. These are quite limiting times; it’s not like just shifting people around, like most other employers can do with their staff.
The Hon Peeni Henare has asked whether last year’s action prompted the need for the bill. Well, yes, it certainly showed that existing provisions were insufficient and not practical. One of the provisions addresses the risks that an extension is required when the House is adjourned, and that’s one of the issues that we dealt with last night, after a question from Vanushi Walters. The risk didn’t eventuate, but it may well in future. I think we should remember that the Defence Act is a piece of legislation from 1990, when peace had broken out in the world and every sensible nation thought that everyone else was going to be sensible from there on. What we’re seeing now, unfortunately, 35 years later, is that there is quite an aggressive stance in the world, and particularly in our part of that world. We need to be prepared for anything. Also, the effects of weather events, cyclones, all these sorts of things are all deployments that the defence force undertakes, and it cannot be stopped from doing that because there’s something going on.
There is no restriction on the number of authorisations that the Minister can make, or the period before them, but, of course, we have the opportunity in the House for members to ask the Minister of Defence—in this case, me—questions or to have urgent debates and to bring the matter to the attention of the House. If the requirements of the bill are met, which is not just that there’s a strike going on but that there’s an urgency and a need for cover, the Minister can make a new authorisation. It is important to remember that there’s not just a willy-nilly let’s all go round and stick our uniformed staff in doing the civilian jobs; it’s actually all these other factors that have to be in place.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning to the folks in the Chamber today. Just to acknowledge the responses, so far, from the Minister. I found that last bit constructive. There was a question—well, my interpretation of what the Hon Peeni Henare asked—around the date. I do take a point from the Minister that we did have a select committee process and there were a number of submissions we heard, and that’s helped to shape the bill as it is, but we are moving through the last remaining stages through urgency, which, if we weren’t moving through urgency, would give us time to pause and reflect given the gravity of the issues at stake here.
The question that I’m interested in is around that commencement date. There were issues last year, in 2024, which have prompted this legislation, and I’m wondering, in terms of speeding this through and not having that ability to reflect on whether we have the best legislation moving through the process—is the reason why we’re moving it through urgency the proximity to Christmas? Is it around the certainty? I suspect that it is, but it would be good for the clarity of the committee for the Minister to share that with us, just in case I’m under illusions and that’s not actually the case.
I do understand what happened last year—there was industrial action—but in my reading of the situation right now, that urgency doesn’t exist because unless there is pending negotiations or pending industrial action that the Minister might want to share with the Chamber, then I guess the question is: why are we moving at pace with these last remaining stages, given that there are a number of issues that we’re trying to continue to put through, but also acknowledging that we have addressed a number of those issues in the select committee process?
My question is around the commencement date: is there scope to move it out so that we can actually really get through more of the detail of what is actually the best way forward for military personnel and civilian personnel? Given that we do want these groups of workers to be able to work together in the best way possible, noting that in the departmental report, and in the select committee process as well, that was an issue that was raised. The Public Service Association submission did talk about the fact that they had off-the-record conversations that military personnel felt uncomfortable about where this was heading. A bit more time would be good to make sure that we have the best process possible, so that if we get to the situation where industrial action is happening, then it’s done in a way which is to the benefit of the wellbeing of the entire workforce—military plus civilian—in that space.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you. I’m happy to address that issue. The date is the date after the Royal assent, which is the normal date for bills.
As for the proximity of Christmas, of course that’s an issue—to make sure that the House isn’t adjourned and we have a problem—but I just also point out that, whenever Parliament is adjourned during the Christmas break, not only is it difficult to do anything through Parliament, since I can’t imagine that too many of us want to be called back in during that time, but also it’s when a lot of weather events happen, whether it’s in New Zealand or overseas, so we do actually have to be prepared all the time.
The defence force can’t always plan on things happening in weeks or months or even days; sometimes, things have to happen straight away, so it is very important that the Chief of Defence Force has the confidence to go into this break knowing that he’s got the ability to pull in the right people at the right time, and he’s not under the sort of threat that, suddenly, he won’t have anybody to undertake some, say, logistics works which he needs to have done for an urgent deployment.
There’s no industrial action that I’m aware of at the moment, and I hope that we won’t be going down that pathway. I think it’s really important that everyone works together as much as possible, in defence and every other part. I’m not aware of any.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to the Minister of Defence for those last responses, which I also found really helpful.
I am a bit concerned about the use of urgency in the House, and not only for all stages. I think what we’re seeing more and more is, at the final stages of urgency, it’s viewed as not a problem, not an issue really, when one of the key things, to my mind, that happens during urgency is the proposal of amendments by members of Parliament. Hearing from the public is absolutely important, as are the amendments. I do try and ensure that, when I’m submitting amendments, they’re done constructively in terms of things that will improve the clarity of the bill. It’s a process of Parliament that should be used and valued, but I’m very concerned that it’s just not something that’s given much respect—and Government members are laughing at the moment, which I think is demonstrative of that.
I think it’s a shame because the public are not just submitting, they’re also watching these stages of the House. They’re sending us proposals for amendments as well, which we’ll often include and submit, and I think they ought to be considered even at a late stage. I recall during Budget urgency that there was a suggestion I put forward. It was about an interpretation of one of the phrases referring to the chief executive of, I think it was Invest New Zealand. It looked to me like a drafting error, and I do think the committee needs to be mindful of those as well. My big point here is that the House’s procedures are very important. Although the Standing Orders only require a reason to be given when urgency is invoked, I think there’s a duty of care in terms of the rule of law and democracy that the reasons are genuinely about urgent situations.
One more time, I go back to whether there’s a gap in the legislation, and I think the point of real clarity was when the Minister spoke to the fact that there is no limit on her ability to make those announcements, make a new power—a second power if you like—on the expiration of the first. I’m, again, just curious about the benefit of changing legislation to extend when that power is already there to make a second—forget the language around it—authorisation. In my mind, while there might be administrative ease rolled into a decision to do this, it removes some oversight.
There is a balance here in terms of the right to strike and the ability to strike, but also ensuring that we have a defence force who’s capable, ready to go, certainly in emergencies, certainly when we need to act quickly—you’ll have no dispute from me on that. I think the question is one about appropriate ministerial oversight or parliamentary oversight, and the mechanism already exists. This is an issue that’s tied to the commencement; it’s obviously an issue that’s tied to clause 4 as well. Interestingly, there are amendments on the Table that speak to this and the fact that, in many ways, this part of the amendments is simply not necessary to meet the problem of us being able to give that direction over the Christmas break.
I’d welcome a comment from the Minister, and certainly if I’ve misunderstood the advice from the officials through the Minister, but otherwise it’s an issue that I’ll certainly be bringing up in the next clause of the bill.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Teanau Tuiono’s tabled amendment to clause 2 providing for the bill to come into force on a day set by Order in Council be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 providing for the bill to come into force on 1 January 2027 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 2 agreed to.
DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. As we seem to be traversing all parts of the bill as one, I’m seeking leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.
Tim Costley: Narrow it down.
Dana Kirkpatrick: Let’s stick to the clauses, then.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, can I just say, before we start clause 3, that we were relating those questions to clause 2 back to timing. We had no closure motions. People were standing up and asking questions of the Minister. We have now closed on clause 2. It’s easy for some members to have a view on that side about what fits and what doesn’t, but I didn’t hear any speeches or any closure motions from that side during that debate.
Clause 3 Principal Act
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to clause 3. This is the debate on the principal Act. The question is that clause 3 stand part.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Madam Chair. Oh!
Hon Member: Ooh!
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Woah!
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I did not realise that mic was on. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a question for the Minister on the Principal Act, because what we’re seeing here is that the bill only covers adjustments to the Defence Act 1990, which is appropriate. However, as we have heard from the Minister on quite a few instances, there are broader implications—we talk about health and safety, but we also talk in terms of emergency management. I know that, in terms of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, there are clauses specifically pertaining to the defence force and those are from a health and safety perspective. We’ve also got the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. I want to check with the Minister: are there no actual amendments to those two other Acts as well that could be affected by the decision that has been made in this bill? It is a short question, but I think it’s an important question on the relativity of the other Acts.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): No, the clause is very clear: the bill amends the Defence Act 1990, and then there’s a full stop. That’s it.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 Section 9 amended (Use of Armed Forces to provide public service or assist civil power)
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to clause 4. This is the debate on the amendment to section 9, “Section 9 amended (Use of Armed Forces to provide public service or assist civil power)”. The question is that clause 4 stand part.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to asking some questions of the Minister on this clause. Some of them I've signalled because they do also tie to commencement, but it really is about identifying the legislative gap here and why we need this as a solution. I have gone back a few times now and read section 9 of the existing Defence Act. My read of the section is that the legislators at the time foresaw circumstances such as the Minister describes, and this is why there are no restrictions on the powers under section 9(2), which is that “Armed Forces shall be used to provide any public service in connection with an industrial dispute except in accordance with the written authority of the Minister, and that authority shall specify the part or parts of the Armed Forces that may be used and the public service or public services that may be provided.”, and also, importantly, subsection (4): this is where the Prime Minister or, if the Prime Minister is not available, the next most senior Minister available is satisfied; that on information that they’re satisfied with from the Commissioner of Police, they may instruct, essentially, the defence force to work with the New Zealand Police in emergency circumstances.
All of us, of course, would want that power to exist. The defence forces are different from other parts of our workforce, and they absolutely deserve respect. But we acknowledge that there may be circumstances, such as those described in existing section 9(2) and existing section 9(4), where the Minister or the Prime Minister may need to give an authorisation that changes that. But I think that the legislators at the time foresaw that this may need to happen in quick succession or at multiple times. The check on whether that's legitimate is, essentially, that period of 14 days, and that requires a Minister or the Prime Minister to turn their minds to whether it's appropriate or not.
This is a really crucial function of our executive: the way in which they exercise their discretion. Actually, it feeds an entire, quite largish group of lawyers’ work in New Zealand; public lawyers who look at the use of discretionary power and, from time to time, will bring judicial review cases, not on the substance of a decision made but on whether particular Ministers or decision makers turn their minds to the things that they ought to have before making that decision. It's a signal that, again, the right to strike is important. My view is that this was foreseen in the current legislation and it is already provided for.
Again, I'm just trying to understand whether there are administrative issues that I can't see, which, if there are, the next question after that is: do they outweigh the right to protest and the right to fair consideration, that those employed in these civilian roles hold within our defence system? So simply, that there is administrative delay would, to my mind, not be sufficient to say that we should then extend the period to 30 days. I imagine that the Minister, if a circumstance like this arose, would have a fair warning that there might be an expiry in the period, as we do now, in fact, heading into the Christmas period. So an assessment could be made before the actual expiration of the first authorisation in time for the Minister to, with due diligence, consider the circumstances and whether the second authorisation was needed over a period, and also take some advice about how far that second authorisation would get us and whether the House was likely to be sitting again or to resume at that period in time.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following on from Vanushi Walters, I want to ask a question of the Minister regarding clause 4(1). In the current drafting of section 9(8) of the Defence Act 1990, both subsections (2) and (4)—one of them pertaining to the Prime Minister or a senior Minister and one of them to the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Defence. What I don’t understand is why only the subsection (2) authority has been extended from 14 days to 30 days but not subsection (4). Presumably, for the Prime Minister, even greater power should be warranted compared to the Minister for Defence. My first question is why only one of them was increased.
But also, I think my second question is that the purpose of the bill and the intention of the bill, as the Minister stated in some of the earlier debates, is to address the instances where the House is not sitting during the holiday period, and, therefore, if the Minister isn’t able to do what is needed in the event of a strike, for example, then the House needs to be recalled to be able to make that decision, but I don’t see how that relates to the 30 days, because the scenario that the Minister has referred to is covered under subsection (2). The only other thing I can think of is that it’s an unchecked—and I don’t know if it is, so the Minister can correct me—extension of the Minister’s power under subsection (2) from 14 days to 30 days, with no real logical purpose for this extension, as addressed by the issue statement of this bill in the first place.
Those are my two questions for the Minister. I guess the first one is: why is it that only subsection (2) has been extended to 30 days? The other one is: considering it’s addressed in subclause (2) of clause 4 already, is there any need for us to extend it to 30 days in the first place? We do have an amendment under my name to revert the date from 30 days back to 14, and I would like to ask the Minister to consider that amendment, unless the Minister is able to provide a response to my questions.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Speaking to this particular clause, one of the things that I’m always aware of with the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is sort of plan B strategies, something to make sure that there are fallback positions to allow the continuation of much of the work that they do. One of those is, of course, that the commander in chief, or in this case the Governor-General has the opportunity to extend a number of matters, not just for the NZDF, but, ultimately, has the power in many circumstances to be able to just go on and extend matters to allow to consider it a plan B for some of the occasions when the House might not be sitting.
In fact, it was only last week at the Armistice Day, the Remembrance Day commemoration at Pukeahu that the Governor-General was introduced as the commander in chief, which, of course, whether it’s in title alone—but it means that it comes with the responsibility of our New Zealand Defence Force and the ability to extend these matters until, at least, the House does sit.
There are a number of amendments that have been put forward in the name of my colleague Vanushi Walters. I have a couple there too with respect to clause 4. One of those is that there is no need for the changes that are being proposed by the Minister because of that contingency plan, whereby the commander in chief, in this case the Gover-General, can in her power extend these powers anyway until at least the House comes back.
Now, the only period where there are 30 days where the House isn’t sitting is through the Christmas period. I’ve looked through all the sitting calendars over the past few years and the only other time where it gets quite long is usually around July where there’s a three-week break, maybe even a four-week break, but that’s not 30 days.
Tim van de Molen: What about an election?
Hon PEENI HENARE: That’s not 30 days. I hear from the other side there “What about an election?” Well, there are still caretaker powers for a Government up until the time that a Government is actually put into place. I know that—I know that.
Tim van de Molen: But the House doesn’t sit.
Hon PEENI HENARE: I know that, but there are still provisions in the Defence Act that, actually as Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan has already pointed out, the Prime Minister can still do that; the Governor-General can still do that. The Governor-General doesn’t change at the same time as the elections; it doesn’t change the same time as the Government. There’s a reason why continuity happens that way.
So there are a number of amendments there that we put forward to the Minister for her consideration. One of those are in my name where we look towards a middle ground, if you will, from Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan whose amendment proposes going to 14 days. Of course, the Minister wants to do 30 days. I say, why don’t we meet in the middle? Why don’t we just call it three weeks and call it 21 days? That’s a good, I think, safe place and a safe option, while remembering that we still have these contingency plans or plan Bs or reserve action plan that has the continuity or has the ability to make sure that there is continuity in these particular matters.
The other part too is to my point in my amendment, and to support the words of my colleague Vanushi Walters, actually what’s being proposed here by the Minister in this particular bill in clause 4 are just simply not needed. They’re just simply not needed. There are enough contingency plans to make sure that there is continuity in these matters. There’s an amendment there in my name that says, actually, we should just forget what’s being proposed here by the Minister and this Government in clause 4 and simply just delete what they’re proposing, because it’s just not needed.
The questions there are pretty straightforward to the Minister. That is about commander in chief and their ability to make sure that there is continuity, regardless of whether or not the House is sitting. The other matter is, of course—because it was raised by National backbench MPs—what about if there’s an election? I wonder if the Minister has a view on whether or not the Government, or a Government, an executive still has the provisional powers up until a new Government is elected—of course, on a no surprises basis. Then the other part is the question about whether or not the Minister would consider bringing that into a sort of middle ground of 21 days for her consideration?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think there are some good questions in there, which I’m happy to answer. To the question on why only section 9(2) is extended—by new section 9(9), inserted by clause 4(2)—rather than section 9(4), well, section 9(4) stays the same for the use of supporting the police during a serious emergency—for example, a terrorism emergency—because we just don’t get notice of that stuff, normally, and so we have to deal with it straight away. These provisions are for a different purpose and are not amended by this bill, because this bill deals with other situations.
Why are we changing the expiry of an authorisation in relation Public Service employees outside the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) from 14 days to 30 days—that was the question that was pretty much asked. Well, it’s a practical and pragmatic change. The 14-day expiry is no longer fit for purpose in the context of present-day industrial action. Since the introduction of the Employment Relations Act 2000, industrial action has become a last-resort measure that occurs only when there has been a significant breakdown in negotiations, which can mean a longer strike. Modern industrial action—including practices of work to rule, or partial strike—mean that industrial action is now more likely to last longer than 14 days, and so any associated authorisation for military personnel to conduct the work of striking staff is more likely to require an extension.
Certainly, I can remember when the military had to be called in to run the prisons after strikes, and I don’t think that too many people would think that letting our most violent offenders free in the prisons, or to leave them without getting food or exercise or anything else, would be a good idea. We do need to be aware of that. I consider that 30 days is a reasonable period for which the Minister of Defence may authorise military personnel to conduct the work of Public Service employees outside of the NZDF.
Another question was: could an assessment be made before the need for an authorisation arose, to anticipate a recess of Parliament? Well, if the requirements of the bill were not met, an authorisation could not be made. It’s not just “We’re coming up to a recess. Let’s all have this provision in place.”, because all these other things have to happen, and it would not be appropriate to grant an authorisation in anticipation as the requirements would not yet have been met, and these decisions are not made by the Minister of Defence—either myself, or those who have gone before and those who will in the future come after me—based on a gut feel or a reckon. They’re taken on very strict legal advice, and they’re actually done at the request of the Chief of Defence Force.
There has been some suggestion that the Government is pushing this through. This bill is not something that we—it’s not on our mandate and it’s not something that we campaigned on. The reason is that the issue has arisen at the request of the Chief of Defence Force. It’s the Chief of Defence Force—the actual operational person in charge of everything Defence Force—who needs to have this done. It’s not some will of mine to go round making up some authorisations or anything, and no Minister of Defence wants to have to do that. It’s a fact that it’s an actual need that’s been found to be there, and it’s being addressed.
As for bringing in the Governor-General to make rulings on all this, I think it’s always best to actually try not to politicise the Governor-General or her role. I think that it’s incredibly important that Governors-General are able to undertake their constitutional role without us trying to put them in a difficult position and politicise them.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister for those responses, which I found very illuminating, particularly the point around partial strikes. I think the Minister put it exactly the way a number of members in this Chamber have put it around the reasons why you need to retain partial strikes: because it gives an avenue for people to be able to express themselves.
For those who don’t know what a partial strike is—which you can no longer do without getting pinged—it’s like, for example, if you’ve got a T-shirt with a slogan on it or you do something just to make your point, to allow you to have some sort of political expression. I wonder if the Minister would be interested in looking at an amendment that would allow partial strikes in this case as well.
I ask that because we have a particular, unique situation with the workforce in the defence sector, where you have military personnel and you have civilian personnel. If you’re military personnel, you sign up for that. You take your orders, and you go through and there’s a hierarchy, but there are certain things you can’t do if you’re a military person. You can’t go on strike. You can’t do partial strikes. You can’t do those sorts of things because that’s what you sign up for. But working alongside them are 3,000 civilian workers. Amongst those, the last time I heard, were a thousand of them that are unionised. So it’s about 3,000. Maybe it’s decreasing because they’re jumping on a plane and going over to Australia—and it seems to be a lot of people.
But I think there’s a good argument here, and I find myself agreeing with the Minister in terms of the ability to have a partial strike to allow people to express themselves and have that point as well, because, as the Minister was saying earlier, the reason why we’re turning towards the 30 days or 14 days and so forth is because of the likelihood of stronger industrial action, because that is the only pathway forward. That is one of the only things that people can do.
So all of this bill is around trying to respond to the situation that happened last year, in 2024, which was the impact on those workers who, as is their right, were organising themselves to take industrial action, to strike. And so we are here debating this bill.
My question is: will the Minister consider, given the unique situation of the workers within the defence sector, an amendment that would allow partial strikes as part of this bill. If not, could the Minister provide a rationale as to why, given that this is a very particular situation. It’s a new situation as well, and there needs to be a way for these workers to be able to find a way to express themselves—remembering that when they took the original action, the offer was zero pay rise. So workers are frustrated that the only way they can find a way to express themselves was to strike. But I think a partial strike would allow them to, I don’t know, take the steam off a bit. So will the Minister entertain an amendment that would allow partial strikes as a part of this bill?
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I had lots of coffee this morning, and thank you to the Minister for her responses thus far. I have a proposal for the Minister of Defence to consider on the basis of her answers. A colleague has asked the question about why clause 4, section 9 amended remains at 14 days versus this one shifting, and the response is there's a need. Yes, I see that response. However, I think the fact that subsection (4) remains at 14 days shows us that there's a recognition that there should be ministerial oversight when these decisions are made in terms of the Defence Force contributing to the police’s actions.
I'm trying to work out whether there's a way through the middle to allow that oversight to happen rather than just extend it to the 30 days. I mean, my first question would be: what is the background in terms of understanding how that number was arrived at and what's the logic of getting from 14 to 30? If possible, what are the specific situations that have given rise to that number? Appreciating that where we have senior people in those roles on the ground who understand what's happening, we absolutely should be paying attention to the circumstances that they say present.
The proposal; I've already spoken about a second authorisation being possible. We acknowledge that is possible. I'm not yet sure that there's sufficient administrative burden to prevent that being the best route for us to continue to have in place. However, is there a way in which we could write into the Defence Act the ability of the Minister to approve the continuation of a first authorisation on the Minister’s affirmation that the circumstances continue to exist where such authorisation is appropriate? I’m just saying that to have eyes across an ongoing situation is important. We've acknowledged that in subsection (4), and there's a middle ground which potentially could minimise some of the administrative burden of requiring a second authorisation to be prepared and legal advice to be provided on that and, you know, truly robust scrutiny to be given. But some level of oversight from the Minister could be written into the statute; that seems like something that's worth considering.
I mean, briefly going back to the first thing of the second authorisation, if we were to make this change and we got to day 29 and for some reason Parliament couldn’t sit within that period, I imagine that the Minister at that stage would send through a second authorisation if needed, and so would use that power that I'm saying could just be used during the summer break period, regardless.
My second question was just taking further a point that the Hon Peeni Henare raised about caretaker powers. So my read of current section 9(8)(b) of the Principal Act is that precludes the ability of the Minister of Defence and a caretaker Government, post-election, to be able to use the powers of authorisation. I just thought for clarity’s sake, it would be useful to get the Minister's view of whether that is her understanding of the read of that section, or whether post an election, a Minister of Defence could use the powers—and actually a Prime Minister as well—under section 9(2) or 9(4) in a case of an emergency. Or whether it would only be, at that stage, a proclamation from the Governor-General that could put in place a measure like that.
The reason I'm interested is I think that our Parliament is a very different place in an MMP world. Right now in the Justice Committee we’re wrangling the difficult question of a rising number of specials and keeping within the period of the writ; we don't talk as much about the period taken to form coalitions, but we've certainly seen periods in our past where it has taken far longer to form a coalition Government. The rules around caretaker Governments, in my view, are quite loose. There's a sense that the term caretaker Government means one thing when in terms of democracy, it should truly be parcelled up into very separate forms of legitimacy that various Governments get, whether they're before the election period versus when they’re after. So just some clarification sought from the Minister.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Vanushi Walters’ two tabled amendments to delete clause 4 are out of order as being a direct negation of the question.
The question is that the Hon Peeni Henare’s tabled amendment to clause 4 replacing “30 days” with “21 days” in subclause (1) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4 replacing “30 days” with “14 days” in subclause (1) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 4 replacing subclause (1) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Peeni Henare’s tabled amendment to delete subclause (2) of clause 4 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(2) amending new section 9(9) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 4 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 New section 9A inserted (Use of Armed Forces to perform work of Civil Staff)
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We now come to clause 5, the debate on new section 9A, use of armed forces to perform work of civil staff. The question is that clause 5 stand part.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the enthusiasm of my colleagues, because this is an important matter. We'll see just by the nature of the way the bill is that this is quite a chunky part of much of the reason why we can't support this bill. The proposals here and much of the context and the speeches that have been given to date have talked about the threat to national security, the need to uphold national security, and matters around health and safety, and those are all things that I think everybody in this House will agree to. That's the reason for the amendment tabled in my name that looks towards proposing tightening up this area. This is where I believe the greatest grey area section is.
In my amendment, what we're asking is that the Minister of Defence makes it very clear that we be far more explicit in the description of what it is those roles are. We know what they are. In fact, a number of speeches in this House have already spoken to it, whether it's the protection of ammunition depots or dumps, whether it's the ability to make sure a ship or a vessel can go out to sea, etc. So what I take and what I glean from that is that the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) knows exactly what those roles are, so let's make sure it's clear and that there are no grey areas.
What I'm proposing in my amendment tabled in my name is new subsection 9A(3)(a), inserted by clause 5: “Any authorisation granted under section 9A must comply with the following limitations.”—a very key word there, limitations. “Armed forces personnel may only perform functions that are (a) essential to maintain the security of defence installations and restricted areas”—that make sense to me; it's already been mentioned several times throughout the course of this bill—“(b) necessary for the maintenance and safety of weapons, munitions, and explosive stores”—another one that has been well traversed during speeches in this House—“(c) required for aircraft and naval vessel safety checks essential for operational readiness; and”—it answers the question about making sure whether or not we're still able to deploy—“(d) urgently required to prevent imminent harm to health or safety.”
Health and safety is, of course, one of those important issues that I know this side of the House takes very seriously, so let’s put those into scope here. Let's allow the defence force, under very clear legislation, to understand exactly what it is and the parameters with which they can use these powers.
Of course, the flip side to that is—and this is where I think this is another one of those grey areas that my good colleague Teanau Tuiono has raised on a number of occasions—then where else could the armed forces personnel be used? What I'm proposing in my amendment is that armed forces personnel must not perform—and I'll be very clear, must not perform—(a) routine administrative, clerical, or non-critical maintenance duties or (b) work unrelated to national security or immediate health and safety.
Those are pretty straightforward. That clears up the grey areas that many of us have with respect to this particular clause to make sure that the scope of this bill actually allows the NZDF personnel to do exactly what it is that is required of them without some kind of loose terminology that says it is in the national interest. Well, this one sets it out a little bit more and makes it clearer, at least from the reckons on this side of the House. I wonder if the Minister—and that's the first question I put to the Minister, if she would consider any parts of that amendment that allow us to remove those grey areas.
Also the other important side of it is to make sure that NZDF personnel aren't simply being used for the sake of being used to backfill positions which aren't in national security interests or health and safety matters. That will help a big issue that the unions raised when they brought matters not only to the Labour Party and the Green Party, but also in parts of their submission. This kind of carte blanche opportunity to use NZDF personnel anywhere and everywhere it sees fit can be removed by this simple amendment that I'm offering to this Government in a way to make sure that this bill is sharper and actually gets to the heart of what it is we're trying to achieve here.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Mr Chair, thank you. It is a pretty simple amendment from the member the Hon Peeni Henare The point is, though, that it’s a very prescriptive approach which leaves very clear gaps. For example, there would be no basis to backfill roles to secure the security of sensitive information or equipment, nor to ensure essential military training with partners can continue. Exclusion of administrative roles would leave a gap. I don’t like that term “just administrative roles”, they’re actually very important roles. There could be a circumstance where those roles are actually critical to a core defence output. That’s why the bill’s requirements are around the impact of the industrial action, not the specific roles that are in or out. It would be unworkable to apply the member’s amendments in practice.
I would also say to the member, think back to COVID times with the work of the Defence Force then, our uniformed personnel then—all within accordance with what he’s saying—and the answer would have to be no. I’ve heard speeches from the Opposition saying the Defence Force do not sign up to these jobs. They didn’t sign up for security guard duty, either. They didn’t sign up to having to front, every day, the COVID discussions or, let’s say, sermons from the pulpit. They didn’t sign up to that either, particularly when they didn’t actually have the power to do the things they should have been able to do, instead giving that to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment staff. So I think it’s really important that we understand we don’t always know what’s going to happen, and that’s why it’s very specific about the effects of the industrial action, not who’s taking industrial action.
The other thing is, too, it does need to be in accordance with the rules under this amendment, and they are very strict rules. There’s no other employer in the country—that I can think of—that has to come to Parliament to say why they have to shift staff from one job to another, it’s really only the Chief of Defence Force. This is not for the benefit of the Government; this is actually for the benefit of the Defence Force and the Chief of Defence Force, who has the authority over thousands of people. But also, it’s not just that, it’s the requirement to do what is needed for the country. It’s not for the Government; it’s for the country.
And I’m sure that people, when they think about this a bit more—administrative roles are not just administrative, they are important, otherwise they would not be there. We don’t have surplus funding to fund roles as “just” something; they are important. That’s why the Chief of Defence Force needs to be able to backfill those if needed in certain circumstances—not every day; not anything else; has to come, cap in hand, basically, to the Minister of Defence, who in this case is me, and say, “This is why I need it”, with legal advice, with the reasons for it, because it is a big step to take these steps. It’s a big thing to do, and we don’t do it just because we feel like it.
Also, just dealing with the fact that this preserves the right to strike. It is very clear there is the right to strike; there is a right to partial strikes. But the Chief of Defence Force has to also, in certain circumstances, have the power to backfill where that’s necessary. Otherwise, we end up with people—health and safety issues, obviously paramount; safety, security of the nation: paramount. The Chief of Defence Force needs to be able to do his or, in the future, her job. It is really important that they not be out tied by the fact that this Parliament now wants to debate partial strikes. It’s nothing to do with partial strikes; it’s actually about giving the Chief of Defence Force the power to do his job.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve just got a question in relation to new section 9A and particularly subsection (2). I would be interested in the Minister elucidating for us—what reassurance can she give us in terms of the ratio of military personnel who have the relevant qualifications, skills, and experience to fill those civilian roles, and what work has she done to be able to reassure the House that such is the case?
I think this is important because—even though I see the language in the clause in relation to the work needing to be done to not prejudice national security or “the ability or readiness (or both) of the Armed Forces to perform specific operational activities”, or when it is necessary for reasons of health and safety—there doesn’t seem to be a provision around also having those relevant skills, qualifications, and experience for those roles. I think, to me, that poses the question as to whether the backfilling of those roles will be performed at the very same level of competency as the civilian roles that may not be performed at the time due to industrial action, for example.
I think this is particularly important because, previously, one of the safeguards that we had was the sort of parliamentary debate that would be triggered earlier, and, in such case, the Minister could have given a much earlier reassurance and explanation as to whether there are the adequate skills, qualifications, and experience to fill those roles. With the diminishing of those safeguards, now it becomes even less clear to parliamentarians if we’re going to be able to get those answers now that a debate wouldn’t be happening.
Going back to my question: I’m keen to seek the Minister’s elucidation as to whether she sought advice as to the range of those skills, qualifications, and experience, and, if so, maybe to what extent did she get details in relation to that? If she got information that shows, perhaps, that there is a gap between those in the military personnel and the civilian personnel, if there is any, what work would be undertaken to make sure that military personnel are equipped with the necessary skills and competencies to ensure that, when the Minister or future Ministers choose to backfill those roles, those roles can be performed to a degree that actually a civilian would have been able to do so?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you. Happy to answer that question. I realise that the member who asked those questions is probably not very familiar with the excellent people in our New Zealand Defence Force and the remarkable skills, trades, and professions that they undertake. They’re not only infantry people, they’re also engineers, they’re lawyers, they’re doctors, there are nurses, they’re electricians, they’re airplane technicians; there’s all sorts of trades and professions within our uniformed staff as well as within our civilian staff. Some of those actually cross over. Sometimes, for instance if you’re on a Navy ship, you’ll find that the galley is actually crewed by uniformed staff. They’re the chefs and the waiters and everything else; they’re the stewards. But if you go into an army camp, you might find that they’re civilian staff. It depends where they are and what they’re doing, and if they’re deployed, because it’s the uniformed staff who are deployed, which means actually leaving their families and being able to go and live on a ship or go and live in some tent somewhere or whatever. They are extremely highly trained.
I’d say there is a reason that Defence Force staff normally have no difficulties when they’re sick of being deployed—or their families, more likely, are sick of them being deployed—and they want to go into civilian roles because they are highly employable. They are trained to think on their feet, to be able to not only understand and take orders, but also to think about them and to question, if necessary. So you’re dealing with people who are highly trained.
They would only conduct the work of civil staff if they had the suitable skills for the roles, and the fact is, you’ll see in many parts of the Defence Force; there are both civilian and uniformed staff there. Even in the public relations part of it, there’s both. There’s all sorts of things. There’s roles that are both, but it’s all about what is necessary at that time. Safety will always be a paramount consideration. There would be nothing that I can think of in the Defence Force around health and safety, generally, that doesn’t have uniformed staff already working in there.
I’m pleased to be able to give the member a little rendition about some of the excellent training, and, might I just say, it’s another way of saying to our young people out there: come and join the New Zealand Defence Force. If I can use this as a recruiting measure, I’m going to do so because they come out very happy, very well trained, very fit, and very ready for action.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I have a question for the Minister in relation to new section 9A, the “Use of Armed Forces to perform work of Civil Staff”. In particular, I'm quite interested to understand how this addresses some of the workforce issues that we have in defence. I'll admit my familiarity in in this space does stem from experience in the police, where there's previously been a freeze on non-sworn staff in those roles, even a sinking lid in the past. What that has resulted in is uniformed staff coming in to fill those civilian roles, and that has a range of complexities.
What I'm interested to understand from the Minister is how this change under new section 9A addresses some of those systemic workforce issues and, in particular, the ability to not only attract but to retain those specialist roles that we want to make sure that we have in place, and to fix some of those basics, such as making sure that those specialist roles are paid fairly, that they're not overworked, and they're given the resources to do jobs safely and professionally, because it's some of those pressures within the workforce that effectively make it really difficult for those people who continue to work in those roles. What I'm interested to know is, if we have uniformed staff taking up those roles that have been in the past civilian roles, what impact does that have on the workforce? Does it increase the stress on those staff? Are they taking up roles that they are potentially—are they trained for them? Are they prepared to do that work? Are they having to do more than their fair share as a result of freezing uptake of civilian roles in that space?
My other concern that I'm interested to hear from the Minister is that we've heard some commentary in the public that when you have a situation where you've got uniformed staff being brought in to fill when civilians are taking some kind of industrial action—how does that work for the general, I guess, cohesiveness of a workforce? Does that undermine, potentially, a collaborative approach to working together when you’ve got one half coming in to fill the spaces and could be perceived, potentially, as undermining the industrial action being taken by civilian staff in order to get a fair pay increase? How does that work for the workforce in general?
So just to recap, my question to the Minister really is: how does this bill, specifically new section 9A, address some of those more fundamental workforce issues such as attracting and retaining key roles and making sure there is a cohesive team in place that can be called upon in times when New Zealand needs them?
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you to the Minister for her ongoing engagement. I want to speak to some of my tabled amendments to this part of the bill. I actually have to start with an apology because, reading back through them, I note that I’ve submitted two identical proposals, which was not intentional at all. I’m going to put that down to the House being in urgency and attempting to get my head across a number of different bills, so I’m just flagging that.
I would start at the amendment that is that was submitted at 7:10:05 p.m. This is amending clause 5 and amends new section 9A and inserts new clause 9A(2)(c), which would say, “and consideration has been given to the impact of granting an authority on the right to strike.” It’s an explicit inclusion of the right to strike within the language of the legislation. I was delighted to hear the Minister reference the right and say that it is not extinguished, that it exists, and that it’s not extinguished, which I think is absolutely wonderful to hear from the Minister. Of course, we’ve got a strong history in New Zealand of strike action, so we know that strike action is one of the methods that does lead us to fairer outcomes really in New Zealand. We’ve had a history of striking in New Zealand from 1821 where Māori timber workers were striking about the way in which they get remunerated. They were remunerated at the time in, I believe, food and consumable products, and the ask from them was to be able to be remunerated in something that could be tradable, essentially. These significant moments in our history are important, and we’ve had the Waihi gold miners’ strike actions in 1912 and then several instances steadily into our future.
The right does need to be protected in New Zealand law. It obviously exists in international law—in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). That, I think, is an interesting place to start because it recognises the right, but it says it has to be exercised in a way that is within the bounds of domestic law. What domestic law says or doesn’t say about the right to strike is very important.
Earlier, I spoke about judicial reviews and the use of discretionary power and the challenge on what a Minister must turn their mind to when exercising their discretion. This is why my view is that if you had this phrase within subsection (2)(c) of the legislation, it’s a clear directive to the Minister that that must be specifically taken into account before an authorisation could be made. I’m hopeful that the Minister, having acknowledged the importance of the right and that it isn’t extinguished, agrees with me that that direction is a useful one.
I then go to the tabled amendment submitted at 7:10:06 p.m. This is the one that’s replicated, so the next one is one minute later. This one proposes to amend clause 5 to amend new section 9A(2)(a) and insert the words “before the expiry of the authority made under section 9A” between the words “the work needs to be performed” and “in order to avoid prejudicing”. The intent behind this proposed amendment is to indicate that there’s a certain amount of urgency to the work that needs to be done, which is, again, a request for the Minister to turn their mind toward the urgency of the work that needs to be done so that there can’t be a pause until striking work has come back into those roles. My view, again, is that we were expanding any discretionary power, if there is a useful option to provide some legislative guidance, as there is in this case, then I think that that is useful for the Minister to bear in mind and decide whether it’s appropriate for us to include it.
I do have other amendments that I’m interested in speaking to if the Chair is so willing, so I will be seeking another call. The next one is the amendment filed at 7:10:08 p.m., and that amends clause 5 to amend new section 9A(2)(b) to add after “health” the following phrase: “where regard has first been given to whether other measures can be put into place in the short term to avoid the need for the granting of the authority.” I’m just going to go to new section 9A(2)(b). This is where “The Minister may grant an authority … if the Minister believes on reasonable grounds that— … (b) it is necessary for the work to be performed for reasons of safety or health.”
I agree with this. I think it is important that if there are health and safety concerns, the Minister ought to be able to make such an authorisation. However, I’ve managed health and safety processes before when I was the manager of YouthLaw Aotearoa. Whenever I’d create those risk registers, one of the things I examined was the various options that I could put in place to manage said circumstance. It was almost never one thing. There were always multiple potential things that could have been done. Again, the question here is whether, for example, if there was an area that was being managed by a staff member who was on strike, you could minimise access to that area because the health and safety issue had arisen in that area. I’m sure discretion could be used. The question is: is legislative guidance useful, again, to anchor ourselves in the importance of the right to strike?
I am now going to the amendment filed at 7:10:09. This one is an amendment to clause 5 to add a new clause 9A(3)(c). That would be to read “the capacity and capability risks identified in other parts of the Defence Force as a result of an authority being made and how the risk is being managed.” This is in relation to where the authority has to be specified in writing and the things that it must specify. Currently, it only reads that the things to be specified are “(a) the part or parts of the Armed Forces that may be used and the work that may be performed; and (b) the period for which the authority applies.” I do think that it’s worthwhile, if the Minister is thinking through the risks that are identified to other parts of the Defence Force as well, that those are also specified in writing. Again, it’s very clear that the Minister has considered those risks and that, despite them existing, the Minister, regardless, believes that the authorisation should be granted.
I’ll then move to the tabled amendment filed at 7:10:10 p.m. This is to amend clause 5 to add new clause 9A(3)(c) to read “the alternative arrangements that were considered in determining a need to grant an authority under section 9A.” This is, again, the flip side of what I was asking before—that the Minister consider various things. This is that the Minister, in writing, provides her rationale, if you like, for making those considerations that she’s turned her mind to—other arrangements that could have been made. My example was closing off a particular area if there are physical hazards or health hazards in a particular area that is now not staffed and just reassuring the public and, indeed, the workers who are on strike that those considerations have been considered.
The next amendment I have to speak about is the one filed at 7:10:11. This is the one to amend clause 5 to add a new clause 9A(3)(c) to read “any indication that the authority will be subject to an automatic extension.” Given the other changes that have been made in this bill, I feel that the Minister may have a view, even at the stage of granting the authorisation, as to whether an extension is likely to occur. This would be useful, also, to flag at the outset in terms of that written authorisation.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you for the contributions from members to date as well. I guess I want to begin by responding to some of the answers that the Minister has given, in particular a response to my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March. I guess, if the Minister could clarify exactly what that process would be, in terms of determining how staff will be moved through. I do take the point, and I agree, that uniformed staff are highly qualified and come with a lot of expertise, but, sometimes, those with expertise and, sometimes, those specialists aren't in large numbers. There could be only a small number of people. So what is the process in order to identify when there are gaps because of an industrial dispute to move people from one particular spot to another? How is that identified? Also, what happens if you don't have qualified staff at that particular skill level available at that time? I think we want to get to a situation where we're not number eight wiring ourselves through particular processes. I do take the points that people made about COVID as well. So if I could get some clarity from the Minister on that, that would be appreciated.
Also, the point that the Minister made around encouraging people to join the defence force as well. I hope that that also comes with good pay conditions, that that comes with suitable housing stock, because I have heard from uniformed personnel who have talked about some of the issues around some of the housing stocks. That would be my plea to the Minister, and hopefully, that's being sorted out—
Tim Costley: The irony—just because last year, the money went to the uniforms, and you opposed it. You wanted the civilians.
TEANAU TUIONO: Tim Costley might want to take a call at some particular stage instead of yelling out across the Chamber. So if that could be clarified, that would be good.
On that, if I could draw the Minister's attention to my Amendment Paper No. 442. This deals with new section 9A, inserted by clause 5, “Use of Armed Forces to perform work of Civil Staff”. In my proposed amendment, I propose that “In clause 5, new section 9A(1), after ‘Minister’ (page 2, line 14), insert ‘and following consultation with any union involved in the industrial dispute’.” I know that side is allergic to the unions, but we've got ourselves in a particular situation here, where last year, the union took some action, and now we're here debating this bill as well. I think my amendment would go some way to providing an avenue for those discussions to happen as well, noting the very the different nature of the defence sector as well.
We've got uniformed staff, civilian staff, civilian personnel, and military personnel working together. Having a way for the union—the representatives for those workers—to be able to have a say and to have a talk and communicate with the Minister, I think, would be a good way to alleviate the situation in the workplace, noting that in the submissions, they did talk about how this could create awkwardness, uncomfortableness within the workplace. We want to avoid that. This House should try to strive to do everything to avoid that as well.
I did make the earlier point about partial strikes—having the ability to do partial strikes, the ability for civilian staff to be able to use that as an avenue to highlight the industrial disputes, I think, would also go some way to sorting out those issues as well.
While I'm up here, if I could draw the Minister's attention to Amendment Paper No. 441, which relates to new section 9A(2)(a)(ii), “the ability or readiness (or both) of the Armed Forces to perform … operational activities … that are integral to core defence outputs;”. I agree: all jobs are great. Administrative jobs are really, really important, but I think it's important for us to get some specificity about what those defence force outputs are, because it seems very vague; it's very broad. National security: we can have discussions about that—that's fine. There're some parameters around how you can have the discussions. Emergency matters: of course, really important as well. But what is the “core defence output”? It could be anything, so that kind of discretion needs to be teased out. It is something that needs to be debated more thoroughly so that we're not actually just giving a whole lot of power over to the Minister without any recourse.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): I move, That debate on this question now close.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Now, members, there’s been quite a bit of contextualisation going on in a lot of the questions. We need to start getting reasonably specific, probably the second part of Vanushi Walters’s speech, where she spoke directly to each of her amendments was a pretty good example.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just thought I’d take some of the questions in sort of a no particular order—a rather random order, really. I’m going to add some of them together and try and come up with some responses that are acceptable to the Opposition and to Parliament.
First off, it is not my role as the Minister of Defence to decide where staff are shifted, what roles they do, or anything like that; that’s the Chief of Defence Force. That’s why he’s in that job, not me. It’s very important that the Minister is not to be involved in that; otherwise, we could be accused of trying to give a preference to one person over another. That would be a very bad thing to happen, and this is not acceptable in a democratic society.
The bill very clearly maintains the right to strike. There is no attempt to affect the right to strike, because, you know, one of the hallmarks of a democracy is the right to strike. I always think it’s so important for people to remember that the right to strike is actually part of our democracy. It doesn’t mean, though, that an employer has to sit back and do absolutely nothing. It is important that when you’re dealing with a situation where they’re a critical situation to deal with, like the Defence Force has to deal with, at the appropriate time, and only in those times, and it’s very clearly set out in the bill, that there is an ability to shift staff from one job to another in terms of uniform staff to civilian staff roles. Now, that doesn’t mean to say that the Chief of Defence Force is going to do this all the time; all these other steps have to be in place—all the other requirements, plus the Minister has to sign it off. It is really important that this is not just a general willy-nilly they can do anything they wanted. Understand, too, for the Chief of Defence Force to shift a uniformed staff, a trained armed forces person, across to do a role which a civilian has been doing takes that person away from the role that the Chief of Defence Force actually wants them to be doing. So this is not something that is just every day; it is only in very prescribed situations.
There is an amendment to add that the work needs to be informed before the expiry of an authorisation to turn the mind to urgency. It’s superfluous. The bill’s really clear that the conditions in new section 9A(2), inserted by clause 5, need to be satisfied for the duration of the authorisation. This is not everyday work; this is a situation where those particular requirements are in place. If they’re not met, then there’s no need for an authorisation, because it would not be valid and it would be subject to judicial review and the Minister would be subject to debate in the House and it would be a matter for the House to debate.
Should there be an amendment to require the health and safety risk to be imminent? Well, that goes further than the current Employment Relations Act. So that would be more restrictive than the current arrangements. So, no, that would potentially create a health and safety risk that doesn’t exist or present.
How would our military personnel feel about being tasked with civilian roles? “Won’t this influence morale?”, essentially, is a question from Parliament. Well, I’m glad everyone is so worried about the morale of the Defence Force, because I am too. But I’m really happy to report that morale is pretty jolly good these days because they’re getting to do the things that they joined for. I’m not asking them to stand outside managed isolation and quarantine facilities. I’m not asking them to go and guard beaches, like the poor old police were made to do. I’m actually asking them to do their job, which is exactly what they are.
Can I also tell you that, first and foremost, our defence personnel are professionals—they’re absolutely foremost professionals in what they do. These types of taskings that we’re referring today only occur in extreme circumstances. This is all about needing to respond just when needed, not every day. We’re not uplifting them all and going “You go fill this job; you do that.” It's not like that.
I think, too, there were some comments about the striking and everything else, but our civilian staff are a key enabler of our military operations, and their work is valued. I’m not going to say to the Chief of Defence Force, “You point out exactly where that person’s work’s adding to operations.” They’re all adding to operations in many ways. The Government is committed to defence.
So I’m really pleased to hear the Green Party of Aotearoa so supportive of our defence housing. I want to see them supporting us in the Budget bids that we make. I want to see them supporting the fact that we have a $957 million uplift in operational spending over the four years as part of Budget 2025. I’m so pleased they care about the standards and the work and the living conditions of our defence force, because I want to see them put their money where their mouth is. I want to see them coming out and saying, “Thank you. Thank you, Government for supporting our defence force.”
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I really appreciate the Minister's response to our questions and Amendment Papers. I also have a number of tabled amendments that I would like to seek the Minister's support on.
I think we'll start with my first tabled amendment, which was time-stamped at 9.00.03. This is to deal with what the Minister said before, and I think this is really timely, because the Minister just said that “Look, I'm not the Minister responsible. That is on the advice of the Chief of Defence Force.” This is an amendment that is replicating what we're currently seeing in section 9(4) of the Defence Act, which states that the Minister, on information supplied by the Chief of Defence Force or a Vice Chief of the Defence Force, may grant the authority. I think this not only allows there to be some sort of safeguard that proper consultation advice has been given but that there is a paper trail for public transparency in terms of the decisions that the Minister makes. Hopefully, the Minister will consider that, because this sounds to be in line with what the Minister has just stated.
My second one is around what my colleague Teanau Tuiono has mentioned in terms of “core defence outputs”, and this is in new section 9A(2)(a)(ii). Now, “core defence outputs” is not a defined term within the legislation, including the primary legislation, and I think “core”, it can be argued, is up to interpretation. I wondered if the Minister would consider an alternative word or even just defining what “core” would mean and some examples of that. But my alternative that I'm suggesting is rather than “core defence outputs”, we look at “essential defence outputs”.
Moving on to my next amendment, which concerns new section 9A(2)(b). Now, this is an interesting one, because the Minister and various members during the committee stage have consistently used the term “health and safety”, but in the legislation it is not “health and safety” or “safety and health”; it's “safety or health”, as two mutually exclusive elements. I don't know if this is a drafting error or there is a reason why those two things have now become mutually exclusive, when every instance that the Minister has referred to it, it has been “health and safety”. My proposal and my amendment is looking at what is stated in new section 9A(2)(b)(ii), which states “ability or readiness (or both)”. My amendment is to actually replicate the same thing—to say that “for reasons of safety or health (or both)”; or, alternatively, the Amendment Paper by my colleague Teanau Tuiono, which is just a simple adjustment of the conjunction from “or” to “and”, which then is also consistent with the wording in the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
Now, moving along to new section 9A(3)(b), which is around “An authority under this section must be in writing”, and must specify the period for which the authority applies. Noting that new section 9A is a separate section from section 9—from the previous section—there is no specific and defined date that is being given here. I think having a specified date is important, so I want to check with the Minister if she would consider to add a new subsection (3)(b)(i), which is “any period under subsection (3)(b) must not be longer than 14 days”—this is consistent with the existing drafting of section 9(8) of the Defence Act, which mentions subsections (2) and (4)—or if the Minister would like to extend that or clarify that it's still the same as the previous amendment, which is no longer than 30 days, which is also a reasonable clarification. But at this stage, the period for which the authority applies has no defined boundary. This will be the same in terms of clause 5 of the bill, new section 9A(8). It's also my amendment, which was time-stamped at 9.00.07, which is also including that particular time frame.
The last thing I want to mention is in new subsection (6), when it says that the Minister must inform the House of Representatives immediately if the House is sitting. There is an anomaly in terms of the previous clause, as well—I'll be very quick, Mr Chair—in that the authority lapses—Mr Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Lawrence Xu-Nan—I see you've got one more amendment.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: One more. Just to clarify that, in terms of this, when the House is sitting, we normally assume that’s at the beginning of the House, but any of the authority that has been granted in this section, for example, and also in the previous section lapses until the next sitting of the House. But a motion that's been raised by the Minister to provide a reason under new subsection (6) would not happen at the beginning of the sitting of the House, but, in fact, it would take, at the very earliest, after question time. What, then, we'll see is a weird gap in which the authority has lapsed and the renewal for the new authority by a motion that's been raised by the Minister has not been triggered. I want the Minister to clarify that, as well, in terms of the sitting of the House and what happens when that authority lapses for that brief moment of time.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just have one further question for the Minister, and it’s in relation to, really, the key point of what this bill is trying to do. It gets to that section 9A—the ability to use military personnel to conduct the work of New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) civilian staff in the event of industrial action if it’s constrained in situations where there is a risk to health and safety. We know from the past that the constraints of section 9 were acutely felt, particularly at the end of 2024, when civilian staff undertook industrial action in support of bargaining for their new collective agreement.
My question to the Minister is in relation to some of the risks that have been highlighted in the regulatory impact statement. There’s a direct risk that has been highlighted that this will impact on the bargaining power of civilian staff to some extent. I’m interested to understand—I know that there wasn’t consultation with unions. The select committee process and some discrete consultation was undertaken, but it would be really good to know what her analysis is of the impact of this legislation on the bargaining power of civilian staff.
Secondly, I’m interested to know what this may mean for NZDF activities that cannot take place where the role of striking civilian staff is central to core defence outputs but there is no link to national security or health and safety. I think that’s an important point that we need to understand.
The final question I have in relation to this part of the bill is about the removal of the requirement to seek House approval to extend an authorisation. Is that, in the Minister’s view, compromising an important check on ministerial power in any way? I know that there are good procedural reasons to counter what we saw happen in 2024—those have been highlighted—but, really, I’m interested to know from the Minister if that removal of the requirement to seek House approval to extend that authorisation is perceived at all as a removal of a check and balance on ministerial power when we’re talking about industrial relations.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Chair. There were a few questions in there. There's some concern that unions are not being consulted and stuff. Well, actually, industrial action is itself actioned by the union, so I understand there are always negotiations around that. In fact, the committee might be interested to know that the head of the Public Service Association has a meeting with me tomorrow, so no doubt we will discuss all sorts of issues and I will no doubt answer those queries in my usual way.
There was a question about why it says “safety or health” in the legislation. It’s because that actually mirrors section 97 of the Employment Relations Act. I think the member is taking the fact that I often talk about health and safety as it’s my area and I naturally go into that, and I’m probably the only person in the House with a graduate diploma in occupational health and safety.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: We have talked about that.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: We have talked about that, haven’t we. So I do tend to think in terms of health and safety, and it’s not to skite, actually; it’s not all about me. But it is important, I think, to have consistency across the legislation. And so that’s why it’s “health or safety”, or “safety or health” as it is in the Act.
Why not have a time limit? Well, the Minister must set a period of time for which the authority applies. It's all part of what the Minister has to do, but it can only apply during industrial action and when the criteria are met. The fact is that industrial action itself, the end of it, provides a de facto time limit anyway. So once the industrial action is finished or the other requirement has finished, then the authority lapses. There was a question around why the bill does not define core defence outputs. Is the criteria too broad—that was the general question. The full version of this criteria is “the ability and/or readiness of the Armed Forces to perform specific operational activities that are integral to core defence outputs;” and it is worded intentionally so that a number of elements must be demonstrated before this criteria can apply. This is still a high threshold which would require robust justification to satisfy it. This could include activities essential to maintaining armed forces’ ability and readiness for deployment or operations, such as responding to expected or unexpected events in New Zealand or overseas requiring military capacity tasks under security treaties or UN agreements, or emergency management.
Does the bill denigrate workers’ rights? That’s pretty much a question coming through. Well, the right to take industrial action remains. It’s the joy of being a democracy. You don’t see too many communist countries where that happens—just saying; it does not work that way. For those people who yearn for the communist utopia for workers’ rights, understand there is no right to strike without tanks coming at you. So understand that it’s only in democracies, and as a Government absolutely committed to democracy, let me tell you it is a core foundation of it.
This bill ensures that the security of New Zealanders and safety of New Zealanders endures should civilian staff exercise these rights. There are always consequences, and those consequences may be a loss of pay. It may be that someone else is doing the job, but the main thing is that the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) has to be able to deal with emergency and other situations that may arise.
Industrial action will still have a considerable impact on New Zealand Defence Force operations under these changes, and it's because the work that would otherwise be performed by military personnel is less likely to be delivered whilst they cover for their colleagues, and the resources of the NZDF will be stretched to fill both military and civilian duties. It is not an ability for the CDF and for the Minister that they take lightly. I can tell you it is a very difficult decision to make and is only taken in in situations where it really must occur.
TODD STEPHENSON (Whip—ACT): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Teanau Tuiono’s amendment to clause 5, new section 9A(1), set out on Amendment Paper 442 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, new section 9A, amending subsection (2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Teanau Tuiono’s amendment to clause 5, new section 9A(2), set out on Amendment Paper 441 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 amending paragraph (a) of section 9A(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Vanushi Walters’ other tabled amendment to clause 5 amending paragraph (a) of section 9A(2) is out of order as being a duplicate of a previous amendment.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, new section 9A(2), amending subparagraph (ii) of new paragraph (a) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 amending paragraph (b) of section 9A(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5 amending paragraph (b) of section 9A(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting a new paragraph (c) into section 9A(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting paragraph (c) into section 9A(3) to require an authority under the section to specify capacity and capability risks be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting paragraph (c) into section 9A(3) to require an authority under the section to specify alternative arrangements be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting paragraph (c) into section 9A(3) to require an authority under the section to specify whether it may be subject to an automatic extension be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Hon Peeni Henare’s tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting new subsection (3A) into section 9A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting new subsection (3A) into section 9A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting the words “with urgency” into section 9A(5) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting the words “and the reason for giving it” into section 9A(5) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting the words “whether there is likely to be an automatic extension of the authority” into section 9A(5) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting the words “and whether there is likely to be an automatic extension of the authority” into section 9A(6) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting the words “whether other options were considered instead of granting an authorisation” into section 9A(6) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5 amending subsection (8) of section 9A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Hon Peeni Henare’s tabled amendment to clause 5 inserting new subsection (8A) into section 9A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 5 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 5 is agreed to.
Bill to be reported without amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
This bill is about balancing the right of New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) civilian staff to take industrial action with New Zealand’s national security and defence needs. I would like, once again, to acknowledge the members of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee who considered this bill and the principles that underpin it.
The core role of the NZDF is to protect New Zealand and advance New Zealand’s interests through military operations at sea, on land, and in the air. The security of New Zealand is a 24/7 issue, 365 days of the year. Our defence force consists of hard-working men and women who are sailors, soldiers, and aviators—collectively, the armed forces and their civilian colleagues.
The NZDF civilian staff are entitled to take industrial action. This is a fundamental right of employees, recognised in law. The civilian staff in our defence force play a significant role in keeping New Zealand safe, whether through providing security at military bases, testing of NZDF capabilities and technology, aircraft maintenance, and countless other important tasks. This means there will be times when industrial action could put New Zealand’s national security at risk and impact the NZDF’s ability to deliver the tasks expected of it.
This bill seeks to ensure the Defence Act 1990 is fit for purpose. This bill ensures that when it is justified to do so, the Minister can authorise the armed forces to conduct the work of striking civilian staff, and it streamlines the process for doing so.
Rather than authorisation lasting for 14 days, the Minister of Defence will be able to say how long an authorisation will last. This removes the requirement to have a parliamentary debate about whether the NZDF can deploy people within their own organisation for longer than 14 days. Parliament will be notified of such an authorisation and the reasons for giving it, and any member of Parliament can bring it to the attention of the House for further scrutiny. Likewise, the Minister will continue to be able to authorise military personnel to conduct the work of striking Public Service employees where not doing so could lead to health and safety risk, which they already can do under current legislation. Parliament’s role in approving an extension beyond that period will be maintained, and the House will not need to be recalled if an authorisation expires when the House is not sitting.
These changes strike a balance between ensuring industrial action can still go ahead and have its intended effect, while ensuring that critical activities can continue, that both health and safety are protected, and that national security is not put at risk. The passing of this bill is a further demonstration of this Government’s commitment to ensuring New Zealand continues to have a defence force which is ready and able to protect and defend New Zealand, New Zealanders, and its interests. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak in the third and final reading of this particular bill. As we've done in other parts of this bill, I do want to acknowledge the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel, both those who serve in uniform and the civilian staff, who I know contribute to the wellbeing of this country, contribute to the ongoing effectiveness of the New Zealand Defence Force, and it's with them in mind for both sides of this House that this bill has been well debated. While we might not agree that we've managed to get any of the amendments, certainly from this side of the House, across the line, it is important that when we look towards the operation and the functionality of the NZDF that we acknowledge both those parts, because this particular bill pertains particularly to them.
Now, the Minister spoke to about getting the balance right, and I think that is always an important thing, and we hope that some of our amendments would strike that balance, get a bit of a middle ground, where we could continue to support both of them: those civilian staff who wish to take work action—strike or whatever it might be—and those NZDF personnel, who continue to serve and could be utilized to backfill those roles. We will continue to oppose this bill for the reasons that we have spelled out through the first and second reading and, of course, the committee of the whole House.
We know that when you leave grey areas, regardless of the bill, or regardless of the legislation, that's where people are unsure about what's happening. We wanted to make sure that it was clear that we can continue to protect the national interest, continue to protect health and safety of this country, while also allowing work action to be taken by those staff and workers right across the country. So we don't back down from the stance that the Labour Party has taken on this particular bill.
The other matter we want to make very clear to the House during the third reading of this particular bill is when this Government came into power, the first Budget, the finance Minister made it very clear that there were cuts to be made across the public sector, and that included the Defence Force and, in particular, the civilian roles. Multiple times, the Minister and this Government were asked whether or not those cuts would impact on these civilian roles or, more importantly, impact on the ability for the NZDF to do their work—the important work—and we were told no, it wouldn't. Yet we are changing the legislation—the Defence Act—to have a plan B or a “just in case”.
When we asked the Government these questions, we were told that no, it wouldn't impact. Well, it's clear, then, from the debate that's taken place during the passage of this bill, that it indeed does have an impact on the opportunity for the NZDF to be deployable, to be ready to serve in times of crisis or emergency. It's clear then that this particular bill is to cater or to cover a plan B, to make sure, at least in the eyes of this Government, that their readiness and deployability is at the forefront.
We always stand, as the Labour Party, on the side of the workers, and we make no apology for standing alongside the civilian staff and, indeed, the public sector. The instances that have been raised in this House during the debate are ones that sound reasonable. When we say that the NZDF can cover for public sector roles where it's relevant and where it's necessary, the one that's always offered is Corrections. That makes sense to, I think, every New Zealander, where we say, “OK, for Corrections, because they're doing an important job in securing our prison facilities right around the country.” However, when we try to approach this Government to make sure that we can be far more specific about what roles it can cover, or whose role it can cover, sadly, I didn't think there was an open engagement with the Government on being far more specific.
Because, now, that begs the question: does it mean that when health goes on strike or teachers go on strike or other parts of our public sector workforce go on strike that the NZDF could be deployed? I think, like I said, the New Zealand public are quite reasonable to think, “OK, Corrections, Police, maybe, even that makes sense to us.” But where it's an important role in the health sector or in our classrooms with our teachers, I'm sure the New Zealand public would have some questions about that.
I thought there were also some really good amendments or suggestions put forward to the Minister that look towards some of those other fail-safe mechanisms around the ability to extend. We talked about the Commander-in-Chief—the Governor-General—and the role that they play in making sure that that can take place. We acknowledge, though, that if they come back to the House here, that the House will be notified by the Minister. We asked, also, if that notification could have far more detail in it so that it could be discussed and debated in the House. Sadly, that didn't get across the line, but we acknowledge that the democratic processes of this country are important, and when these important matters are raised, we always push that it should come back to the House for consideration—not something that continues to put power in the hands of the few. That's something that we will always stand up against and make sure that the democracy that our country believes in continues to be practised here in Parliament.
One of the important things that the Minister mentioned in her third-reading speech was about making sure that the Defence Act is fit for purpose. I think that should be something that we should always look at. Something that the Minister said during the committee of the whole House, sort of, raised the eyebrows of a number across the House, and that was that when the Defence Act was written, in 1990, it was written in times of peace. Then now, we're making an amendment 25 years later because it's important. Well, there were a heck of a lot of conflicts between 1990 and 2025, which I think serves up an opportunity for this House to look at the Defence Act as a whole. I mentioned it in one of my earlier contributions. It's that beach batch or that holiday home in Coromandel, where you put a lean to on the lean to and before you know it, you've got a wet carpet, and the house is leaking.
The Defence Act is an important Act, and the Minister highlighted that, and I totally agree with her and support her on that matter. Therefore, the Defence Act should be relevant, it should be agile and, more importantly, it should be fit for purpose of today's Defence Force and the needs that confront our country.
It's been made and highlighted, at points across the House, that national security is at a challenging time geo-strategically around the world. We know that there are challenges, and New Zealand certainly aren't immune to that, so we do need to make sure our NZDF are fit for purpose and the legislation that governs them is also as well.
The other part, which I think the Minister made a really good point, is that for weather-events, and right now in the hurricane season, those things are really important for us, to remain ready to deploy, ready to operationalise, to support not just New Zealanders. We've seen it over the past few weeks, the devastating floods in the south, the devastating fire in Tongariro, and we know that the NZDF will play their part in our community, and we need to make sure that they are able to do that. Of course, that extends to our friends and our neighbours and our whānau in the Pacific, where, if I recall correctly, even in my time as the defence Minister, quite regularly, were deployed because of hurricane season or tropical-storm season.
I think the House and the Minister make really good points there, to make sure that despite the debate on this bill, New Zealanders need reassurance that our NZDF will be there for them. That's what I want to give to our community that are listening or the community that follow this debate: the NZDF, and, of course, the civilian staff and the uniformed staff, are there to serve our country, and we know they will. The reassurance that, despite the challenges, known or unknown, that we might face in the coming weeks or months, we need to know—we want the public to know—that the NZDF will be in the best position to be able to support however the Minister and the Government sees fit. We support that.
We want to encourage and make sure that our whānau out there feel safe and secure because it's what we know, whether it's in the Pacific or locally, is when a grey ship shows up after an event and it's got the Kiwi or the Royal New Zealand Navy on the side, that brings assurance, and it brings security to those areas. I reflect back on the volcanic eruption in Tonga. The HMNZS Aotearoa was the first ship to arrive. After having spoken with the Tongan people, they said they couldn't have asked for a better blessing, and that wasn't just because it was the first one to arrive, but it was because it was Aotearoa who answered the call.
It's really important, despite the debate, and the backward and forward across this House, that our public know our NZDF are always ready to go. They're highly deployable, highly trained, and will always answer the call when needed.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak on the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill in this third reading. We have just completed the committee of the whole House stage, which was illuminating. The Minister was very engaging, and, I guess, one of the things with that Minister in particular is that you don’t need to read a crystal ball—they’re pretty straight up whether you like the answers or not. I didn’t like the answers, but at least they were clear, so there is that as well.
I will say that the comments around the right to strike didn’t land well with me; I think there was some talking around that right as well. I still see this as limiting the right to strike, and I think that this bill weakens the right to strike by allowing striking civilian staff to be replaced with uniformed personnel. It’s called strike breaking; it creates lots of pressure on staff, whether they’re uniformed staff or civilian. In that committee of the whole House stage, we did talk about the unique nature of the defence force—you have civilian staff, you have uniformed staff, military personnel, and that’s a unique situation. When you sign up for the military or when you sign up for the defence force, you sign up for a hierarchy, and you sign up for a whole lot of issues. You don’t get to strike—you don’t get to do partial strikes, and so on and so forth—and that is the expectation there, but you do have 3,000 civilian workers, and at least 1,000 of those civilian workers are unionised, and it is incredibly important that they have the right to strike. The issues around bringing in uniformed personnel or other parts of that staff to take those roles is also something we should be incredibly careful about as a House.
One of the illuminating things—I think it was one of the earlier clauses where we were talking about the reasons why this bill is coming to the House in the form that it is—was that there could be an escalation of industrial dispute because that is one of the only ways that workers can actually engage when they’re not being paid properly. I immediately thought, well, is there an exception that can be made in this case, because of the different circumstances with the defence force workforce, for partial strikes? For those who sat through this House when partial strikes legislation was being moved through the House, that was something where, if you do partial strikes, you will get your pay docked. Just for people’s clarification: for example, you had teachers who were participating in partial strikes where they just wore T-shirts saying a particular political slogan. You’re not allowed to do that, but, because you’re not allowed to do that, you go straight down the strike avenue as well. I think there is a strong argument there to allow for partial strikes as well.
In another one of my amendments, I did talk about making sure in the legislation that the union is informed—that there is consultation with the union. I think that’s important, and I think that’s important because it provides a way to have that discussion—to have that negotiation—because the reason we are in here at this particular time is because, in 2024, Public Service Association members in New Zealand Defence Force civilian staff roles were offered a zero pay increase. That’s amazing to me. It’s not even the beginning of a negotiation that people could agree to, right? You show up to the bargaining table and the offer on the table is “Here’s nothing”—here’s nothing. The workers used the tools that were available to them—used the avenues that were available to them—and good on them. They actually won that strike. That is the rules working as they should. The unique situation you have with the defence force with uniformed personnel and civilian personnel has to be taken into account, and I don’t think that this bill fully addresses that at all.
We also had a bit of a discussion around the use of urgency. This House has seen a lot of urgency over this parliamentary term—too much, some would say, and I would say as well. There was a bit of a discussion around that, but, with this particular bill, it did have a select committee process where we did have submitters coming to the select committee. They presented very strong arguments, I thought—strong arguments that I don’t think were picked up in either the departmental report or in the select committee report. There were issues that were not resolved adequately as well. Although I acknowledge the straight answers that we did get from the Minister, I was not left feeling that submitters who had come to the select committee could feel that those issues had been resolved at all.
This bill only had a couple of stages going through urgency. We had the first reading, it went to select committee, and then it came here; then we had the committee of the whole House, which we’ve just finished, and now this is the third reading—so part of it was under urgency. One of the questions that we did pose to the Minister was: why was this particular part in urgency? We should only really use urgency if we really need to, but, in this case, half of it was and half of it wasn’t. What was the rationale? Is it the proximity to Christmas? Is the Minister aware of any industrial disputes that might be arising? Why was the timing such that we’re rushing this part of the bill through under urgency?
I think there is an argument that we could actually—by acknowledging the unique circumstances that we have with defence force personnel, both uniformed and civilian—find other solutions to help to allow civilian staff to be able to express their rights, and to allow civilian roles to be able to fully use the rights that they have for them. I know that, for myself when I was sitting on the select committee, and for others as well, I was actually quite surprised with how many people there were in civilian roles—3,000 is quite a lot. There’s the other question around, well, why are so many of these roles being done by civilians when you would assume, and I did assume before the select committee process, that a lot of them would be done by military personnel—by uniformed personnel? Is it a cust-cotting—cust-cotting—apologies—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Cost-cutting.
TEANAU TUIONO: —cost-cutting—that’s the one! Thank you, Madam Speaker. Is it a cost-cutting measure? If so, just be straight up about it. Is this the reason why you have so many roles? I do take the point—and possibly there could be some agreement on this across the House—that people made around, well, if you’re going to put people into these roles, and I’m particularly thinking about the uniformed side of it, you should pay them properly. You should make sure that their housing stock is up to scratch as well. I’ve talked to enough people to know that, although there are plans in place to make sure that housing stock is being replaced, in the case of Waiōuru, as far as I have heard, that has not happened.
Yes, it’s important to note that this a career pathway that people choose, and I did note that the Minister was talking about the large amount of money that she was able to get through the Budget—but how much of that is actually going into the pockets of the workers? How much of that is being put into the pockets of both uniformed personnel and civilian personnel? We know that, on the civilian side, when they went into that negotiation, they were just offered a zero pay increase. It’s all very well and good to talk about all the money that is coming through the Budget lines, but you’ve got to look after people. You’ve got to make sure that they can put food on the table, keep the lights on, be able to look after their families and look after their kids—that’s incredibly important. You have to ensure that the housing stock is good as well. If you have issues with that, there is no recourse that I know of within the uniformed side of it—the military personnel side of it—where you can actually rectify that and speak up. In some ways, if there are issues around that, you have to rely on those who are within the civilian roles to raise those issues—those incredibly important issues about the impact on workers.
There were a lot of questions that were posed, and there were a lot of straight answers, but a lot of those answers missed the mark. A lot of those answers went around and didn’t address the concerns of those that came to the select committee. There’s an old saying: if you’ve got a hammer, and that’s all you’ve got, everything looks like a nail, and I think this is the situation that we’re finding ourselves in. There was an industrial dispute that happened last year; the Minister wanted to fix that, but she’s only got a hammer, and she’s using it on the nail. The other thing that is really important is that, if you really wanted to solve industrial disputes, pay workers properly. Pay workers properly—pay them what they’re worth, make sure that it keeps up with inflation, and make sure that we look after workers. I do not commend this bill to the House.
LAURA McCLURE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on the third reading of this important piece of legislation. But just to remind those at home, in no shape or form does this reduce the ability for industrial action. I think I said it in my second reading speech, that it’s awfully disruptive to any industry when there is industrial action. Being able to use and utilise your staff in order for the safety of our Defence Force, our personnel, and, actually, our country’s safety and security—I think that’s a very fair and reasonable bill, and I commend this bill to the House.
Hon MARK PATTERSON (Minister for Rural Communities): It is an honour for me to rise to confirm New Zealand First support for this Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill. I would also like to acknowledge the incredible work that our Defence Force does, being prepared to put themselves into harm’s way on our behalf. I know that that view is shared across the House—well, at least I think it was; we’ve had some fairly moderate support, would I say, from some of the other parties here, but certainly not from us. In fact, we’ve been very proud in the past, in the 52nd Parliament—I know that the Hon Ron Mark held that portfolio. I know no one would have been prouder to hold a portfolio ever than Ron, a returned serviceman himself, and someone who I know still keeps a very keen interest in what the Minister of Defence is doing in this this respect.
It’s important to note that this is not only about armed conflict—we know that geopolitics is dangerous around the world and there are heightened tensions at the moment—but it is about emergency management as well. We’ve seen numerous examples lately, where our Defence Force personnel have come to the service of people, New Zealand citizens, here at home. Actually, just a couple of weeks ago down South, with the big winds. We actually had military personnel out, with communications down, going door-to-door, delivering flyers to farmers to just let them know what was going, with the telecommunications being down. So we really appreciate what they do for us.
This bill enables the New Zealand Defence Force uniformed personnel to carry out civilian roles in the event of industrial action. The military simply must be able to function, whether it is in an offensive manner or whether it is here at home delivering flyers in the Clutha region. This does not undermine the right to strike. There is absolutely the right for those civilian personnel to strike. It was a ridiculous assertion that was made—in, I think, the committee of the whole House yesterday—where the Hon Phil Twyford said that it was somehow equated to the 1951 waterfront strike, and the Government would be using this to bust strike action. I thought that was alarmist and completely irrelevant to what this bill actually does.
This is a moderate and sensible measure. It enables the military to perform its key functions, and maintains civilian employees having the right to strike. There is a formal process to go through; there are checks and balances; there is still parliamentary oversight. Minister Collins has done a great job bringing this pragmatic measure forward, and New Zealand First supports it to the House. Thank you.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call—Oriini Kaipara.
ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): E te Pīka, tēnā koe. On behalf of Te Pāti Māori, we oppose this bill in its entirety because it makes it easier for the armed forces to replace civilian defence staff and Public Service workers who are taking lawful strike action. Let’s be clear: soldiers cannot strike, but civilians in the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) can. This Government now wants to use those soldiers as strikebreakers. The bill gives the Minister of Defence a new and expanded power during industrial action by NZDF civil staff.
The Minister will be able to authorise the armed forces to do the work of those who are striking whenever the Minister believes there are reasonable grounds where national security, operational readiness, or safety could be affected. That authorisation only has to be in writing; not agreed by Parliament, not independently tested, just signed off by the Minister. The Minister must then notify workers that the military has been sent in to perform their jobs and must notify this House after the fact—not seek approval, not justify it, but simply tell us what they have already done.
For Public Service workers, the Minister’s power is widened again from 14 to 30 days. If Parliament is adjourned, the authorisation just rolls over automatically. This is a step change that removes the safeguards that recognise how extreme it is to use the military to undermine strike action. It normalises military interference in civilian industrial disputes. The people most affected are the people who keep our country running; the people who have already been denied fair wages.
The Public Service Association has been absolutely clear; they said this legislation restricts defence workers’ rights and is completely unjustified. Last year, their members were offered zero pay increase. They only achieved something better because they took strike action, the precise right that this bill now seeks to silence. Fleur Fitzsimons has said—[Knocks glass over]—plainly bringing in the military as strikebreakers is “extremely serious”—sorry.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s OK. I’ll just get one of the clerks to bring a towel. Thank you.
Hon Member: “To the left, to the left.”
ORIINI KAIPARA: “To the left”—that’s right. OK. Fleur Fitzsimons has said plainly bringing in the military as strikebreakers is “extremely serious”. What used to require a resolution of this House will now require only the stroke of a Minister’s pen. Unions have called it extraordinary and an attempt to undermine New Zealanders who are standing up for better pay and conditions; and they’re right. My colleague Teanau Tuiono’s recommendation for partial strikes must be noted and supported. From a Te Pāti Māori perspective, this bill does not align with our kaupapa.
Mana motuhake: we oppose any move that strips away workers’ rights and suppresses collective power. Māori make up a majority of the NZDF civil staff, as well as the wider Public Service. We are nurses, we are teachers, and we are firefighters. Now, at any time, the armed forces could be deployed to replace us when we strike for fair pay. That is an erosion of rights that will ripple into every workplace here in Aotearoa.
Mana ōrite: this bill makes it harder for workers to negotiate improvements, harder to achieve pay equity, harder to challenge unfair systems. Our incomes policy is clear: uphold pay equity and strengthen collective bargaining. This bill does the absolute opposite.
Finally, mana mokopuna: when workers lose their rights, our mokopuna lose security. They lose whānau stability. They inherit a society where the power of the State can be used to silence legitimate dissent. That is not the future we fight for, and let’s be honest, if the Government were truly concerned about safety, wellbeing, and national security, they would pay our nurses properly, they would value our firefighters, they would resource our teachers, and they would uplift the New Zealand Defence Force’s own civilian workforce, not undermine them.
Instead, this Government wants to send troops into schools and into hospital, into our communities, not to help but to break strikes, to weaken workers, to keep wages low. Te Pāti Māori cannot and will not support a bill that erodes rights, undermines collective bargaining, and weaponises the armed forces against civilian workers. We do not commend this bill to the House.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Civilian staff are critical to supporting us when disaster strikes, and it’s really important to note that armed personnel depend on civilian staff, even within the New Zealand Defence Force, to keep them well—whether it’s in IT roles, health roles, or administration roles. Actually, the Minister, during the committee of the whole House, acknowledged that those were incredibly complex, highly qualified roles. This includes engineering roles that help the military personnel equipment to adequately function, so I find it really interesting that that every time that we have a bill that erodes workers’ ability to participate in strikes, we have speech after speech from the right-wing politicians thanking those very same workers they are undermining. Their actions actually speak louder than their words. It’s hard to believe their speeches are thanking those very same workers they’re about to undermine, when we have a bill in front of us that follows, literally, a 2024 zero pay increase for the Defence Force civilian staffers, which would have seen them take effective pay cuts due to inflationary pressures.
Make no mistake: this bill is a direct result of what we saw last year. What else can you call a bill that seeks to erode the parliamentary checks that are in place to ensure that a Minister is adequately accountable to a decision to replace civilian staff with military personnel and that makes it easier for military personnel to replace civilian staff? During the committee of the whole House, one of the questions that I asked was whether the Minister had sought advice or reassurances or was able to elucidate to the House the advice that she received as to whether military personnel had the adequate skills, qualifications, and experience to actually replace civilian staff. She wasn’t able to actually substantiate this, and all she gave us were just platitudes about the highly qualified military personnel, which no one was necessarily challenging. It was more a matter as to whether those roles would be able to be replaced to the very same competency that the civilian staff are able to perform. If the Minister is not able to tell us that she did receive reassurance and advice on this very same matter, it’s hard for us to have faith in a bill in front of us that seeks to erode civilian staff’s ability to adequately withdraw their labour as a tool of bargaining, which is one of the most powerful things workers can do when they are trying to prove their worth to their employers. By withdrawing your labour, you demonstrate the importance of your work. If the Government is choosing to, instead, deploy the military to fill those very same roles, they are undermining people’s ability to take industrial action, to fight for better wages, and to fight for better paying conditions and safe staffing levels.
I do not buy, nor believe in, any of the Government’s arguments that this is not about undermining the ability to strike, because even though the Minister says that striking is part of a democracy, well, clearly this Government doesn’t really believe in the right for workers to take part in strikes without those very same actions undermining their ability to make ends meet, because, otherwise, they would have not introduced legislation this term to actually add pay deductions to striking workers. You can’t say that striking is part of our democratic process and then, at the very same time, bill after bill after bill, erode workers’ rights and people’s ability to sustain industrial action.
The Green Party is clear that independent of our criticisms of this Government’s encroachment and alignment with the US when it comes to the military-industrial complex, the New Zealand Defence Force plays a critical role in supporting us when natural disasters strike. Therefore, we cannot stand by a bill that seeks to erode those very same workers’ ability to perform their duties in a way that is adequately dignified.
The members who have talked and thanked the personnel should actually be standing up for those workers’ ability to fight for better pay and conditions, instead of defending zero pay increases, while, at the very same time, they’re handing billions of dollars to landlords, to tobacco industries, to fossil fuel companies—
Hon Member: That’s rubbish!
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —while everyday workers struggle. If the members on my left call out “rubbish” when I say those things, what do they call those billions of dollars going to entities that are ripping our planet and our communities off?
The Green Party will fight to improve workers’ conditions and ensure that everyone has a dignified life. Judith Collins may call that a “communist utopia”, but we call that simply socialism, which is, actually, honouring the dignity of everyone.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Storytime is over; we’ll come back to reality here—the simple, practical changes that this bill makes to ensure we can uphold our national security. It’s, frankly, embarrassing that neither of those two previous speeches, and indeed some of those before, from the Opposition benches had not a single mention about upholding national security. All they care about is their union mates being able to strike. That is an absolute disgrace. This bill ensures that we can maintain national security on our bases at a time when, unfortunately, globally, it’s becoming increasingly important. I commend this bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for an opportunity to take a call on the third reading of this bill just after we’ve had actually quite a robust committee stage. I’ll refer to some of the conversations we had during committee stage and my contribution.
We won’t be supporting this bill, but I would like to start by recognising first the important role that our defence force plays. I think we have a rich history of a strong, well-resourced defence force. It didn’t always start that way. I’ll make a few historic references in my contribution. The first defence force in New Zealand was actually set up in 1863 under the Colonial Defence Force Act. It was a regular force of only 500 troops, who were all voluntary and expected to serve for a term of three years each, funded to the tune of only £30,000.
Of course, since then, it’s grown rather substantially, and quite rightly, the Minister and others have pointed to the fact that the defence force plays an integral role in terms of national security, but also in terms of peacekeeping and our aid contribution, and also in terms of emergencies. Certainly, on this side of the House, we respect that role and we are grateful for that role. My contributions are all made in the context that I think that is a fundamental part of the role of the State and that it’s important that we have carve-outs for the defence force as well, to ensure that they can act where there are threats to our security. We recently had a family member who became a private in the defence force, and it gives me a huge sense of pride to see her become a member of our defence force as well.
In the context of that deep respect, it really is how I look at this bill, and what I always look for with any legislative change is: what is the problem statement, where is the gap? That’s why I spent a considerable amount of time in the committee stage questioning the Minister on the rationale for the bill. I think what became clear is that it doesn’t appear that there’s a gap in the way it has been described at the stages of the bill coming through the House.
The way in which I understood the gap initially was that, if we had a period where the House is adjourned—adjourned only; not concluded for that term, but just adjourned over the summer break—and you have an authorisation that expires during that period, there is no way for an authorisation to be extended by the House. Now, while that is true—and that became clear through the committee stage—it was also clear that the Minister can make a second authorisation. My line of questioning was really about whether that was the case, and clearly it is the case. There is no gap. The Minister can make a second authorisation. My line of questioning was then around whether there would be administrative delays that would cause detriment to our national security and whether that was the thought process that gave rise to the bill. I’m still a little unclear as to whether that is the case, but I did propose to the Minister that perhaps, if it was, one way of rectifying that would be to create a power in the bill that allowed the Minister alone to extend an authorisation.
If we were looking at levels of scrutiny, the first level you would have is for Parliament to authorise it on the expiration of the 14-day period. That’s obviously the best case scenario; not always going to be able to happen in a long extended period where Parliament isn’t sitting. However, your next best option in terms of scrutiny would be to have the Minister extend the authorisation. Now, the beauty of this is that then there is still a level of scrutiny, and the Minister would be expected to turn her mind to whether the circumstances were still such that an extension should be authorised. I don’t know that the House has quite had an answer as to why that wouldn’t be a suitable thing to do. Just recognising again, as we all have across the House, that the right to protest is in fact important, and so minds must be turned to that when weighing up if the circumstances are appropriate to make an authorisation, and, if so, what that period should be.
I remain of the view that, given the timeline in section 9(4) of the Defence Act has not changed, there’s a recognition that, actually, 14 days is a reasonable period of time for, in that case, the Prime Minister or the next senior Minister to turn their minds to whether it needs to be extended by the House or not. Again, I don’t think that we really travelled sufficiently through the argument why those two provisions are as different as they are.
There’s a solution—well, the first thing is there is no current gap, unless there is an administrative difficulty for the Minister over that summer, and I think the House needs to be clear about that. And, in the second part, if there is an administrative difficulty, there is a fix to that, which would still overlay that ministerial oversight. I think, unfortunately, we haven’t explored, in truth, the proposed amendments, which I think would have gone some way to improving the bill—and broadening the powers, actually—because right now, the Minister doesn’t have the power to extend on her own; it’s only the House who can do that. However, it would just be the next layer of broadening that we would be doing.
A number of submitters at select committee—I wasn’t on the select committee stage of this bill—pointed to the issues that have been spoken to across the House. Again, I think it would have been prudent to consider some of the changes that we suggested in this bill, but unfortunately that was not done. Again, I go back to the issue of, I guess what I’d almost call, a bleed into treating urgency as just a way of churning or getting legislation through the pipeline as opposed to genuinely considering whether the reason is urgent or not.
As I’ve said earlier, in my view, there is no urgency tied to the summer break period, given the Minister could issue a second authorisation. That argument simply isn’t there. I wonder, as we continue going through this week of urgency in the House, whether it’s an obligation on us all to consider whether the Standing Orders are sufficient in their requirements for moving the House into urgency. Currently, the requirement is that a reason be provided by the Government, but, again, what we’re starting to see—and I’ll acknowledge here that this has been something that’s come up regardless of which party is leading Government—that a reason be given, as opposed to a genuine reason that ties itself to why we’re skipping through certain stages.
Attached to that is my concern that, if the select committee stage is fulfilled—if a bill is sent to select committee at all—that’s now deemed to be sufficient in terms of engaging the democratic process. I don’t believe it is. I think, again, we’re seeing a bleed to shortened select committees. It certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed by me that there seems to be an increasing use of the four-month-and-one-day behaviour, where bills are referred to select committee for just over the period where, if they were under four months, there would need to be a debate in the House. Then, of course, it’s the select committee who decides what period of time submissions are called for.
Now, this presents the problem that if you layer one atop the other—the shortening of those periods—you would have a public who doesn’t feel consulted. You would have members who are viewing amendments sometimes at the last minute, and you’d have Ministers who aren’t truly considering Amendment Papers as they should in the committee stage. I mean, this is probably not the worst example of it, but it’s certainly an example where there were some sensible amendments which I had hoped would be considered but haven’t been. Thus, sadly, I cannot commend this bill to the House.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): This bill is not about helping the Government, it’s not about helping the National Party or Minister Judith Collins; this is about helping our defence force, supporting our defence force, from the newest recruit to the Chief of Defence. It is telling to see the Labour Party and the Green Party come out firmly opposing that support—not only that they won’t debate the issue that exists, but they spread these mistruths. We hear about the 1951 wharf strike, and this could be used to break it. The Green Party tell us, “Oh, it could be used for forestry workers.” No, it can’t. This is only an internal thing for the defence force. It shows the lack of knowledge, it shows the lack of respect on that side of the House for our defence force, and it shows the lack of support. The National Party supports our defence force. National supports every single service person, and we support this bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is a split call. I call Helen White.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. It’s a split call, and that gives me five minutes to tell you why I don’t think that it is fair for the member of the Government who just stood up to talk about this as an ill-informed Opposition. This Opposition has done its level best, in urgency, to take this matter seriously. That has been very evident in the questions that have been put. My friend on the other side of the House has just raised the thorny issue of the 1951 strike. It clearly hit home when the Hon Phil Twyford talked about that. It’s an absolutely relevant thing to talk about if you’re from the Labour Party, because those times were definitely very, very formative for this party.
I want to talk first of all just about the value of strikes. There’s a little bit that may have been said by other speakers, but I want to reinforce it. When the Labour Party and the Green Party talk about this as having an impact on striking and being a strike-breaking tool, that’s because if a military worker takes the position of a striking civilian worker, they undermine the power of a strike. We set about a striking mechanism in a structure. You can’t strike for any reason in New Zealand, and you can’t strike at any time in New Zealand. You can only strike when the legislature says that’s a legitimate tool in the tool box, and you have to give good notice, and there are essential industries in this country where there is a lot of notice required because they are essential to the population. It is a managed ability that people have.
What this piece of law does is it says that people can be ordered or forced, because they are military, to go into those positions and do those jobs in a time of strike. That actually does undermine the industrial rights of that group of people. That’s a big deal, and it isn’t that the Labour Government hasn’t seen a balancing act here, because this is our military and this is an important part of the mechanisms that keep the country safe. That has been an important thing. It’s only an amendment to a law. There was already a checks and balances system in place, and part of that checks and balances system was coming back to this legislature if we extended the period that the military were going to do that. People had to come back to this legislature. They no longer need to do that in the same way. That’s an erosion. That’s a lack of balance.
What my friend the Hon Phil Twyford talked about, that seems to have really got up the noses of some of the Government bench members, is that, right now, we are in a world where we have seen military forces on the streets in the US. We have seen that happen. I never thought I would see that. I never thought I would see that kind of intervention. We’re in a time of great change, and so it’s very important we hold and respect our organised rules for things like striking and for things like the use of our military. We respect those young people who come into the military. I talked about it in the committee stage. My volunteers who come in are full of wonderful ideas and ambitions, and they join the military, and they don’t expect to be told that they must go over and do the work of a plumber, because that happens to suit the Government of the day. That is not what they signed up for. That is not why I value them. I value them, and I respect them, and I respect the fact that they are human beings doing great work and being brave. There is a balance to be struck. Thank you.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): It really fills me with sadness hearing some of the comments from the other side of the House. I haven’t had the pleasure of being on the select committee that dealt with this bill, but, from the basic reading, I can see and hear that what’s being said on the other side does not reflect what we’re doing here. As the Hon Judith Collins just said, the arguments against are showing actually how much the other side cares about our defence force—or, rather, doesn’t care for our defence force. This law, essentially, keeps New Zealand safe around the clock while still respecting the right of civilian staff to strike. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I often go to the regulatory impact statement for the truth because that’s one area where it’s harder for the Government to spin things. The regulatory impact statement makes it incredibly clear what we’re doing today. It says in it that back at the end of 2024, when civilian staff undertook industrial action in support of bargaining for a new collective agreement, that caused problems. That was when they got a zero percent pay rise.
The member Rima Nakhle, who has just resumed her seat, talked about the fact that they care about the Defence Force. My question would be why then did this Government offer them a zero percent increase in pay? Then when they took industrial action, they’ve introduced this legislation as a direct response to prevent those civilians from being able to take collective action such as strikes in the future. Essentially, what this does is use military personnel to conduct the work of New Zealand Defence Force civilian staff in the event of industrial action. That is incredibly short-sighted because if we are seriously talking about our defence workforce, about the wellbeing of New Zealand, about how we grow our defence service to be capable and able to respond, this is a short-term stopgap measure to simply prevent situations that occurred at the end of 2024 when civilian staff took industrial action because they got a zero percent pay increase. That’s the nub of it.
I think it’s important to note that this bill is No. 8. There are more, but this is the eighth thing, in general, that this Government has done to undermine the rights of working New Zealanders, and so I think it’s important that we put it in the context of all of the things they have done since being in Government.
The first one was to repeal fair pay agreements—that was done right away. They’ve brought back 90-day trials, removed the 30-day rule, removed the ability to give workers access to the collective agreement when they first start work—that’s been taken away. Pay deductions for partial strikes—we’ve discussed and debated that one in the House. The ability to partially strike has been removed by this Government. You’ll have your pay eaten into by your employer if you determine you’d like to partially strike. The next one is that if you earn over $180,000, you cannot take a personal grievance against your employer—huge undermining of rights in that one—and the public sector funding cuts right across not just Wellington’s local economy, which is completely downwardly spiralling as a result of those cuts, but right across the country we’ve seen workers who can’t afford to feed their families and pay their bills as a result of that. And, of course, we have the scrapping of 33 pay equity claims.
This bill is hot off the heels of those changes that this Government has made, and I do not take to heart and believe when they say that this Government has the Defence Force’s interests at heart. We do not accept that at all, because this comes in the context of an ongoing undermining of workers’ rights in New Zealand. This bill is an answer to a question that nobody in defence is asking. Nobody is asking that question. At a time when the New Zealand Defence Force is facing staffing shortages as well, this House should be focused on real solutions of how we build our workforce, not political theatre masquerading as reform.
Does this actually solve any of the real problems that the Defence Force is currently facing? Does it strengthen our country? Does this improve the lives of New Zealanders in the Defence Force who are struggling to pay their bills without having a decent wage? This bill fails on all of those tests. The Defence workforce is not struggling because of a lack of rules or powers or structural levers; it is struggling because people can’t afford to stay, and so are only coming when unemployment is peaking to such a level that we might see a slight uptick. They are struggling because pay has not kept up with inflation. That is the problem, not the fact that we’re going to suddenly install uniformed people to take the roles of civilians to prevent them for striking for decent pay. Military families cannot secure housing near their bases because specialist roles are leaving faster than they can be replaced.
This bill does not take any steps towards addressing those problems—problems such as burnout from long hours, repeated deployments, and persistent vacancies, and the hollowing out of morale of the defence service. This bill actually takes steps to increase or further erode the morale by having uniformed or civilian and Defence Force personnel potentially having issues if they’re stepping into those roles. This bill deals with none of the pressures that have led to it. Instead, this Government has brought forward legislation that tinkers with obligations, expands bureaucratic oversight, and creates compliance costs that are absolutely unnecessary. It’s a complete disconnect with the workforce issues that we are seeing.
One of the deepest concerns that have been raised is that the Defence Force should be supported in a way where we have a long-term plan to build our workforce. This bill does not do that. One of the most alarming aspects of this legislation is the lack of evidence that underpins it. The Government has repeatedly asserted that the bill will strengthen the workforce but when we’ve looked for data, when we’ve looked through the submissions and we’ve looked at that, there’s absolutely no evidence that the proposed interventions resolve any of the issues that were heard at select committee and no evidence that this will actually make a real difference to the problems we’re seeing.
Good lawmaking requires evidence, and this bill offers a bunch of slogans instead. It is not really assisting in any way. We would like to see meaningful change that raises the wages of those people and enables their ability to take collective action and to have decent working conditions. By simply taking this and doing this, it fails to modernise the workforce or address future challenges. New Zealand’s Defence Force deserves to have that oversight and that foresight and a future planning model in place and this bill is incredibly short-sighted.
I would like to conclude by saying that it’s all well and good to talk about what a great service the Defence Force provides. We hear “Aren’t they amazing and don’t they do a great job?”—yes, they are, and they deserve better than this. They deserve better than having this kind of tinkering at the margins that doesn’t go to the heart of addressing the fact that they deserve to be paid better. They deserve to have oversight and a plan in place that supports that. They deserve to have support for their families. They deserve to have improved housing and cost of living conditions taken into account. They deserve to have expanded mental health and wellbeing services. They deserve to have stronger recruitment pipelines in engineering, aviation, healthcare, and IT. We would like to see those things put into this House. We would like to see better retention incentives that match the reality of the modern labour market.
This bill does none of that. All this bill does is take another step in the long line of assault on workers’ rights that prevent situations that happened at the end of 2024, when we had people striking for more than a zero percent pay increase. New Zealanders expect to have a defence force that is ready to respond in floods and fires, geopolitical risks, and humanitarian crises, but instead, this Government has delivered a piece of legislation that responds only to its own political messaging, and that’s a sad loss.
DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): I have never heard so much rubbish in my life—it’s just unbelievable. I’m delighted that I’ve got the last word on this bill, because I’ve got a few things that we need to clear up. Let’s just remember, shall we, that the Government of the previous regime had six years in which they did nothing for defence—not a single thing. The attrition rate in defence in their time was out the gate. It has now turned around.
I just want to reiterate a couple of things that my colleagues have said. It’s shameful that the Opposition thinks it’s OK to leave armaments and secure bases unprotected in times of strike because striking people are more important. No one denies that they are allowed to strike—if you want to strike, happy days; go for your life—but let’s just remember that some of those places need to be protected in that time. You can’t tell me—no, not you, Madam Speaker—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Good point.
DANA KIRKPATRICK: —but the Opposition can’t tell me that nurses and doctors leave the hospital when they strike and nothing is put in place to help people in that hospital. There are people that go in there and they take up those places so that people get looked after.
Dr Tracey McLellan: No, they don’t. There are limited life-preserving facilities.
DANA KIRKPATRICK: Yes, they do, because I know some that do it. Let’s just remember that we support our Defence Force and our service personnel and we want to make sure that they have safety and security as one of their key areas of focus, leaving the civil personnel to strike, if they see fit.
It’s very simple, this bill. The Opposition members seem to have whipped themselves up into a frenzy, thinking it’s a whole lot of things that it’s not. It’s simple: if you want to strike, you can strike, if you’re a civilian member of the Defence Force. This is plan B. This makes sure that those places are looked after. It’s quite simple, and I commend the bill to the House.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Madam Speaker—oh, no?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Actually, that’s my call. Is this a point of order?
Hon Member: No.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill.
Bills
Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. We come first to Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 4 to 13—“Amendments to principal Act”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Madam Chair, thank you. We come to this committee stage of this Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. I’d like to reiterate my thanks given in the second reading to the select committee for their work on this bill—
Hon Member: No worries.
Hon Member: Happy to help.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh, good—and also just to give a brief overview of the first part, Part 1, of two parts in the Act.
The purpose of this legislation, as has been said, is to establish a Director of Regulation with a set of statutory objectives and some powers and some obligations. All of this is set up so that people in the early childhood sector can actually point to their rights—that the person that holds the power over them will actually have some laws that restrain how they use their power while also making clear what their priorities are. So if we go through the clauses in Part 1, we begin by interpreting what early childhood education is and therefore what kind of services this part of the law will apply to—early childhood services and play groups that opt-in to being certified under the Act.
We then talk about the purpose of this part, and it is to regulate early childhood education in such a way that there are “… minimum standards for quality early childhood education that allows all children to establish strong foundations for learning, well-being, and life outcomes; and” also to “(b) support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.” Which is important to a lot of parents up and down this country. Once you have that purpose, there are certain objectives that are pursued in order to support the purpose. First and foremost—absolutely critical—is protecting the health, safety, and wellbeing of children. Then there's educational and developmental outcomes, and then there's accessibility and choice for parents. And then there's informing parents and caregivers. Because one of the things that was found in the Ministry for Regulation’s review of the early childhood sector is often parents can’t actually identify what good is and bring market pressure on to providers to improve. And finally, the objective of implementing a licensing and certification system is something that the Director of Regulation will do to achieve this purpose.
It then goes on in clause 27A, inserted by clause 7, to set out the Director of Regulation—that they must be appointed and that they must be an employee of the ministry at the time of the appointment. It goes on to list the functions that the director carries out. And that is things such as issuing the licences, providing support and information, and also assessing and responding to complaints about licenced early childhood services. So that's an important avenue for parents.
It goes on further to say about how the director’s functions and duties are performed. And it says, first of all, in accordance with the purpose and objectives that we've discussed, they're accountable to the secretary, the chief executive of their respective department. And finally, there's some principles: the health, safety, and wellbeing of children is the first principle that they have to follow. Similarly—and skip to the end—"good regulatory practice, including (without limitation) decision-making that— (i) is risk-based, proportionate, fair, and transparent; and (ii) avoids imposing unnecessary costs on parents, caregivers, and service providers.” Then the delegation of directions, functions, duties, and powers. This can be done—obviously there won't just be one Director of Regulation, there will be a number of people working for them, but they need to delegate those powers in writing.
Subsequent to that, there are really a lot of changes that you might describe as mechanical or minor and technical, but I think I've laid out most of what Part 1 does: set out the purpose, the objectives used to achieve the purpose, then there's the Director of Regulation, then there are their duties and the principles for which they carry out those duties to fulfil the objectives and achieve the purpose. All of this offering transparency to people who are regulated.
There is a minor and technical amendment in my name that the Government intends to support. We’ve reviewed other amendments as they’ve come in. We do not intend to support other amendments. Thank you very much.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister for walking us through what this bill purports to do, in his view.
Labour strenuously opposes this bill, because it doesn't do what it says on the tin. It talks about facilitating early childhood education reform, when in fact what it does is it has a very strong labour market focus, and it doesn't—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Sorry to interrupt the member. Can I just ask members to refer to the clause that they’re speaking to?
INGRID LEARY: Yes, sure. What I was doing, Madam Chair—thank you for the guidance—was I was just about to talk this committee of the House through Labour's approach to this, because I would like to, when I come to my questions on clause 4, given that the Minister has given an overview, I would also like to give an overview of how we plan to approach this, if I may, because the Minister himself has raised the purpose of the bill and he's talked about the effect of that. It will be our view—as we interrogate the clauses—to show that, actually, there is a denigration of children's rights, and we will be doing that through Part 1.
He's also talked about minimum standards; we will be interrogating the Minister about how those standards are upheld and what safeguards there are. He has also mentioned the complaints procedures and, through the parts related to that, we will be asking for the processes that are involved and also the vulnerability of the Crown to judicial review. As I said, he has mentioned the purpose, and we will see clause by clause how, in our view, the purpose and the drafting does not align with the purpose. Therefore, we have a number of amendments that we would like to table to make the drafting align further.
The Minister himself mentioned new section 27, and, indeed, that is a fundamental section that we will be going through very carefully, where a lot of the changes are made that essentially decouple the stewardship of the Ministry of Education with its regulatory role. This goes against the OECD best practice, and we will be referring to that in some of our questions, wanting to understand how New Zealand will be aligning itself with OECD countries, given the decoupling goes in the opposite direction of what the OECD recommends.
The Minister has also talked about health, safety, and learning as priorities. We will have amendments relating to that, and a very strong focus on Māori and Te Tiriti. We are wanting to understand—and get on the record for Hansard, as well—not only why Te Tiriti is not mentioned but there seem to be implicit references and parts of the bill and, therefore, we will be asking the Minister if, in his view, Te Tiriti is implicitly to be considered when this bill is applied.
Finally, just in response to the Minister’s own opening remarks—he's talked about the schedules as being essentially technical: in fact, we find that many of the powers that will go from the secretary to the director are conferred by a Schedule 1, and then the safeguards that we would expect to see in Schedule 2 are not there. We intend to spend some time on Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 to unpack how they could be improved or what the risks are as we see them, because we do not see the safeguarding and the legislation before us.
Having said that and being aware that it is a committee of the whole House stage, I'll now turn to clause 4 with my specific questions, which are around definitions, as the Minister has said. This question will come up in relation, I think, to each of the clauses, because we heard from many submitters that there are no Te Tiriti obligations, so we want to understand why Te Tiriti is not mentioned in clause 4. We also want to know what advice and evidence he sought on the impact on tangata whenua education.
We would also like to understand what the Minister thinks a playgroup entails. What is his definition for a “playgroup”, as mentioned in the definition of “early childhood education” inserted into the Act by clause 4 of the bill? New subparagraph (b) talks about “a playgroup that opts to be certified”. Can he please define a playgroup for us? Also, what are the circumstances in which a playgroup would not be able to be certified under the Act? Is any playgroup able to be certified or are there some criteria, and where will those criteria be located so that the director can do their oversight job?
Finally, what is the difference between an early childhood service and a playgroup? Madam Chair, I do have some other questions, also on this, regarding the regulatory impact statement (RIS). We have heard in the RIS that there has been a lack of consultation. This is mentioned on page 48. So, again, coming to these definitions that the Minister has referred to and that we see in new subparagraphs (a) and (b), what assurance do we have that the definitions that he provides around those groups, playgroups and early childhood services, actually align with the sector expectations? We also want to know how they will be assessed for standards when they haven't been consulted on—and that, again refers, to the RIS, page 48, where there is actually a repeated thing throughout the RIS about the lack of consultation.
I also have some legal questions, which is where, given I’ve referred to the absence of the Treaty, does the Minister accept that this could undermine the Crown obligations; and if not, why not? If he could answer that question: why doesn't it include Te Tiriti obligations in the key definitional clauses? Some of our other questions relating to Treaty will be around the impact of the absence of Te Tiriti. Those are different questions, but for the purposes of this section, we would like to know why it is not mentioned in the key definitional clause, and that will go to my later question, which comes around under the schedule, where we see implicit references to things like puna reo and kōhanga reo and so on.
Finally, in the RIS at page 30, there has been an identification of a risk of confusion. Again, this is around some of the lack of certainty around the early childhood service and the playgroup. So getting a very clear steer from the Minister as to where he gets these definitions from; whether they align with the sector; what consultation—if any—was done; and what will happen in the absence of having alignment on those definitions. Also, minimum standards and a playgroup that opts to be certified; are there circumstances in which they cannot be? If so, what are they? And the same to an early childhood service. We will have many more questions on Part 1.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): The member Ingrid Leary has just taken 8 minutes to ask two very simple questions. First of all, a playgroup is defined in the wider Education and Training Act as a group that meets on a regular basis but where children don’t attend for more than four hours at a time. There are other definitions, but the point is that the definition is already in the wider Act.
On the absence of a definition of the Treaty in the “Interpretation” section of this bill: I’m an ambitious politician, and I thought about perhaps getting some of my ideas about defining the Treaty into this education amendment bill, but I actually just don’t think defining the Treaty of Waitangi should be done here in this interpretation section of the Education and Training Act.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair. On to clause 5; this is an important part of these reforms, and there are a number of submitters who wanted us to spend some time here and really understand the trade-offs and the choices that are being made here by Government to prioritise certain sets of values in the education system here. Just for the House's attention: section 14 in the Education and Training Act 2020, which is being amended. It has three parts. Some of those are being picked up here but some of those are a bit different. They are about setting standards for quality. There is also a mention of provision, there, which we'll get to in a second, but also the second one is about health and safety and wellbeing of children, and the third one is about enabling parental choice.
Those are all important things and they are mirrored here, but the difference is that when submitters came to the committee and they raised their concerns, particularly those providers of things like kindergarten services, those providers who are community based, have a long history of provision for children—you know, after, say, the Second World War, the establishment of play centres and play groups—those organisations that are represented at the committees by their bodies continue to raise the point that in putting the new section 14(b) as it is here and then also backing that up with the new 14A points around establishing this for parents and so parents and caregivers have more information; they felt that there was a sort of de-centring of children's wellbeing and children's rights in this, and that's a fair enough point.
I want to first ask the Minister is it his intention to do that? Is it deliberate that these objectives sort of create a new hierarchy of how you might balance both the wellbeing of children and education provision with the rights of parents—which obviously do exist and have been catered for in the original Act at section 14 but in a different way—or is it the case that it is the same balancing exercise and yet we are introducing, then, other sort of provisions about you might interpret that?
The second question is around how this should be interpreted. When we talk about new section 14(b) as it's written there—“support[ing] choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.”—that is a good thing. Is that an acknowledgement of really just the administrative arrangements that are around this, now? Some departments that are outside of education manage this as an allocation. They have done that well before the 2020 changes, let alone these changes. Departments like the Ministry of Social Development, for instance, administer the Out of School Care and Recreation (OSCAR) contracts, which are about providing education services but they're predominantly because of labour market force participation. It's going to be a goal of any Government of New Zealand, I would suggest, that people who have the care of children in their ordinary life should have options and choices around that.
So is that intended to be given effect in some different way, here, or is it the same balancing exercise? Or is there more of an emphasis now—which is what the submitted suggested that there was—on this active labour market participation? If so, should that be recognised? Should it be clearer—if the Minister is trying to give effect to those administrative arrangements that have grown up over time in the Public Service—that we also have this secondary goal of making sure that parents can participate in the workforce, making it clearer that early childhood education is about that?
If that is an intention and that's what he means, then we should say that. So those dual purposes there should have a sort of hierarchy and a balance between them, because there are trade-offs to be made by any Government. If early childhood education is intended to provide a real range of services that are outside of what is currently being provided for in the market by those providers who came along to the committee and said, “Our number one concern is the welfare of children, our number one concern is their educational development.”—if it is the intention in New Zealand to have another sort of service which is more like the OSCAR services which are available to older children, where that is predominantly around active labour market participation of parents and caregivers, then should we be sitting that out more clearly here? Those are my two questions, and I have more on this.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Can I quickly address these two questions in relation to clause 5 inserting new sections 14 and 14A. The member asks, what is the Government’s intention having twin purposes for the Act? One is to implement minimum standards for quality education for children. The other is to support choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.
I think it’s clear to most people that early childhood education policy has those objectives now, it has for a very long time. Successive Governments have introduced policies to boost that. What we’re doing here is putting in statute law that those are the things, the purposes that the director of regulation for early childhood education should be following. I can’t make it any simpler than that. Those are the widely acknowledged objections; we’re putting in law that the regulator must take heed of them.
Then there was a question about whether new section 14A paragraph (d), by providing information to parents and caregivers, the member described that “decentring children’s rights”. A couple of things in response to that. Number one, that comes three paragraphs after paragraph (a), which says “protecting the health, safety, and well-being of children” is the first objective in the list.
Second of all, I don’t know if the member’s met any 3-year-olds, but one of the best ways to help them is actually to ensure that their parents are enabled, because most 3-year-olds are quite dependant on their parents and caregivers. So by informing and helping them we actually are centring the child. We could, of course, give all the information direct to the 3-year-old, but I don’t know, they might eat it or something, and that wouldn’t work so well.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the Minister’s response. I love the fact that the Minister is telling literally a mum of young children about what it is like being a parent of young children. I’m sure that is something that Arena Williams will have more to say on, but I want to pick up on something the Minister has said and I want to start with clause 5 as well, because it is an important part of this bill, along with the Director of Regulation and also regulations of early childhood education (ECE) in general.
But just looking at this first part—now, broadly, I see the intention here of separating out “purpose” and “objectives”, and we’ve seen that as well in terms of other legislation, particularly in terms of some of the broad objectives we saw in the education bill that was passed last week. But what the Minister said was interesting to me because new section 14(b), inserted by clause 5, to “support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.” is not in the existing legislation. That is new. It’s a very peculiar one because this is saying that the purpose of ECE is to ensure that we free our parents to go and work. It’s what we’re looking at there, which I thought is a very interesting purpose in education because there’s no other part—I mean, unless the Minister can quote a specific section—of the Education and Training Act about parents working in jobs. Like, that is not even covered within the overall purpose of the Education and Training Act.
But while that is what a lot of parents have to do—and I do acknowledge all of the parents who are in this House at this stage of the bill, and of your spouses and partners who have to work and have to ensure that their children are going there. But what it also means, by this singular clause, is to treat early child education not as a place where tamariki learn and develop skills but essentially treating it as a babysitter, essentially a nannying service.
Carl Bates: That’s not what it says.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: But that’s exactly why we have this particular section here, and I cannot fathom why the Minister would consider including this part when it’s not in the existing legislation.
Conversely, what we’re seeing—and it’s quite an obvious gap within new sections 14 and 14A—is there is not a single mention of teachers and there’s not a single mention of the resources that support teachers who are working in ECE, to ensure that a lot of this does take place. Again, I agree that parents do perform an important role in all of this, but in terms of providing for some of these teachers, it also performs an important role.
So if we’re sticking to a separation of purpose and objectives—you know, providing clarity, and I understand that, but I would ask the Minister to consider my amendment that new section 14(b), “support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market” isn’t actually something that is needed within this section, especially when it’s not in the existing legislation.
Furthermore, I would ask the Minister to start by considering my amendment which does say supporting teachers, qualified teachers, and workers to ensure that they are well resourced and supported as part of the objectives.
I’m not asking the Minister to include it in the purpose of Part 2; I’m asking the Minister to include it in new section 14(a) under “Objectives of Part 2”. So I’m going to start with those two: the peculiar inclusion of 14(b) and what is the intention of that, and why in the purpose and objectives, are teachers not mentioned at all?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): If the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan had listened to the debate, he would have heard my earlier answer. Section 14(b) has been put in the legislation because it reflects the simple reality that many New Zealanders actually do send their child to early childhood education so they can go to work. If the member seriously doesn’t think that’s what happens in New Zealand, I don’t know where he has been—certainly not listening to this debate. I won’t repeat myself again on that topic.
He then asked, “Why do we not include teachers?” Well, very simply, this is about children. This is about getting outcomes for children. I know that there will be people who want the service provider to be put at the centre of the policy, but it’s not—we’re doing this for children, and we have no intention of supporting the member’s amendment.
Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to pick up on a point that the Associate Minister of Education raised, there, about replacement section 14(b), inserted by clause 5, and the kind of unusual answer that he gave, and he said that he was not willing to repeat himself. Well, I wouldn’t want him to repeat himself either, ‘cause that would be very tiresome to listen to.
But my question that I would like to put to the Minister is, throughout the regulatory impact statement, there has been constant referral to the lack of consultation. There’s been constant referral to the possibility of being opened up to future litigation, which we will probably ask questions about, a little bit further on. But I just don’t see the need when the Minister said, before, that parents, people, know that early childhood education (ECE) is an educational service—but it’s also known that parents use it when they are in the workforce; they use ECE services, send their children to ECE services, when in the workforce. So if that was something that everybody already knew, why is it so important to make it a specific purpose—
Carl Bates: To remind you.
Hon JO LUXTON: —in the Act? Maybe you could take a call—oh, no, maybe not, because I don’t think you’d have anything worth listening to.
But perhaps you could explain why, then, if it was well known why there is a specific need—
Carl Bates: I think the Chair is worth listening to.
Hon JO LUXTON: I’m asking the Minister, Mr Bates, not you, so please be quiet. I can’t get my question to the Minister if he can’t hear through your barracking.
I’ll go back. So my question to the Minister, with regards to section 14(b), is: if everybody knows that that’s what was happening and occurring in ECE, then why feel the need to make a specific purpose of this piece of legislation?
Also, given the lack of consultation out there—I noticed that there was some consultation undertaken as part of a review, but not direct consultation with regard to this piece of legislation, particularly with teachers and parents, which is concerning and we will have more questions around that a bit further on. But also, I want to know why there was the need to change the wording from “supporting the health, safety,” out of the purpose and putting it into an objective, when it doesn’t really specify how to go about protecting the health and safety. Some of this is extremely unnecessary, when—having come from the sector myself, being a teacher, and also having been a centre owner—these things were never an issue, so I don’t understand why the Minister feels the need to specifically tease these out, add these really unusual purposes in. So it’d be really great to be able to understand the Minister’s thinking, there.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): In relation to the first question about why we are putting the requirement of section 14(b) inserted by clause 5 in statute, well, the whole purpose of this exercise is to put into law the rights and responsibilities of the regulator and, therefore, also, the rights and responsibilities of the regulated into law. That’s the whole purpose of doing this, which I explained in my opening remarks—I’m not sure if that member heard them.
Then the question is, has there been enough consultation? Well, actually this is a process that began in June 2024, 18 months ago. The Ministry for Regulation began consulting literally thousands of teachers, centre owners, parents about their desires for regulation of early childhood education. This bill puts into place the recommendations that Cabinet agreed after that consultation process. There’s probably never been more consultation on a bill of this length to make improvements to regulations. So, nope, I’m very comfortable and the Government is very comfortable with the amount of consultation that’s occurred.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair. OK. Those are very useful questions and I thank the Minister for his explanation of that new section 14(b). As you can see, this is something that my colleagues on this side of the committee and submitters have been quite interested in, and it is useful for us to clarify what this means.
My first question, then, in this part is on the difference around the provision wording in the original section in the Education and Training Act, and then the words “to provide for”, which the Minister has chosen. The difference there, seems to me, to be that provision across locations is not something which is either geographic locations or for certain communities or to make sure that there is a choice for parents isn’t something which is included as a purpose in this part, and I’d like the Minister to clarify that. On the old reading—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can you please clarify which part you’re speaking to.
ARENA WILLIAMS: Sorry, I’m talking to clause 5, which creates new section 14, which is titled “Purpose of Part 2”.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Thank you.
ARENA WILLIAMS: Under subsection (a) here, we have the words “set and implement minimum standards to provide for”. That is a formulation of that word “provide”, which means that the regulator is regulating for the regulated to provide services to a set of minimum standards. Under the old formulation, which uses the word “provision”, the settings there are around ensuring that the provision meets the needs of parents.
The difference there is that we know, as electorate MPs, that many of us do not have enough early childhood education centres for teachers locally to go to. It’s not clear whether that’s a problem in some communities, because many parents drive their children from one area to another—so from, say, Manurewa to Auckland Central, because they are working parents. So that’s fine; we don’t need to solve that problem and that situation. But we don’t know that, because the standards aren’t set in such a way that it would be clear that that was a policy problem that needed to be solved. Under the old provision, though, there was still a reason and a purpose for the regulator to make sure that that problem to be solved was a problem that could be solved. Under the current provision, the formulation “set and implement minimum standards to provide for” is about providing minimum standards for those providers of education in whatever location they happen to be in to meet the standards that are required of them. That’s fine if you want to take that approach, but it is a change, because there is a policy problem when parents can’t access these services that they need in the locality in which they need them.
The question, then, of the Minister is: is that deliberate or are you meant to read that “to provide for quality early childhood” as if there is still a requirement that, somewhere, someone—either the secretary or the director of regulation—knows that there is a policy problem there to be solved around provision, equitable provision or otherwise, just simply geographic provision? And is there a mechanism by which to solve that that is enabled by this probably under new section 14(a), which I’m not seeing?
My second question in this part is around what do these services look like that the Minister has explained that support choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market, because these services, under the old formulation, probably didn’t exist; they’re probably down at an end of the market that we didn’t have under the old formulation. Here’s my guess: they are probably less expensive, they are probably less intensive, they are probably less focused, perhaps, on educational outcomes. There are a range of services for care of children which are outside of the education system at the moment now but they are designed for older children, like OSCAR, like babysitting, which my colleagues have discussed. Is this a new sort of service which will exist under this new formulation in new section 14 which the Minister envisions here, where they are primarily about the labour market participation of the parents, and, if so, meeting that need, and are not meeting needs of educational wellbeing of the children—what does that service look like? What should New Zealanders expect to see, or is there no new service and this is simply existing currently that the sort of provision of day-care services is also meeting that need? That would be a helpful clarification.
Just two further quick points—actually, I’ll have to raise this with the Minister later, but it is about grandparents. There are 10,000 grandparents in New Zealand, as advocated by Seniors New Zealand, who have the care of parents, they are constantly invisibilised in our regulation and our primary legislation; they should be recognised in this new section 14.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Grandparents can be caregivers for the purposes of this Act. There is not any type of new service envisaged that we are putting in place. The principles by which, or the purpose with which, the Director of Regulation will regulate—there’s not any suggestion anywhere here that a new type of service is being created. The member seems to ask why the legislation doesn’t seek to require the supply of early childhood education (ECE). To start an ECE requires initiative, and, by definition, you can’t force someone to take initiative, so we’re not seeking to mandate that people open early childhood centres.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Just one last call on clause 5—from me, anyway—before I move on to the latest section. I appreciate the Minister’s response to my earlier question. Now, when it comes to the purpose of Part 2, I want to check: one of the barriers, currently, for parents—and I understand the Minister clarified that the purpose is to support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market. But one of the challenges we’re currently seeing in early childhood education (ECE) is that even though parents are participating in the labour market, ECE providers are actually too expensive for parents to be able to afford that. That is a really important part, if that is going to be the purpose of what the Minister is proposing.
So I want to check with the Minister in terms of my amendment on this, which is to include a new purpose, which is to ensure a well-resourced public early childhood education system. Early childhood education should be a part of the public system, like schools, and the purpose should reflect that, and I think that will go hand in hand with what the Minister’s proposing under new section 14(b), inserted by clause 5, in terms of parents participating in the labour market, because the parents are, I guess, more encouraged to do that if they are able to have free or cheaper ECE services. But at this stage, that’s not simply the case in terms of the costs. Therefore, to focus on the parents, why would they go into the ECE service and enter the labour market if they’re actually going to be worse off overall in the first place?
So that’s one of my amendments I would like the Minister to consider. Now, on to new section 14A, I have a number of amendments around this as well, and the first one—and the Minister kind of touched on that—under new section 14A(a), when you’re looking at protecting the health and safety and wellbeing of children receiving early childhood education, I think it’s important to give a specific example here, and I want to engage with the Minister on whether he would consider my amendment, which is to include an adequate teacher-student ratio, because this is probably one of the most important things that the sector’s asking for: to have sufficient student-teacher ratios, which would align with the protection of the health and safety and wellbeing of the children. We are seeing, at this stage, that for certain providers, the ratio is stretched to a point that the teacher cannot even take their entitled and legally entitled leave, because the minute they take leave, such as a lunch break, etc., the ECE centre will break ratio, which is not going to be good for the health and safety and wellbeing of the child—because, like the Minister said, that’s probably the most important focus that we have here: the health and safety and wellbeing of the child.
Now, moving along in terms of some of my other amendments, I want to engage with the Minister on improving educational and developmental outcomes, which is 14A(b) of “Objectives”. I think education and development outcomes is really, really, important, but one thing that potentially isn’t covered in that, unless the Minister is able to clarify that it falls under “developmental”, is emotional outcomes and whether that is something that we are going to be seeing as a part of the objectives, because, again, we’re seeing an increasing number of students with higher needs, both in terms of entering into ECE but also in terms of entering into primary school, and that’s an ongoing trend—and whether that is something that the Minister would consider.
Finally, one of my other amendments is to add another objective to new section 14A, and I think this reflects two objectives: one of them is around our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child but also if we are looking at something like this, akin to what we’re seeing in terms of section 127 of the Education and Training Act, in terms of board objectives, maybe for ECE, which is also looking at ensuring that early childhood education gives effect to relevant student rights set out in the Act but also the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act. That’s my final amendment that I want to check with the Minister on.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): There was a lot of, frankly, indecipherable speech there. What I did get out of it was in new section 14A(b), should we add emotional outcomes? Well, actually it’s hard to imagine how to—
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Point of order, Madam Chair. I just want to seek your clarification and guidance on something. We are hearing these little patronising jabs from the Minister. I want to just check with you if that means that it’s an open slather for everyone to start their speech with—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): That’s not a point of order. Holding the House in order is the role of the chair, and I will rule if there is unparliamentary language. I was listening.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Madam Chair—and probably a good example of why there should be more emotional development in early childhood education. But it’s clear that developmental outcomes include emotional development, and the Government has no intention of adding the member’s amendment.
There was a question of whether the Bill of Rights and the Treaty of Waitangi should be added to objectives. I think for people watching this at home, you just have to ask yourself, you’re running an early childhood centre. We’re focused on the quality of the education, the safety of the children, the information provided to the parents. There’s an unreality about these suggestions that maybe they should also be asking about the Treaty of Waitangi and the Bill of Rights. It’s exactly the kind of reason why I recall—and in many ways it’s the genesis of this bill being here—seeing 500 early childhood operators absolutely steaming before the 2023 election, furious at the rubbish that they’ve been subjected to, and not a single member of the then Government fronted, which really astonished me.
We are getting rid of the Australian stuff. We’re putting in law the true purposes of regulating early childhood education so that those people can tap on the sign and have explained to them what it is that we regulate early childhood education for, why that is, and so that all of us can get on better and have more effective services for the youngest New Zealanders. It’s as simple as that.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, it’s time for me to leave the Chair for the lunch break. The committee is suspended and will resume after question time.
Debate interrupted.
Sitting suspended from 1.02 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Visitors
Fiji—Parliamentary Delegation
SPEAKER: Members, I'm sure that you'd want to join with me in welcoming the Hon Sakiusa Tubuna, Chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs from the Parliament of the Republic of Fiji and his accompanying delegation, who are present in the gallery.
Business of the House
Business of the House
SPEAKER: Members, I seek leave for the Hon Jenny Salesa to be appointed as a temporary Assistant Speaker until 11.59 p.m. on Saturday, 29 November 2025. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none. Thank you.
Business of the House
Business of the House
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Point of order, Mr Speaker. Just to try and save getting complaints, I believe you—do we need to do the prayer?
SPEAKER: No, because the House is still in session.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: I just wanted to avoid that, just in case.
SPEAKER: Yeah. No, thank you for raising that. I’m sure that there will be a lot of people watching the broadcast who will wonder why we didn’t start with the prayer today. It’s because the House has sat this morning and this is a break from urgency. Therefore, the House is in continuum from yesterday.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Economic Growth
1. SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Economic Growth: What recent reports has she seen on exporters’ access to United States markets?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister for Economic Growth): The Government welcomes the United States’ decision this week to remove the additional tariffs that had been applied to a range of New Zealand agricultural products, including beef, offal, and kiwifruit. These products represent around 25 percent of our exports to the United States, worth approximately $2.21 billion a year. The removal of these tariffs restores pre - liberation day access for exporters and provides some relief for farmers, processors, and rural communities, and the jobs that they support. This is a positive step in the right direction for free and competitive trade.
Suze Redmayne: How will this benefit New Zealand exporters?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The removal of the additional 10 to 15 percent tariffs is expected to save New Zealand exporters around $330 million in duty costs per year. That, of course, represents a meaningful boost for our agricultural sector, particularly beef, offal, and kiwifruit producers, helping strengthen export revenues at a time when international conditions remain challenging. This also contributes to New Zealand’s wider economic recovery, improving cash flow for exporters that underpin jobs and boost regional incomes.
Suze Redmayne: What has industry said about this change?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, removing the additional tariffs lowers costs for exporters and strengthens New Zealand’s competitiveness in one of our most important markets. Industry has welcomed the decision. Beef + Lamb New Zealand says, “This returns us to a level playing field.”, while the Meat Industry Association of New Zealand notes that “With US production at 70-year lows, New Zealand’s high-quality, safe food and fibre products are needed in that market. This announcement is welcomed and supports our export-led recovery, allowing New Zealand food exporters to compete and contribute fully to a stronger, more resilient New Zealand economy.”
Suze Redmayne: What other actions are the Government taking to increase trade opportunities for New Zealand?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: New Zealand is a trading nation, and this Government set the ambitious target of doubling the value of our exports in 10 years. To progress that, we have expanded work with Gulf partners through the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand Gulf Cooperation Council agreements; launched and progressed free-trade agreement negotiations with India; expanded cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; and reduced non-tariff barriers through regulatory alignment, digital trade tools like e-certification, and targeted market access work across agencies. Together, these steps support more predictable access, lower compliance costs, and stronger export-led growth.
Question No. 2—Health
2. JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) to the Associate Minister of Health: What recent data has she seen about smoking rates in New Zealand?
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health): This morning, results from the New Zealand health survey on smoking rates between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025 were released. While it’s encouraging to see the daily smoking rate across all populations decreased slightly to 6.8 percent, it’s even more encouraging to see that fewer Pasifika are smoking and that the smoking rate for 15- to 24-year-olds is 3.2 percent, down from 19.1 percent when the survey started 13 years ago.
Jamie Arbuckle: What do the results tell us about current smokers?
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: At the broadest level, smoking rates for those aged between 45 and 64 remain persistently high. While Health New Zealand and stop-smoking services have worked to refocus their efforts on this demographic, it takes time to shift the behaviour of people who have been lifelong smokers. The data also show that continued focus is needed to reduce Māori and Pasifika smoking rates, which remain higher than population-wide. To be clear, Health New Zealand and stop-smoking providers continue to work incredibly hard to reach into communities to support those who smoke to quit, through whatever tools work for them, whether it’s gum, lozenges, patches, or vapes.
Jamie Arbuckle: Supplementary. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just wait a minute.
Jamie Arbuckle: What other trends do the data show?
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: I’m particularly interested in digging further into what’s driving a growing gender gap in smoking rates. Smoking rates for women have been noticeably decreasing more quickly than those for men. We’re also seeing a slower but steady growth in Asian smoking rates, which had previously been amongst our lowest smokers. While these trends highlight the need for us to remain agile in how we target our efforts to reduce smoking rates, what we can’t lose sight of is the tremendous progress that’s been made: we have 280,000 fewer smokers than we did 13 years ago.
Jamie Arbuckle: What are the next steps she is considering?
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: As I’ve alluded to, I want to ensure we’re making the best use of our resources, and this includes how best to target the people who are actually smoking. Thankfully, we know young people aren’t taking it up. What we need to focus on is how to shift older smokers, connect with Māori and Pasifika smokers, and reduce the gap between males and females. In addition, I’m considering further regulatory changes that will ensure we have a regime that reflects the harm of products and has appropriate controls on the market. These changes will be informed by recommendations from the Ministry of Health smoke-free advisory group.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has she seen that due to the success of this programme, there is less tax coming into the Treasury of $200 million; and is that going to the tobacco companies, or is the explanation behind that that someone who says that is an economic moron? [Interruption]
SPEAKER: That’ll do—that’s enough. A very brief answer.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Yes, we can confirm that there are no tax breaks, for those who understand the economy. This is about a budget for reduced revenue.
SPEAKER: Before I call the next question, I’ll just go back to the drill sheet for a Government motion that I understand was circulated to the House.
Question time interrupted.
Motions
Pike River Disaster—15th Anniversary
SPEAKER: Before I call the next question, I’ll just go back to the drill sheet for a Government motion that I understand was circulated to the House.
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice or debate to recognise the anniversary of the Pike River disaster.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I move, That this House notes that 19 November 2025 marks 15 years since the Pike River disaster; express its condolences to family and friends who will forever be profoundly impacted; and thank rescue and support teams for their service on that day and the days that followed.
Motion agreed to.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question time resumed.
Question No. 3—Prime Minister
3. Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: When he told Mike Hosking, in July last year, that “food prices are falling really quickly”, which food prices was he referring to, given staples like milk, cheese, butter, and bread have all skyrocketed in price, under his leadership, some by as much as 50 percent?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I was referring to the 12.5 percent under his Government, when he was Prime Minister, versus the 4.7 percent under my Government, when I’m Prime Minister.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So does he regard a 4.7 percent increase in food prices as “food prices falling really quickly”, and does he think that most New Zealand families would feel that way?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: From 12.5 percent to 4.7 percent, that is a much better result.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he think that the price of an average family’s grocery shop is cheaper or more expensive under his leadership?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, the member, hopefully, does understand inflation, which is a thing where prices keep going up. Food prices have gone up 4.7 percent. It’s because dairy and meat prices and global coffee prices, in particular, have been contributing to that result. But what I say is that when food prices go up 12.5 percent, each year, under his Government, versus 4.7 percent under our Government, and inflation is at 3 percent, that is a better result and a better outcome than what he achieved.
Hon Nicola Willis: Can the Prime Minister confirm that between November 2020 and November 2023, food prices rose a total of 22 percent?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, I can, and that was a function of a Government that increased wasteful spending, drove up inflation, and drove up interest rates. This is a Government that has taken inflation down, has had eight interest rate cuts, and food inflation at 4.7 percent—we’d love it to be lower, but it’s much better than 12.5 percent.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: If his Government has fixed the cost of living crisis, as he’s claimed, why are there now 650,000 New Zealanders—one in seven—who cannot afford to go and see their doctor?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’d just say, under this Government, we have made the biggest investment around primary GP care by capping it at 3 percent and putting $175 million in. Ninety percent of New Zealanders, if they don’t have a community services card, can access a GP for $70 or less. But, again, the member wants to gaslight his record, but under his Government, GP prices went up 30 percent. Again, the simplest thing that the member could do is come on board and support the extended prescriptions, because, of course, that would free up $105 and actually make sure that a 12-month period, rather than a three-month period, means more GP appointments are made available to everybody.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So will New Zealanders pay more for their prescriptions or less than they would have had the Government not scrapped free prescriptions, as they did when they first became the Government?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: New Zealanders who have long-term medical issues and who need regular medicines can now extend those medicines out to 12 months, meaning they don’t have to go back to the GP to get repeat prescriptions. That saves them $105. It’s a pretty simple issue. It’s not ideological. Just come on board and support it.
Hon David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Government has committed billions of dollars into filling fiscal holes and funding dozens of new medicines for hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders through its careful economic management?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I can confirm that the Pharmac management has got infinitely better. I want to thank the Minister for his contributions around that. We actually did plug a fiscal cliff that was left behind by the previous administration. We put forward $605 million into cancer drugs. We have made a big investment in GP visits. We’re very, very focused on all of our metrics in healthcare, unlike the last Government where it went backwards on everything.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So how does increasing the price of going to your doctor and introducing fees for prescriptions help New Zealanders struggling with the cost of living?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, it went up over 30 percent under Labour, under your Government. That’s how much the GP fees went up—over 30 percent. We have capped them at 3 percent. We have put $175 million in. We are simply saying to people who have long-term prescriptions, extend them out to 12 months and save GP visits, freeing up opportunities for other folk to be able to get into their GP much faster.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does he accept responsibility for the fact that there are now 98,000 more New Zealanders smoking or vaping daily than when he became Prime Minister and that New Zealand has plummeted from second in the world to 53rd in the world, when it comes to the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index, falling further and faster than any other country on Earth?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, first and foremost, if I could deal with the last bit first, the Tobacco Industry Interference Index, which, actually, is not a credible report, because when Brunei is ranked number one in the world and they’re smoking rate is 17 percent, it’s not the best the thing I’d be putting my store of knowledge into. But I’d also just say to the member that New Zealand has the third lowest smoking rate in the OECD, and we are at 6.8 percent. That is very good progress when you consider the UK is at 11.9 percent, the US is at 11.6 percent. When you look at Australia, it’s at about 8.3 percent, Canada is at about 8.2 percent. We are making good progress, but we are now dealing with a small group of hard core smokers that we actually need to continue to work hard at, and, encouragingly, when you look at 15-to-24-year-old smoking rates, they are well below 5 percent—well below 4 percent—at 3.2 percent. That’s a good thing. That’s a generational shift.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the Prime Minister is correct with respect to that false report that had, for example, Burkina Faso way ahead of us, when their smoking is far higher than ours; the question is, why did Morning Report run that rubbish, unchallenged, earlier this week?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I don’t know, but it’s clearly not a credible report.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir.
SPEAKER: Point of order. I’ll have to say that I’m tempted to actually ask for the question to be asked again because there was a comment made across the House during that question.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Yesterday, sir, you required a member to commence a question without statement and with a question word. That is consistent with Speakers’ ruling 187/7. We would ask that that direction be applied consistently across all members.
SPEAKER: Yes, most certainly. That last question started with the word “can”. Prime Minister?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’ve answered it.
SPEAKER: Oh, you’ve answered that one. I missed that part.
Question No. 4—Infrastructure
4. Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) to the Minister for Infrastructure: What reports has he seen on New Zealand’s Infrastructure Pipeline?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister for Infrastructure): This week, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission released its quarterly snapshot report on the infrastructure pipeline for the quarter ending 30 September. It shows the value of infrastructure initiatives in the pipeline has grown to $275 billion, an increase of $38 billion from the previous quarter. It’s great news for the construction sector and for economic growth. The value of initiatives with a confirmed funding source increased from the previous quarter up by $56 billion to $181 billion. Overall, the pipeline now contains over 12,000 projects that are under way or being planned.
Dr Carlos Cheung: Why is the national infrastructure pipeline important?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The pipeline signals upcoming activity to the market, helping people plan ahead for major projects so they can hire, train, and retain key staff. We are working hard with infrastructure providers to improve the quality of information into the pipeline and also to raise the visibility of the pipeline itself. It is quite common to hear some people, including commentators and MPs in this House, say, “What we need is an infrastructure pipeline.” I agree. The truth is we have one.
Dr Carlos Cheung: How many infrastructure projects are under construction?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There are 2,500 infrastructure projects under construction across the country with a further $10.5 billion of initiatives in procurement that will begin work shortly. In the September 2025 quarter, New Zealand was building over 680 water projects, 590 transport projects, 80 school projects, and 35 health and hospital projects. Around 320 initiatives under construction are valued at over $25 million each. We’re looking forward to seeing this grow over time.
Dr Carlos Cheung: How many infrastructure projects are under construction in Auckland?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I know that member will be very interested in Auckland. The infrastructure pipeline shows there are around 800 projects being delivered in Auckland, with a further 100 projects in procurement that will begin work shortly, including a couple of major transport projects in South Auckland that I know the member will be interested in, alongside his colleagues.
Dr Carlos Cheung: Is the national infrastructure pipeline growing?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, indeed it is. We’re looking forward to seeing it grow further as we address our infrastructure deficit. We’re looking forward to the publication, in the new year, of the National Infrastructure Plan currently under way and under development by the Infrastructure Commission.
Question No. 5—Prime Minister
5. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?
[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he stand by the statement made by his Minister of Climate Change at COP-25 today that “We must keep 1.5 alive, Mr President, and New Zealand is committed.”, and, if so, is he aware that with every action his Government takes to increase our domestic emissions, we will be required to pay more to other countries to reduce their emissions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first leg of the question, yes.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Has the Prime Minister requested, or been provided with, any estimate on the cost of offshore mitigation, which is becoming increasingly necessary to meet our nationally determined contributions (NDCs), as a result of Government decisions to enable more domestic emissions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I said to the member yesterday, we know that NDC target is tough, but we are doing everything we can to meet that goal, and, importantly, we’re prioritising domestic action to do so. But, as I said, we’re not going to send billions of dollars overseas.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Why has the Prime Minister not requested information on the potential multi-billion dollar cost of meeting our nationally determined contribution, which he has previously said he is committed to?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, we’re doing everything we can to meet that. We’ll continue to do so. That’s why we’re taking domestic action to do so, but, importantly we look at our emissions budgets—one and two—we look at our emissions reductions plan, we look at our track in progress towards net zero 2050, and we’re comfortable with the progress we’re making.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he stand by the statement made by his Minister of Climate Change at COP today that “We are committed to transparency arrangements.”, and, if so, when will he be transparent with New Zealanders about our potential $24 billion offshore liability by recording it in Crown accounts?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I want to reassure the member and all New Zealanders that we will just simply not be spending billions of dollars and sending it offshore.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Will the Prime Minister then commit to transparency and accountability by ensuring that that constructive liability under the Paris Agreement nationally determined contributions is recorded on Crown accounts in May next year?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, we have a series of mechanisms in place to make sure that we’re delivering on our net zero 2050 goal. That’s what we’re very focused around. As I said yesterday—I keep saying to the member; I don’t know how many more ways there are to say it—we’re going to give it a good go. But I just want to reassure New Zealanders that we are not sending billions of dollars offshore, and we’re not sending jobs offshore, either.
Hon Shane Jones: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the reference to a constructive liability is actually mythology and there is no legal, enforceable duty that can be imposed on New Zealand to send $24 billion to the Congo in some green, fanciful pursuit?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: That is correct, and I just want to say to the member: we are very focused on delivering net zero 2050. Our plan, which is our domestic plan—we’re doing everything we can to take domestic actions—is making sure that we can deliver that maybe even a bit earlier. That’s a good thing.
Hon Shane Jones: Dreamers! Dreamers!
Hon Marama Davidson: Don’t say that about Treasury.
SPEAKER: Just wait, everyone. Those conversations across the House are not to occur.
Question No. 6—Finance
6. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Does she agree with Nicola Willis in March 2023 that “National will take action to get food prices under control once more”; if so, are food prices now higher or lower than October 2024?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Well, in answer to the first part of the question: yes. In the year to March 2023, when I made that statement, food prices had risen a whopping 12.1 percent in one year. That, of course, was the highest annual food price increase since 1989. As the member knows, since then, food price inflation has come, in the year to October, down to 4.7 percent. And while that is higher than anyone would like, I will take 4.7 percent over 12.1 percent any day of the week.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why did the Prime Minister claim last year that food prices were “falling really quickly”, when the price of mince is up 18 percent, lamb 22.6 percent, and bread is up 52.5 percent in the last year alone?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: As the Prime Minister already explained in answer to an earlier question, it is because one of the marked things that has occurred in the economy under this Government is that food price inflation has come down from its record highs. To put that into context for members: in the period from November 2020 to November 2023, just three years, food prices rose a total of 22 percent. Since November 2023, just shy of two years, they’ve risen a total of 6 percent. So it is an objective fact that food price inflation is under much better control under this Government than it was under the last.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why, despite her announcement in March of the “next steps in the Government’s mission to deliver better grocery prices for Kiwis”, has the price of cheese increased by 30 percent, eggs by 18.5 percent, and butter by 27 percent, in the last year alone?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, I do not wish to patronise the member, but, of course, she will be aware that tradable food items, including particularly dairy items, have been impacted by the strength of global commodity prices. I’ve been advised by Treasury that with export prices recently levelling off, food price inflation is expected to ease next quarter. It is a fact that a lot of food is imported and is also influenced by global markets. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, international dairy prices have recently been rising at more than 20 percent a year. The member may also wish to celebrate with me that veges fell by 10.7 percent in price this month. That is the largest monthly price decrease for veges since November 2021.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why did she claim in July 2024 that “cost of living relief is on the way”, when the cost of electricity is up for the 11th month in a row, 11.8 percent higher than the last year?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because this is the Government that delivered cash to the wallets of every working New Zealander with tax relief, that would have been denied to them by a previous Government—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: No, hang on, stop. There’s interjection and there’s barrage—that’s barrage. Just calm it down.
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because we’ve delivered tax relief, we’ve ensured that families with children in early childhood education are able to get up to 40 percent of their fees rebated, because we’ve ensured that inflation has come back into target, that interest rate reductions have been so significant that it is worth hundreds of dollars a fortnight to many families—that is real cost of living relief.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Well, how many families have actually received the full $250 tax cut that was promised by her in 2023?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, I’m pleased to advise the member that more than 11,000 New Zealand families in the last quarter got a $150 payment out of the FamilyBoost. Now, fortunately, many of those families will have also benefited from the full impact of our tax relief plan, which in some cases also gave them $50 a week. So you add the numbers up—a skill I know that is, you know, a little lacking over there—and you get to $250 a fortnight.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: How would she rate her cost of living performance out of 10, and would that be higher or lower than the 3.9 the New Zealand public have given her Government?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I would describe our work on the cost of living as work that must constantly be in progress. We are not there yet, and anyone who would sit back on their laurels and say they had got that job done would be the wrong person to be a Minister in this Government because we’re a Government that aspires to a lot more for New Zealanders: a faster growing economy, higher incomes, a lower cost of living, more opportunity.
Question No. 7—Tourism and Hospitality
7. MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent reports has she seen on cycle trails in New Zealand?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality): The 2025 evaluation report for the great rides of New Zealand, released yesterday, shows New Zealand’s 23 great rides are pumping $1.28 billion a year into our local economies.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: How much?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: $1.28 billion. The report also shows visitor spending attributed to the great rides jumped 35 percent for the year ending June 2025, compared to the same period in 2021. This is a significant boost for our local tourism market. Riders are spending more on accommodation, food, and hospitality, which is great news for local businesses, jobs, and our economy.
Miles Anderson: What other benefits does the report show?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The report shows that visitor nights in nearby accommodation tallied 4.9 million in the year ending June 2025, which is a 25 percent increase on the 2021 figures. Since being set up by Sir John Key’s National-led Government in 2009, these figures show the appeal of our cycle trails continuing to grow and the real economic benefits they bring to regional communities. Higher spending on accommodation and hospitality goes hand in hand with more people using the trails. We’ve seen over 2.5 million trips recorded for the year ending June 2025, up 18 percent on the 2021 figures. More visitors means more income for local businesses and more job opportunities for Kiwis, and a stronger economy for all of us.
Miles Anderson: Why are cycle trails important?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Together, the 23 great rides receive about a million visitors a year, of whom around 20 percent are international visitors. With these numbers expected to grow, maintaining and improving these trails is a must. That’s why we’ve made recent investments into cycle trail infrastructure, including funding two sections on the Mountains to Sea great ride in Ruapehu and extending the Dunedin Tunnels Trail. We are committed to ensuring that our great rides continue to attract visitors and deliver significant economic benefit so people can keep enjoying the unique experience and landscapes pedalling throughout New Zealand.
Miles Anderson: How will more international visitors support economic growth?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: We know the benefits a thriving tourism and hospitality sector brings to our economy, as tourism directly supports nearly 200,000 jobs and contributes $44 billion to the economy. The data shows that our great rides are growing in popularity, both with international visitors and with Kiwis. We want to ensure that there is greater regional dispersal of visitors, and the great rides are proving very successful in doing this. Our Government is fully committed to supporting the regions to thrive, including by getting more visitors to New Zealand to experience all that we have on offer.
Question No. 8—Environment
8. SCOTT WILLIS (Green) to the Associate Minister for the Environment: How many jobs addressing wilding conifers did Jobs for Nature fund over the course of the programme, and how many roles will be lost when funding is discontinued?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Associate Minister for the Environment): I’m advised that 3,125 temporary positions were created as a result of Jobs for Nature funding for wilding pine control. The previous Government’s $1.2 billion make-work scheme was a time-limited, COVID-era measure, and cost taxpayers $77 per hour of work created. However, we are carrying on with the wilding conifer control programme and have actually maintained funding at a slightly higher rate than Labour’s 2023/24 Budget, but we’re also being careful with where we spend our hard-earned money, ensuring taxpayers that they get value for money. I’d also add that funding for wilding conifer control under the Jobs for Nature banner actually ended in Budget 2024.
Scott Willis: Does the Minister agree that Jobs for Nature funding for wilding pines and conifers has significant value by tackling a major ecological issue and providing meaningful employment for people?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Well, as I’ve said, we’ve carried on with that funding. We’ve managed to find additional funding in the last year for wilding conifer control, and so we obviously wouldn’t carry on funding if it wasn’t working well. That’s what we’re doing.
Scott Willis: Does the Minister accept that some of our regions and rural communities are dealing with significant environmental issues like wilding pines and conifers, and that addressing these problems with programmes like Jobs for Nature provides meaningful employment for people in rural communities?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: One thing we’re not interested in doing is make-work schemes. Where we’ve got a problem and an issue that needs addressing, we’ll address it. It doesn’t mean you have to spend lots of money to create a job to solve a problem. For example, for wilding conifers, one thing we could do is open up conservation land that was previously grazed to grazing again. That would actually generate revenue and actually control some of these wilding pines, at very little cost to the Government. We don’t have to employ sheep.
Scott Willis: What is his response to Federated Farmers of New Zealand spokesperson Richard Dawkins, who said that wilding pines posed an “ecological crisis”, such as through the increasing risk of wildfire, and that while the Government’s new funding was welcome, it “falls well short of what’s needed”?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: I actually had a beer with Richard last night, so we discussed many things on this topic, but what I would say is that we have carried on with the funding. We are trying to ensure that we do it at a much smarter and a more efficient rate. As I said, grazing is a tool that needs to be utilised; using fire—again, a cheap way of getting on control. And, of course, where we’ve managed to find savings, we’ve invested them into this programme. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: There’ll be no discussion or talk across the House while a question is being asked.
Scott Willis: Would he describe the 16,000 jobs and the billions in environmental and economic benefits from the Jobs for Nature programme a success; if so, why are there no plans to renew the programme to continue the success?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: The Jobs for Nature programme was always a time-limited, COVID-era response. It was never intended to be permanent. That is how it was always set up, and it’s come to an end, as it was supposed to.
Question No. 9—Health
9. Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What actions, if any, were taken to mitigate multiple clinical portals in Central and Te Manawa Taki regions described in Health New Zealand document HNZ00092045, and when were these actions taken?
SPEAKER: Before I call the member, I’ve been informed that the answer to this question may be slightly longer due to the complexity of the question itself—although it’d be hard to be longer than some of the answers given today.
Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health): Our Government is focused on ensuring New Zealanders receive the care they need. That is why, as part of our record investment in health, Health New Zealand is developing a 10-year digital investment plan to deliver a modern integrated digital health system that will put patients first. The action referenced by the member was to prioritise investment for consolidation of clinical portals. I’m advised by Health New Zealand that funding has been prioritised and that work has commenced this year. In the Midland region, a core clinicals road map has been developed that includes consolidation of clinical portals and access to diagnostic results. In the Central region, investment has been made in single clinical portal - improvements as well as improving access to diagnostic results and replacing paper-based hospital referrals. The current environment is a complex mix of multiple systems and processes. There are, in fact, over 6,000 data and digital systems at Health New Zealand—approximately one for every 15 staff members. That is the result of years of under-investment and complexity which will take time to fix, but we are absolutely committed to providing clinicians with the modern, effective digital tools that they require.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: When he said in March that he had asked Health New Zealand to re-look at its proposal to cut data and digital staff and projects, how did he scrutinise the proposal to build a single clinical portal?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: There was advice provided to me back in March. There is a digital investment plan under development by Health New Zealand. They continue to invest in our data and digital systems at Health New Zealand, knowing how important that is to clinicians and patients to ensure they get the timely access to healthcare that they need. But as I said in the primary answer, there are thousands of data and digital systems at Health New Zealand. That has not happened overnight and it is going to take time to fix it. The previous Government thought they could simply amalgamate 20 district health boards, put a nice new letterhead on top, and say job was done. Actually, we’re doing the hard work of actually making sure we fix the systems that are required, getting the systems in place. That’s the hard job; that’s what we’re doing.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Will he take responsibility for failed software initiated under his tenure that crashes frequently, delays patient care, is unsafe, and will now take months to fix?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: I imagine she’s referring to the issues at Wellington Hospital, and there is a significant amount of work under way to address that. Recent fixes have improved patient search times. There is a multidisciplinary team being established that is dedicated to identifying and resolving these issues. The vendor is involved in making sure they resolve their issues. Health New Zealand is investigating and resolving access performance bottlenecks in real time and has infrastructure investment under way; it’s looking to accelerate parts of this work to free capacity and improve performance. Health New Zealand is also replacing PCs and hardware where it is identified as a contributing factor. I can assure the House there’s a significant amount of work to address those challenges. As I would say, it’s very easy to amalgamate the DHBs and put a new letterhead on top. It’s much harder to actually do the hard work of bringing the system together. That’s the work we’re doing.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Why won’t he take responsibility for a failure under his tenure that led to a software programme that means people cannot be looked after now?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: We are addressing the issues as they arise. If we’re going to talk about responsibility, maybe she would like to take responsibility for the $100 million—
SPEAKER: No. No, no, no, no—
Hon SIMEON BROWN: —that she cut from digital when she was Minister of Health.
SPEAKER: The Government is going to lose a question today if the attacks on the Opposition continue. Carry on.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: When his Government cut $330 million in funding from Health New Zealand digital, along with 400 staff, and 132 IT projects, what did he think would happen?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, I’d ask the previous Minister what she thought would happen when she cut $56 million of operating costs and $50 million of capital—
SPEAKER: Sorry—sorry. Sit down.
Hon SIMEON BROWN: —In the 2023 Budget.
SPEAKER: You can’t ask that. Try again.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Do I get a repeat of the question?
SPEAKER: Yeah—or a different one.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: When his Government cut $330 million in funding from Health New Zealand digital, along with 400 staff, and over 132 IT projects, what did he think would happen?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, this Government is investing a record $16.68 billion additional over three Budgets into Health New Zealand. We are focused on fixing the problems in front of us, but the reality is, when you’ve got a system where the last Government thought you could amalgamate 20 DHBs and put a new letterhead on top—what did they think would happen? We’re focused on fixing the problems in our health systems, reducing wait-lists, improving the system for patients and clinicians, while they let the system fall apart under their watch.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Does the Minister understand that surgeons need quick access to patient results because, unlike National Ministers, they need to see what they’re cutting before they operate?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, that might sound very funny and be a good social media clip, but the reality is that what we’re focused on is actually fixing the broken system that the last Government left behind—their botched merger, where they thought they could put 20 DHBs together and put a new letterhead on top and say, “Job done.” Actually, we’re doing the hard work—we’re doing the hard work required to reduce waiting times for patients and improve access for New Zealanders so that all New Zealanders can get the timely, quality access to healthcare that New Zealanders need and deserve—something they forgot when they focused on bureaucracy over patients.
Question No. 10—Housing
10. TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Associate Minister of Housing: What recent announcement has he made about Rotorua?
Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing): I am pleased to announce that contracted emergency housing in Rotorua has, effectively, ended with the placement of the last household from CEH—contracted emergency housing—into more permanent accommodation. The number of households in contracted emergency housing has fallen from its peak of over 240 households across 13 motels—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Hold on—wait—
Hon Shane Jones: Out with the gangs—out with the gangs.
SPEAKER: Just wait. That’s utterly ridiculous. You may as well just sit down and not bother, because no one appears to want to hear what you’re saying—particularly from your own side. Carry on.
Hon TAMA POTAKA: The number of households in contracted emergency housing in Rotorua has fallen from its peak of over 240 households across 13 motels, prior to 2023, down to zero today. With the last whānau rehoused, the remaining contracted emergency housing motels are now preparing to return to commercial use and supporting the tourism aspirations that the city, the Government, and particularly Minister Upston share.
Tom Rutherford: Supplementary. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just a moment. You just need to calm it down slightly. The constant, constant comment is not an interjection; it’s a barrage.
Tom Rutherford: How were the emergency housing contracts brought to an end earlier than their original December timeline?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: In spring 2023, the Hon Todd McClay—hard-working Rotorua MP—and I committed to close the contracted emergency housing by December 2025. In December 2024, I advised that all contracted emergency housing in Rotorua would be set to close by December 2025. This exit has been achieved a month ahead of schedule. The Government delivers on its promises and, importantly, with and alongside council, iwi, agencies, and providers—mahi tahi.
Tom Rutherford: What other housing actions has the Government delivered for Rotorua, alongside ending emergency housing motels?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: The Government continues to invest in housing in Rotorua and has a strong pipeline of new housing places, including the 150 social housing places in Rotorua, announced as part of Budget 2024 by the Minister of Finance; 100 new Kāinga Ora homes that are proposed to be delivered over the next year; and 120 or so homes by iwi providers to be delivered. And, of course, the Prime Minister, Minister McClay, and I attended Ngāti Whakauē this year up at Wharenui Road, ongoing work alongside Te Pokapū. We are delivering housing.
Tom Rutherford: How does this result fit into the wider work the Government is doing to fix emergency housing across New Zealand?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: This is part of the Going for Housing Growth that Minister Bishop has been articulating so well over the last couple of years. The community housing provision of 1,500 homes announced in Budget 2024; hundreds of homes that have been procured and collaborated alongside iwi and Māori providers in places like Ohakune, Te Tairāwhiti, Hopuhopu, and Waikato, and indeed other far-flung places in New Zealand. Of course, there have been recent announcements about continuing to support Housing First and transitional housing. This Government is doing the business, and we will not be responsible for a motel and hotel generation.
Question No.11—Housing
11. ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) to the Minister of Housing: Does he stand by the Government’s proposed changes to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): Yes. Those proposed changes were published in July last year, and, clearly, they will undergo some changes as we sync them in to the new planning system, which we will unveil shortly.
Oriini Kaipara: Does he agree that upholding Treaty settlements in Plan Change (PC) 120 also means upholding several co-governance arrangements across Tāmaki-makau-rau; and, if not, can he name the specific co-governance arrangements which do not apply?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, PC 120 is a wee way away from the original primary, but, generally, yes. I’m advised that the Plan Change 120 that the member is referring to has followed a robust statutory process so far, and if the member thinks that it hasn’t, I invite her to write to me and explain why.
Oriini Kaipara: Does he agree that “te tino rangatiratanga o ō rātou kāinga me o rātou taonga katoa” [“the sovereignty over their estates and all of their properties”], described in article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, also applies to urupā and wāhi tapu?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, as the member knows, article 2 of the Treaty is not incorporated into New Zealand law, and so I’m not going to give a jurisprudential discussion around that. I’m obliged, as Minister, to follow the law and we seek to do that, and councils in relation to their discharge of obligations are obliged to follow the operative provision at the moment, which is the Resource Management Act and national direction underneath it. I’m satisfied that that is the case at the moment, but if the member has evidence to the contrary, I’m happy to hear it.
Oriini Kaipara: Can the Minister provide assurances to this House, to the public, and to ngā mana whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau that urupā and wāhi tapu in areas targeted for upzoning and high-density housing will not be affected by proposed changes in PC120?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I’m not trying avoid the question, but if the member wants specific questions about a specific matter like PC120, I’d invite her to put that on primary notice so that I can come prepared to answer those questions. I don’t have enough information to answer that coherently, because I am not responsible for the detailed elements of that plan. If the member wants detailed answers to that, she should have put that on notice, and she didn’t. So the short answer is that I don’t know, but if the member doesn’t think that the operative provisions are working as intended, she should write to me and I will investigate.
Hon Tama Potaka: Does the Minister stand by the immense work—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Hang on—wait. No noise, thank you, from the front bench over there—and over there.
Hon Tama Potaka: Does the Minister stand by the immense work undertaken by the Government on the national papakāinga standard and also the granny flat standard that will support Māori housing aspirations, as well as the significant Māori housing development across Auckland, in places like Ōwairaka, Carrington, Panmure, and elsewhere for Māori and all New Zealanders?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, indeed, I’m very proud in particular of the papakāinga work. Soon there will be a national environmental standard on papakāinga, which will slot into district plans around the country, making it far easier for iwi to use their whenua in the development of papakāinga. I’m also proud of the work that the Land for Housing programme has done, working with post-settlement iwi and other groups in Auckland, and I’m pleased to pick up on the work that the previous Government did in relation to the Carrington development, which the member mentioned, in particular.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you. The Minister is responsible for the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill, which is overseeing wāhi tapu changes. It is expected that the Minister arrives here with the details, given that there’s only been 11 days for that bill to receive submitters.
SPEAKER: Well, that might be the expectation that the member has, but it’s unreasonable, given the primary question that was set down on the sheet today.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Speaking to the point of order.
SPEAKER: Well, I’ve just ruled on it.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The member’s primary—
SPEAKER: Hang on, I’ve just ruled on it, thank you.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it’s nothing to do with fast track.
SPEAKER: Good. Question No. 12—
Hon Shane Jones: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: No, we’re moving on to question No. 12.
Hon Shane Jones: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: I know you want to ask a supplementary, but you’ve run out of them for today. Question No. 12, Tangi Utikere. [Interruption] When the House is ready—your own side—to give you a bit of respect, you may ask a question.
Question No. 12—Housing
12. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Housing: On what date, if any, did he make a specific request to the Cabinet Office for conflict-of-interest advice relating to the city link bridge funding transfer, separate from his regular six-monthly conflict reviews, and what was that advice?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing): I did not make a specific request to the Cabinet Office for conflict-of-interest advice relating to the city link bridge decision. Shortly after my appointment as Minister of Transport, I received advice from the Cabinet Office that I could make decisions on the Melling interchange as Minister, putting aside my role as MP. I acted in accordance with that advice in making the city link bridge decision and didn’t consider I needed further advice from the Cabinet Office. I am confident that I acted in accordance with Cabinet Manual guidance. For example, there is precedent for Infrastructure Acceleration Fund funding variations. As I said to the House yesterday, the Minister of Finance and I agreed to vary a funding agreement for Hamilton City Council, swapping $31.5 million of funding from a bridge to a water project. In this instance, Hutt City Council asked to vary their agreement because they identified a better value for money solution for their stormwater project—wanted to use the savings to fund a walking cycling bridge, as the member knows.
Tangi Utikere: Did he disclose to officials that the city link bridge was a project he campaigned on, and, if so, how was that information recorded and assessed in the subsequent decision-making process?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, as I’ve just said to the member, shortly after my appointment as Minister of Transport I received advice from the Cabinet Office that I could make decisions on the Melling interchange as Minister, leaving aside my role as the MP for Hutt South.
Tangi Utikere: Were any concerns raised about his potential conflict of interest in the reallocation of Kāinga Ora funding, and, if so, by whom?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No.
Tangi Utikere: Did he notify either the Cabinet Office, the Cabinet secretary, or the Prime Minister of any perceived or real conflict prior to signing off on the reallocation; if not, why not?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, all I can do is repeat the answer I gave in relation to the primary, which is: I became Minister of Transport early in 2025 and there was a meeting—as there always is when there’s a reshuffle and Ministers take their portfolios—and I received advice from the Cabinet Office that I could make decisions in relation to the Melling interchange as Minister. I’ve acted in accordance with that advice and I’m confident I’ve acted in accordance with the Cabinet Manual.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order. Sir, we have a situation here that this is the second day where questions of this nature have been asked. Yesterday we covered where, as asked as Minister of Transport, that those questions should go to him as Minister of Housing. We put this question in to the Minister of Transport and the Government transferred it to Minister of Housing. That’s all good. But now we have a situation where the Minister is answering questions as Minister of Housing saying that when he became Minister of Transport, he declared things. Given the nature of this question, I think it’s really important that the Minister is very clear in addressing this question.
Hon Chris Bishop: Well, speaking to the point of order. We transferred the question to housing essentially for completeness, because that is under the portfolio where that decision was made. But ministerial portfolios in relation to these—the portfolio in relation to the Cabinet Manual is essentially agnostic as to the portfolio; it’s about being a Minister.
Tangi Utikere: Did he comply fully with Cabinet Manual rule 2.76, including the requirement to declare any conflict of interest, have that declaration recorded, and transfer responsibility for the matter to another Minister; if so, what evidence exists to show that that was recorded to follow those course of actions?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, as I’ve said to the member a couple of times now, I’m confident I acted in accordance with the Cabinet Manual, and I’ve met with the Cabinet Office to discuss it.
Tangi Utikere: How can he maintain that his handling of the funding transfer met the required ministerial standards when he disclosed nothing, sought no independent advice as to conflict, and declined to delegate this decision?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Ministers don’t seek independent legal advice in relation to these matters. They seek advice from the Cabinet Office, which is what happened.
SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions. Members leaving the House are to do so very quietly.
I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill.
Bills
Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill
In Committee
Debate resumed.
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act, and Schedule 1
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. When we were considering this bill earlier today, we were debating Part 1, so, once again, the question is that Part 1 stand part.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve been listening very carefully to the Minister’s responses, and I’m sure you have been following along behind the scenes. I know that we have interrogated a bit on clause 5, so we are coming shortly to the end of those questions. I do just want to clarify for this committee that, when I referred to the inclusion of or reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in an earlier section, I think the Minister misheard me as wanting a definition. It was actually a question around why Te Tiriti was not included. It was not to define it. I just thought I’d put that on the record.
I have been listening to the Minister’s answers, and I just want to seek clarification, please, on some of the answers that he gave to the Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan regarding section 14. I guess I’ll frame it like this so that it’s really clear for the Minister: we’ve got subsection (a) and subsection (b) both as purposes, and he gave some answers around the common understanding of why a labour market rationale should be supported. When we look at the submissions from some of the big hitters in the sector, they don’t agree with the Minister’s interpretation of labour market forces being as valid as section 14(a), which is around educational outcomes.
Really, what I’m looking at in section 14 is the word “and”, which separates subsections (a) and (b), and whether the Minister sees these as complementary or whether they are mutually exclusive, because if we look at the submission from Kindergartens Aotearoa, they critique it. They say, on page 3 of their submission: “The purpose is narrowed and the interests of children are no longer the primary focus.” If we look at the Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE), they say that the bill’s “purpose, objectives, and guiding principles … [in Part 1 undermine] children’s rights” and position early childhood education (ECE) as labour market support. If we look at Montessori Aotearoa New Zealand, in their submission they said that there is a “Risk that an emphasis on supporting parental workforce participation may overshadow quality improvement goals.” That is in the section under “Key Risks” in their submission. Finally, under the ECE Parents’ Council Aotearoa, they have said: “By embedding workforce participation as a core purpose, the bill shifts ECE away from child development and learning, and family support.”
My specific questions on this: the first one is around whether the Minister believes that the word “and” is sustainable there, or whether that replaced by the word “or”, and what would that mean for the director? In effect, that is what this bill is doing. Is there a hierarchy in those two parts, subsections (a) and (b)? If they do not prioritise the child’s learning, then can he, please, let us know that on the record—or is he saying that children’s learning is still prioritised? In which case, it would be really important to have that on the Hansard so that there can be some kind of accountability to the director in their interpretation of that purpose.
The second question is around what evidence the Minister has—he still hasn’t produced any to support his contention around this kind of common understanding that parents and caregivers want to participate in the labour market. While I accept the contention, as the basis of a policy that is being put into the purpose of Part 2, I’d like to know what evidence the Minister has for that, because he still hasn’t given us the evidence from the sector to say that that is what the sector itself wants.
The other question I have is around whether he agrees with his Minister of Education that all children learn the same way—I have heard the Minister of Education say in this House that all children learn the same way—and the reason I ask that is because of the failure to have a Te Tiriti reference in there. If that is his contention—and I refer to his comment before lunch that Te Tiriti was, in his words, “extraneous” or one of the extraneous matters, and that was a word that he did use—then where is his evidence that all children learn the same way? If there isn’t that, how will he make sure that Māori children are able to get the same learning outcomes?
I still have just a couple more questions on this, and this is really bringing us to the end, I think, of Labour’s questions on this clause.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, perhaps the member could ask those couple of questions now if you’re ready to take another call?
INGRID LEARY: Sure, and then—thank you.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Madam Chair, seeing as she hasn’t taken another call—the question of whether or not parents and caregivers pay to send their children to early childhood education centres, with one of their goals being to go and work, I’ve now addressed this several times. That is one of the reasons parents do it. If anyone wants to dispute that, they can, and the people watching from home can judge for themselves.
There was a question, “Do all children learn the same way?”. No, they don’t, but there is, actually, a science of learning where you can make advances by testing hypotheses, seeing what works, and advancing. That is what this Government is committed to and what Erica Stanford, our education Minister, is committed to. The idea that, somehow, the Government thinks that all children are the same—it doesn’t; it just thinks we should use best possible knowledge when it comes to curriculum and pedagogy, which we do.
Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question on this clause 5, section 14A, “Objectives of Part 2”. Now, I’m not a member of the Education and Workforce Committee that has covered bill, so forgive me if I’m asking a question that members of the committee already know the answer to, but I don’t. I’m interested in hearing the Minister’s answer to my question with regard to section 14A(e). Throughout the regulatory impact statement, it talks a little bit about the current regulations etc., etc., being somewhat confusing, needing to provide clarity for centres, parents, etc.
In Objectives of Part 2 paragraph (e), where it talks about “implementing a licensing and certification system that provides service providers, parents, and caregivers with certainty and clarity, as far as is reasonably practicable, regarding minimum standards for quality services.”, I’d like to know why the wording “as far as is reasonably practicable” is in there, because surely that doesn’t provide certainty and clarity. Why could it not be without those words, where it just says, “certainty and clarity regarding minimum standards for quality services.”? I’m interested to know what “reasonably practicable” means in this particular part. Thank you.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to move on to a new clause. I’m going to move on to clause 7, “The Director of Regulations”. New sections 27A to 27E are a substantial part of this bill regarding the new role that the Minister is creating. I’m going to focus my contribution, this time, on new section 27A, “Director of Regulation”, and also new section 27B, “Functions of the Director of Regulations”. To begin with, because this is something that the select committee and also submitters have raised as a part of that, they just want to get clarification from the Minister about whether, in this case, the Director of Regulations would also be overseeing kōhanga reo and puna reo, as part of their role? If I can get a nod from the Minister—oh, great, thank you, Minister, for that first clarification. In which case, I think that it’s important to bring to the Minister’s attention one of my amendments on new section 27A, which is—in clause 7, new subsection 27A(2)—after “experience and expertise” to specifically include “experience and expertise when it comes to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.
Now, this is not simply us wanting to include Te Tiriti for the sake of including Te Tiriti but actually offers a very reasonable explanation for why that is important for the Director of Regulations, because if the Director of Regulations does indeed—like the Minister has just nodded to and acknowledged—have oversight over kōhanga reo and puna reo without any understanding or background in Te Tiriti, that would, potentially, mean that they can’t really perform their duty or power or functions as effectively as they ought to when they are looking at Māori-medium early childhood education (ECE) services. I want to check with the Minister, first and foremost, if that is something that he would consider under new section 27A.
Now, in terms of new section 27B, we’re looking at two main areas: we’re looking at the “Statutorily independent functions” of the Director of Regulations, but also at “Other functions”. I want to check with the Minister from an “Other functions” perspective. There are a number of things in here that, I think, seem odd, unless the Minister thinks that paragraph (j) does, in fact, cover it. But things like, for example, new section 27B(g)(iii)—“incidents at licensed early childhood services and certified playgroups.”—one would assume that when it comes to incidents, particularly critical incidents, it is important for the relevant health and safety agency—for example, Worksafe—to also be involved as a part of that. Despite the fact that the Director of Regulations may have certain powers and functions, there are specific requirements, as the Minister may understand, in terms of the Health and Safety at Work Act, but there are also relevant regulations as a part of that, in terms of the health and safety of children in an ECE service.
I know that the Minister, specifically, wants to talk about synthesising or distilling some of the regulatory environment, but it is important for the committee to also recognise the fact that the deregulations that we’re seeing across the ditch, in Australia, have led to more critical incidents in ECE centres, as well as a growing trend of unsavoury behaviour that we’re seeing in ECE that may eventuate if we do look into distilling or even deregulating. I do want to check, as a starting point, whether the Minister will consider one of my amendments, which is around the fact that when we’re looking at incidents, for example, and critical incidents, in licensed early childhood education certified play groups, the relevant health and safety agency must be involved as a part of that.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. Lawrence Xu-Nan has quite correctly pointed out that clause 7 is indeed a bit of a heavy-hitting clause in this bill. Nevertheless, we have skipped over clause 6, and I would just like to ask the Minister some questions about it because clause 6 amends section 22 of the principal Act in relation to records. It effectively puts “or the Director of Regulation” after “the Secretary”, so it expands what information early childhood education services must make available to the director. This is referred to in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) at page 38, but there’s also some real caveats in the RIS around this.
On page 33, it notes that the regulatory actions could be seen as punitive by the director. It also confirms again that there was no consultation with providers on expanded information requirements, and at page 30—and this is probably one worth really getting an understanding of from the Minister—is how this new regime is going to deal with the confusion risks during the transition period. That has been highlighted in the RIS at page 30.
If we look at who is going to bear the brunt of this, once again it’s going to disproportionately affect small, Māori-medium, and community-based services, so I have a question for the Minister about what advice he received regarding the impact of this particular clause on smaller and Māori providers. I’d also like to ask the Minister about the Privacy Act implications. Clearly, there is a need for limits on information collection and use. Could the Minister, please, just let us know what rules or protocols will cover this? Will this happen through secondary legislation, and if so, when can we expect to see that, and what will the level of scrutiny of that be? What will the scope of that be, and this is really important given the Opposition’s concerns about the direction of travel, which, in our view, seems to be heading toward a weighting towards privatisation.
How will that data be protected from commercial exploitation? Who will be accountable if there are failures to protect that data, and what are the sanctions? What advice, if any, did he receive about Māori data sovereignty? That has a different suite of issues and concerns that need to be answered. Also, why were providers not consulted on the new information burden?
The totality of the question really is: how will the Minister ensure that information-gathering powers will respect privacy and data sovereignty? Will they follow the same regime as the secretary, even though the director’s powers are more extensive? Are the safeguards to be equivalent, are they not there, or are they intended to be proportionate to the extended powers, and where will they sit?
Then, when I can come back for another call, we’d really like to go into detail on new sections 27A to 27E, in clause 7, where we have a plethora of questions.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. While the Minister's just getting some advice and also potentially responding to some of my earlier questions, I do want to raise a specific example—and a very recent and topical example—when we're looking at the functions of the Director of Regulation and what the Minister for Regulation would then think in terms of the interaction between the new Director of Regulation and the existing function.
The specific example I wanted to address is the recalling of play sand that has asbestos. Currently, that’s going through our schools and also our early childhood centres. The reason I want to address that particular example is that the person who is currently managing that particular incident—that is done by Ministry of Education (MOE); that is currently done by the Deputy Secretary Operations and Integration, and that has a direct line of reporting to the Secretary for Education. But, when you're looking at the Director of Regulation for early childhood education (ECE), it reports to the secretary, but other deputy directors in the MOE don’t necessarily report to the Director of Regulation, and the Director of Regulation doesn't necessarily report to the deputy secretaries. I'm assuming that we're looking at a lateral sort of organisational chart when you're looking at the function of Director of Regulation.
If the Minister wouldn't mind walking us through that, in these sort of situations, when you have currently about 90 early learning service centres that need to have the play sand with asbestos recalled and potentially shut—temporarily closed while we assess the situation—how would the Director of Regulation be able to work with this function? Or, alternatively, the Minister may say that that's actually not the function of the Director of Regulation, and that particular aspect of the operation—integration of the ECEs—still falls within the appropriate deputy secretary within MOE. That is a very topical, I think, example of how this is going to potentially play out on who is going to be the person responsible for the ability to address that particular incident.
Now, in terms of my other tabled amendments, while I'm waiting for the Minister in terms of some of the Amendment Papers that were already proposed—giving the chance to speak to those—I do want to address another tabled amendment that I've got—well, actually, a couple more—and that still is to do with new section 27B. That is that, after new section 27B(k), there should be additional clauses that we're looking at. Both of them covers, in terms of both our obligation under the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, which I mentioned before—that's not necessarily a bureaucracy, as something internationally that we genuinely just signed up to and is held accountable for. In that particular case, I'm proposing to the Minister that, alongside when we're looking at “[carrying] out proactive, regular, risk-based monitoring of compliance by service providers with applicable requirements under this Act”—and that is new section 27B(e)—that there should be a separate clause that talks about carrying out proactive and regular monitoring of compliance alongside the Children's Commissioner against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
I think this is quite an important thing, because also, as the Minister understands, with the passing of the Regulatory Standards Bill, etc., and everything that's attached to that, and how we can look at things like regulatory impact statement, it's also prudent to mention that the bill the Minister himself has brought doesn't actually have a child impact statement attached to it, even though this is probably—arguably—one of the bills that will affect children the most. I think it would have been beneficial for the committee to be able to assess some of the impact it would have to children through that particular assessment. Those are my few questions for the Minister at this time.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to take a call on this bill. I wasn’t in the Education and Workforce Committee, so I have been following the conversations with interest. I just have a couple of quick questions for the Associate Minister of Education, looking at what the difference is between the role of the secretary and this new role of a Director of Regulation. I think that’d be really helpful for folks at home to sort of try to understand why there is this extra layer.
To support the contributions made by my friend and colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan around the inclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi—I support the reasons that he did so, because kōhanga reo and puna reo have a very specific pedagogy and a specific role to play as well. Getting those answers, I think, would be important—but just to add to that question as well, around the role of te reo Māori quality assurance, if I can put it that way, because if you’re going to kōhanga reo and you’re going to puna reo, it’s going to be all in Māori. How will that function work in terms of this Director of Regulation? How are they going to assess whether the appropriate standards, whatever, are being met as well? I think that’s a really important question for the Minister to answer. It’s specifically about the quality of te reo Māori language quality assurance, and also the way that it links to te reo Māori pedagogy and curriculum as well, because you can’t just walk into a kōhanga reo and not understand the language and then be able to do this function. I would be interested to hear some answers from the Minister around how that function fits in with the very specific role that kōhanga reo and puna reo have as well.
Also, I was looking at sections 27B(e) and (g), inserted by clause 7, which are “(e) to carry out proactive, regular, risk-based monitoring of compliance by service providers with applicable requirements under this Act:”, and “(g) assess and respond—(i) to complaints about licensed early childhood services and certified playgroups:”. Perhaps this has been covered before, so apologies to the committee if it has been. I’m thinking about the role that teacher-pupil ratios will have, early childhood ratios. As the Minister probably does know, and probably the committee knows as well, that is a point of contention within the sector as well, and it’s always different as well. If you’re looking after—I’m just thinking about my own kids—a bunch of two-year-olds, they’re all different than if you’re taking care of children that are younger than two-year-olds, and, of course, as they get older as well. What role does the Director of Regulation play? And things around teacher-pupil ratios: is there a role; isn’t there a role? I would also be interested to hear the Minister’s response, and how that could be possibly linked, or not, to WorkSafe considerations as well, because if you’re trying to juggle lots of kids and you’re just one person and they’re babies, that’s a lot of work. What compliance tasks will the Minister expect this Director of Regulation to do? What are the functions that they could have as well?
I’ll just recap for the Minister. Just for someone like myself who wasn’t able to get to the select committee, the differences between the secretary and the director of regulation—also, those questions around the inclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, not because it’s just a constitutional element, which I think is important, but because it defines particular early childhood spaces such as kōhanga reo and puna reo. How will the function of this Director of Regulation check on the quality of te reo Māori language assurance and quality? My last question is just around ratios as well: how will that work? We do want teachers to be able to do their job safely, to look after our kids safety as well—it’s incredibly important. If there is some function that is lined out there, it’d be good to hear that.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I’ll address, quickly, a number of questions that have been asked. Jo Luxton asked what “reasonably practicable” means. It means what it sounds like: people should be required by the law to do what is possible, but they can’t be asked by the law to do impossible things. It’s used in a lot of drafting. I faced a similar question, I think over the Regulatory Standards Act, or maybe it was the Medicines Amendment Act, but that should be a familiar term to people who are paid to make laws in New Zealand. It’s through many of the laws we make.
Lawrence Xu-Nan and Teanau Tuiono both asked about incorporating a Treaty clause, particularly in relation to kōhanga reo and te puna reo. We could do that, but I would stress to them that actually New Zealand is a place with many settlers of different backgrounds and many different types of education. It’s not obvious why we would put one of them in legislation. What we want is people who work for all children, and that means that you may look at section 14(a): the select committee actually said “education that allows all children to establish strong foundations”.
Lawrence Xu-Nan said he had an amendment in relation to that. I’ve addressed this issue of the Treaty several times; we’re not going to accept that amendment. There was also an amendment suggesting that WorkSafe be involved. WorkSafe is already involved, because this is a workplace under the Health and Safety at Work Act; that’s played out where the Ministry of Education and the WorkSafe have worked together over the coloured sand issue that’s being dealt with as we speak, so there’s no need for WorkSafe’s role to be put into this legislation.
Ingrid Leary asked a series of questions about clause 6, about information and the custody of information and respect for information. She even asked about Māori data sovereignty. Quite simply, all that clause 6 of this bill does is shift a role from the Secretary of Education to the Director of Regulation. That person will be subject to exactly the same requirements, acting under the Public Service as they would be, regardless of what particular role they had or what we called it, so there’s not actually a substantial change there, in clause 6. That’s relevant to what she’s talking about.
Then there was a question, I think, about—Lawrence Xu-Nan asked if the Director of Regulation would be accountable to the secretary. I think it’s really helpful, I’d say to Dr Xu-Nan, to read what it says here: the Director of Regulation is appointed by the secretary. They have to be an employee of the ministry, which the secretary is in charge of. I think it should be pretty clear: if you work for someone and they appoint you to a position, you’re accountable to them. I can’t make it any simpler than that, much as the member might need me to.
Then there was a question of whether there should be a child impact statement added, in some sort of analogy to the Regulatory Standards Act. No, we have no intention of doing anything like that.
Finally, there was a question from Teanau Tuiono in relation to new section 27B and the functions of the director and whether the director would be a policy maker, for example, setting the ratio of students to teachers. Well, the answer to that is no, and part of the purpose of what we’re doing here, and the reason that we’re setting it up this way, is that we want the person who makes the policy and the person that enforces the rules to be different. We wouldn’t want, for example, the police to be making the laws and then enforcing them. We try to have a separation, and that’s generally considered now to be best practice regulation; that’s what we’re doing here, in part. It’s one of the things that we’re doing with this bill, so that will continue to be made by the Government, advised by the Ministry of Education, not by this director.
Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two questions for the Minister. One's a new one, but the other one is that I just want to seek some clarification from the Minister with response to my earlier question. I accept what he has said there, and I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to understand really clearly—really clearly—where “as far as is reasonably practicable” is used in new section 14A(e), “Objectives of Part 2”, inserted by clause 5. I want to understand why those words are in there when it says clearly that you're trying to implement—“implementing a licensing and certification system that provides service providers, parents, and caregivers with certainty and clarity … regarding minimum standards for quality services.”
Why are those words “reasonably practicable” in there when this is going to be implementing a system that provides clarity and certainty regarding minimum standards for quality services? I still don't understand why those words are in there, and I'm genuinely not trying to be awkward when I ask that question. I wasn't a member of the select committee, so I really am keen to understand that, when it should be something that should be quite clear and easy for the objectives to be.
The other question I have is around the Director of Regulation, new section 27A, inserted by clause 7—that “The Secretary must be satisfied that the person has the appropriate experience and expertise to perform and exercise the functions, duties, and powers of the Director of Regulation.” What is deemed to be the appropriate experience and expertise? Are they going to be required to have a sound knowledge of the early childhood sector or otherwise? Is that going to be a requirement or not? I note some of the questions that were raised by the Kindergartens Aotearoa association with particular regard to this point.
What mechanism is in place to ensure that, in discharging their duty, the director is not in conflict with ministry policy and practice? Do they remain an employee of the ministry when their responsibilities will sit with the Education Review Office?
I'm interested to know about the appropriate experience and expertise. Who will decide that? What is deemed to be appropriate experience and expertise? Surely someone who’s going to be in charge of a sector like that should have—it would be good for them to have—certain knowledge of the early childhood sector and how it has operated in the past and what it is that the Minister is trying to achieve going forward in the future with early childhood education service as well. It would be really good if the Minister could clarify.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I will just try once more on “reasonably practicable”. I guess the point is that the law has to be upheld, and it could be upheld in a court. If the law didn’t say “reasonably practicable” and it said that the regulator had to provide certainty and clarity to parents, without any qualification, then it’s a standard that could never really be reached, because there would always be somebody who said that something was too uncertain or unclear. You can test whether a person has done all of the things that they reasonably could have done, so it actually allows the law to be followed and interpreted, whereas it could become meaningless if it’s a standard that can never practically be reached.
As far as the appropriate knowledge and expertise, the bill doesn’t say what the appropriate knowledge and expertise for the Director of Regulation is. What the bill says is that the person who appoints them has to be satisfied that they have the appropriate knowledge and expertise. Now, in that circumstance, the person might well be asked, “What did you think was appropriate? Why did you think this person was the right person?” and they would have to give their reasons, and that would be subject to public scrutiny. Like many of the purposes of this legislation, we are trying to ensure that the purpose of regulating and the quality of regulation is set out in law so that ordinary people can say, “Hey, you’re not doing this right. Parliament said how you should do it.” It’s all about giving people some standing and some status and holding people accountable.
TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank my colleagues over here for defending Māori education, and in this case our kids. I want to stress the point, the relevance, and the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education legislation and endeavour over the last 50 years. This is not just a case of “Can you put pop the Treaty in?”, and this speaks more broadly to the broad attack on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the removal of it in education, from preschool all the way through to university.
Now, it’s been the adherence to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the requirement of adherence to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in education legislation over the last 50 years that has taken Māori from a place of being almost boxed out of education, be it in preschool or university, in the 1950s and 1960s that has been hard fought through the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s, all the way up to today to us producing the highest results in education—the highest in the country. Have a look at NCEA, have a look around, and have a look at the participation rates of today versus 1980. Have a look at it all. It all tells us that the inclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is part of the success.
The Māori education model has been tried, tested through fire and through everything, and has come out still going strong, OK? It’s the best educational model for Māori. It’s the same in preschool. It’s the same in puna reo, in kōhanga reo. It’s the same in kura kaupapa and wharekura. It’s not lost on me that we have a Minister here who’s actually using the kura kaupapa model to promote his other endeavours in education. It’s just beyond me.
OK, so it has been the adherence to Te Tiriti o Waitangi that has enabled all of that development. So why, oh why, in 2025, are we taking it out, getting rid of it, stripping it back? We’re making it, oh, just, you know, no longer a commitment. It’s completely beyond me—it’s completely beyond me.
There has been generation after generation of Māori academics who have stood up and proposed these things—educational hypotheses, completed doctorates—and who became professors, led universities, and started their own to prove all of these things. All of it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt—that’s what the evidence tells us—and yet here we are, having to defend the Māori science of learning—the Māori science of learning.
OK, these things have been done already and they’ve been proven. The link between language and knowledge system is a known thing. In te iwi Māori, we call that
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and what’s known is that it is connection, and the earlier you can get it in, the more powerful those young people become along their educational journey. Proven fact—proven fact—time and time and time again. Then here we are, with someone not so schooled in educational endeavour, leading the bandwagon of getting rid of the Treaty. It is absurd—it is absurd and obscene. It’s obscene, because as I think about the 30 percent of young Māori who are going to form the labour workforce of this country into the future, you are talking about undermining their educational experience. I just cannot fathom what the reasonable answer is, and I cannot fathom it because there is not one there.
So as I think about these things—these are all in Part 1, by the way—and as I read through it, there’s no requirement for anyone in this piece of legislation to give any thought to anything a young Māori learner or their whānau might need. How can that possibly be a community, family, or a representative model where one culture is just completely sidelined?
If we want to talk about the relevance and the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, you’re talking about the constitutional founding document, the document that gives constitutional validity to Māori and constitutional validity to every other person in the country, and the Minister thinks, “Huh, well, there are a lot of us in this country. Why would we put that one in?” We’d put it in because it represents every single person in the country—that’s why. So I’d love to hear any response this Minister has to any of the things I’ve put forward. Kia ora tātou.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to take a question from Teanau Tuiono, but I am looking for new—
Teanau Tuiono: Yeah.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): And questions.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): It’s a couple of quick questions, and to acknowledge the responses so far from the Assistant Minister of Education. I do hear what my colleague Tākuta Ferris was saying, as well, in terms of Te Tiriti, because, for a number of us, that would solve a lot of the issues.
We were talking earlier about the role that the Director of Regulation would play, and I haven’t yet heard an answer around how when you go into, say, a kōhanga reo or a puna reo, you don’t have the language or cultural competency—how is that going to work practically? That’s what I want to know. This person will have a number of new functions under this legislation. How are they going to understand them, let alone all the other early childhood centres which operate in other languages, as well? So it’s a practical question about exactly how that particular element would work.
There are a number of us that think that if you put Te Tiriti in there, in the references—and I just acknowledge the tabled amendments by my friend Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, which would take care of that and ensure that that would be taken care of. But if they’re not in there, how is that function going to be carried out in a way which is useful? If they don’t understand the language, it makes it very, very tricky if they don’t understand the cultural context as well, and there has to be a depth of language, as well, in order for that to be useful.
The other quick question that I have is around ratios. I heard what the Minister was saying that this is about compliance, and if they’re not compliant, then that should have a feedthrough with policy. I understood that. But what happens with the situation where you have complaints that are arising because particular early childhood centres are breaking ratio, where you have too many kids or babies per teacher, and that’s creating unsafe working conditions for both the tamariki and mokopuna, and also for the teachers, as well? Does that fall into the function of this Director of Regulation? Are they able to make recommendations to the policyholders or to the policy creators, as well?
My understanding is that ratios are determined by Order in Council, and the one that we have—unless we’ve changed it since I was following this issue more closely—is still stuck on what the old ratios were years and years ago, even though the research is telling us “Actually, you’ve got to be able to deal with our babies differently, as opposed to our toddlers.”, and so on and so forth. So my question is what is that link, and I ask if the Minister could be give a specific answer around the ratio question. If complaints arise because of the functions of the Director of Regulation in terms of breaking ratio, or all of those other issues that I’ve talked about, what is the follow through so that you can get some policy change?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Look, in the first speech, there was actually nothing of substance to respond to. In the second speech, from Teanau Tuiono, he’s asked, well, what happens if the rules are not being addressed? New section 27B in clause 7 is the section that he might look at. It’s the job of the Director of Regulation to address breaches of the rules.
He's then asked me about the fact that there may be some people who would argue that the research suggested ratio should go up, and others would suggest that they should go down, but, as I’ve said, that’s not part of this bill. That’s not something this Director of Regulation should decide. But section 27B(b) does say that they should enforce the rules that are there.
He's also asked about language and culture, and asked whether people will be confident, given that you’ve got Māori there as first settlers, and you’ve had many waves of settlers since then—people with different aspirations, language, and culture. If you go into a place which might be Chinese, for example, will they be able to speak to that? Obviously, when you come to hire people, hiring people that are capable and confident is going to be important. But that’s not something in this legislation, other than perhaps the requirement that the person who is hired as the Director for Regulation has the capability required in the opinion of the Secretary for Education who hires them.
SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendment to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 440 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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendment agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 4, amending the new definition of early childhood education to insert “that opts to be certified under this Act”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Can I please ask people to be prompt with their voting, and also just to make sure that under Speaker’s ruling 71/3 that it’s just the person who calls out gives the vote for or against and the number that they’re voting for, and nothing extra.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 4, deleting the words after “a playgroup” in the new definition of early childhood education, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, replacing the word “system” with “service” in new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting words after “system” in new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Mr Willis, I’m just going to ask you if you can be just a little bit quicker getting to your feet with those votes, please. Otherwise, start standing up a little sooner.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting the word “minimum” from paragraph (a) of new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, replacing paragraph (b) of new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting paragraph (b) of new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, adding the word “grandparents” after “parents” in paragraph (b) of new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (c) into new section 14, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new paragraph (c) in new section 14, relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting new paragraph (c) into new section 14 regarding resourcing for early childhood education, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (aa) into new section 14A, regarding children’s rights and welfare, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, replacing “receiving” with “participating in” in paragraph (a) of section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting “as the primary objective under this Part.” in paragraph (a) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting the words “including adequate teacher-student ratio” in paragraph (a) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting the word “emotional” into paragraph (b) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (ba) into new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting “grandparent” after every instance of the word “parent” in new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, amending paragraph (d) of new section 14A, regarding monitoring and reporting of the performance of the early childhood education system, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, adding the words “geographic availability and equitable provision” to paragraph (d) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, adding the words “availability and price” to paragraph (d) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, adding the words “geographic location and availability” to paragraph (d) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting “as far as is reasonably practicable” from paragraph (e) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting the word “minimum” from paragraph (e) of new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, relating to funding and resourcing for teachers and staff, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, relating to implementing a curriculum that gives effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, relating to relevant student rights, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, relating to the elimination of forms of discrimination, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 14A, relating to the reporting on early childhood education, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new section 14B headed “Kōhanga reo”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapi-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new section 14B headed “Kaiako pay equity”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new section 14B headed “Equity-based funding for Māori medium education”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Looks hard work—take a break in between if you’re tired.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): In response to the question from the Hon Kieran McAnulty, a break in between would not be very helpful.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Well, it’s just she was tired, Madam Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I know, I can see that, but a break would not be helpful
The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new section 14B headed “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. In light of the comments from Kieran McAnulty being tired of voting, I seek leave for the remaining Opposition amendments to be skipped in terms of voting.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. I think everybody knows that that’s not what I said—you certainly know that—and I don’t think that leave should be taken seriously when it is quite clearly a misrepresentation of what has been said. The comments were between you and myself, not between the Minister and myself, and you, at the time, took it as a light-hearted comment. It shouldn’t lead to leave being sought for those purposes.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Speaking to the point of order, I was aware that the proposal that I made was not his solution to his problem. I was just giving him my solution to his problem.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, thank you for those points of order. Look, I will say that some of these times in the committee are quite tedious, and I do question what value the public who’s watching on TV gets from this process, but it is a political thing that’s been going backwards and forwards for many years. Given that there’s some more votes in front of me, I think we’ll just carry on. If anyone does want to withdraw their amendment and we have a rest, they’re more than welcome to.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, inserting a new section 14B headed “Clarity of obligations”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. I’m not sure how the member from New Zealand First voted, I don’t believe that to be clear, and, just for clarity, I’d like him to say in either of the official languages how it is that he voted.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you. Would the member like to repeat his vote?
Dr David Wilson: Eight votes opposed.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 6, replacing “Director of Regulation” with “Regulations Review Committee of Parliament”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 6, inserting the words “if the information relates to regulatory compliance or efficiency only”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 6, inserting the words “by agreement of the Secretary”, be agreed to.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, amending new section 27A(2), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting the words “including Te Tiriti o Waitangi” into new section 27A(2), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting subsection (5) into new section 27A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting the words “alongside the relevant health and safety agency” into new section 27B(k), is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting paragraph (j) into new section 27B, relating to compliance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting paragraph (j) into new section 27B, relating to compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, amending new section 27D(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting paragraph (ca) into new section 27D, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting paragraph (ca) into new section 27D, relating to the role of qualified teachers and staff, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 7, deleting new section 27D(d)(ii), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, replacing paragraph (aa) of new section 27E(3), relating to delegation of functions, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting a new section 27F headed “Annual Māori education equity report”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting a new section 27F headed “Monitoring of racism and discrimination”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting a new section 27F headed “Māori early childhood workforce development”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting a new section 27F headed “Māori Standards Authority”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 9, inserting subsection (5) into new section 619A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, inserting subsection (5) into new section 619A, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Just before we start the next vote, I’d just ask the member not to interrupt the member who is so diligently doing all that voting over there. Thank you.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to clause 10 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Tākuta Ferris’ tabled amendment to clause 11, amending new section 636(2)(b), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Part 1 as amended be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 1 as amended agreed to.
Part 2 Consequential amendments to other legislation, and Schedule 2
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to Part 2, the debate on clause 14—“Consequential amendments to other legislation”—and Schedule 2. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Part 2 consists of one clause. It is clause 14, “Consequential amendments”, where it says, “Amend the legislation specified in Schedule 2 as set out in that schedule.” It goes on in Schedule 2 to make a series of amendments to the early childhood and the playcentre regulations, both from 2008. These are changes and cross-references, replacing the word “Secretary” with “Director of Regulation” for example, because as we know, the purpose of this bill is, in part, to create the Director of Regulation who takes on the role the secretary would have played.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. Part 2 has been described, previously this afternoon, as being mainly technical, and I think he’s given us a flavour of his view of that. Indeed, it could look administrative. But actually, the system level impact of Schedule 2 is significant. That is because it operationalises the full removal of the Ministry of Education from regulation decision making in early childhood education (ECE).
So this is about the decoupling. Unfortunately, we were not really able to interrogate what that would mean in the previous debate, which was shut down rather early in my view, because there were supplementary questions around the level of uncertainty in the roles of the secretary and the new director. What this Schedule does is it replaces the Secretary with the new Director of Regulation in every clause that deals with licensing, and there are many of those and we will have some questions around that, specifically around including the conditions of license and suspension and withdrawal of licenses.
It also regulates monitoring and inspection. We did not get to interrogate the lack of safeguards around the new enforcement powers that the director has, which are broader than the secretary. Again, enforcement actions: the same issue there around safeguarding, notification to parents, notices of intention to take action, compliance processes, minimum standard check, permission to vary ratios and premises uses, and many of the clauses there are also relating to that.
I don’t think we heard adequate answers from the Minister regarding some of the questions that were raised by the Green Party on that. That speaks to educational quality, to ECE pedagogy, to curriculum support, teaching workforce issues, and licensing and regulation that will now sit in different agencies. Let’s remember, also, that the licensing is currently done by Ellen MacGregor—Reid, who has been around this building for about 10 years. There will be transitional situations that will arise. We haven’t been able to interrogate what will happen to the case law and the decision-making whakapapa, if you like, when that changes. As I’ve said, the Director of Regulation has broader delegation powers than the secretary did, but there are no safeguards in this schedule.
So we still have unanswered questions around conflicts of interest, private sector influence, profit driven quality drift, and less focus on education. I want to ask the Minister a few questions specifically, but I also want to pick up something that he himself said, which was he talked about this being a bill of best practice. That this is about having separation of powers essentially, and he mentioned that in relation to regulation. But I would like to point the Minister to the regulatory impact statement where there was a lack of consultation. But also, there have been select committee submissions that have talked about the strong pedagogical oversight and effective transition from ECE to school requiring clear public accountability and having a model where the secretary and director role are together, where there is one overarching governance structure.
So ECE may be the outlier as far as regulation goes, but that is what the OECD report says. It’s in a report called Starting Strong. It was alluded to by submitters. In page 126 to 129 it talks about when you decouple there are uneven service qualities, there’s confusion amongst parents, there’s regulatory inconsistency, weak accountability, gaps between educational goals and regulatory enforcement. On page 21 of that report, it also, basically, foreshadows what this bill is exactly doing in Schedule 2 by wholesalely transferring over these regulatory making powers without oversight by creating a semi-autonomous regulator, it allows a third-party delegation of regulatory functions, and it moves oversight away from an education-led framework.
So that raises a whole lot of questions, which I will be asking, about accountabilities, because we don’t see those powers elicited and alluded to and framed correctly in legislation. This is just a wholesale of moving from one role to another under, presumably, secondary regulation.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): The member is attempting to debate a series of policy questions; these were resolved in the debate on Part 1, and, indeed, in the select committee and in the first and second readings, as well as the policy developments and the Ministry for Regulation’s review, which engaged thousands of people as far back as last June, nearly 18 months ago. This is a schedule which changes a series of words—mainly replacing “Secretary” with “Director of Regulation” in order to give the consequential amendments to the things agreed in Part 1.
Furthermore, the member has made a suggestions that this somehow moves the regulator to the Education Review Office. It does not do that. There is a separate bill before the House which does do that, and we can debate that in that bill, in the appropriate place. So far as this bill goes, it simply shifts the position within the Ministry of Education from the current secretary to someone appointed by the secretary. And, by the way, Ellen MacGregor-Reid, great as she is, has been in the job for two weeks. The person who is appointed to this role might well have longer experience than her.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do agree with the previous speaker, Ingrid Leary, that this section—although, despite what the Minister is saying, it's a switching of various numbers—simply highlights the scope of the role of the Director of Regulation in comparison to the Secretary for Education. Now, before, when we were discussing Part 1—and I'm going to say the same thing that the Minister said to me. If the Minister had listened to my questions carefully, the Minister would have remembered that I didn't ask regarding the interaction between the Director of Regulation and the secretary but, in fact, the Director of Regulation and the deputy secretary. The instance I raised was around the place and asbestos, because in those it was the deputy secretary who had to manage some of that—specifically, the Deputy Secretary of Operations and Integration.
Coming to Schedule 2 of Part 2, I still would like to know from the Minister how that organisational chart will potentially look when you're looking at, potentially, a lateral appointment. Again, I stress that the Director of Regulation will report to the secretary, but so would other deputy secretaries. How would the Director of Regulation interact with the broader Ministry of Education (MOE) when you are determining some of these regulations, as we see in Schedule 2? Again, a person may have that in title, maybe functions in power, but how would that work in terms of potentially overstepping what is within their mandate? Or if the mandate overlaps between the role of a secretary or deputy secretary and the role of the Director of Regulation, especially when things overlap multiple areas? Early childhood services, for one, as well as schools, as in the example that I provided previously. So I do want to check with the Minister that, for someone who does say they want to see a reduction in regulation and bureaucracy, this has inadvertently created a different layer of bureaucracy that someone needs to manage or look into. That covers most of the regulations, specifically, when you're looking at some of the ones that are to do with even, let's say, for example, ratio, which is Schedule 2 of the regulations.
Just a simple question to the Minister: how does the Director of Regulation interact with the broader MOE in that organisational chart? Again, not to do with the secretary.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I can only reiterate that the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan is openly trying to relitigate debate from Part 1, where the questions were addressed. He may not have liked the answers, but they were certainly given. This part is very narrow; it simply makes consequential amendments to give effect to matters that we’ve already debated.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Just before I call the next speaker, this schedule and this part, which I can see is really narrow, does actually bring in the fact that you can talk about the secretary and the director or regulation, because that is, really, as I can see, what this whole schedule is about. Then it refers to various other regulations that are affected by the change that is being proposed.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, just to give an example of that, if we look at what is being amended in the early childhood services regulations, there are quite a number of regulations to do with applications for licences, or a probationary licence, classes of licences, home-based licences, suspension of licences, circumstances where licences are changed or replaced, appeals, health and safety, and so on.
These are quite significant matters of public interest when it comes to the safety and efficacy of early childhood centres and play centres. I don’t think we have had adequate explanation from the Minister, either in this debate or in previous ones, about the areas where the regulatory impact statement itself has identified that there is some area of potential confusion and overlap between the role of the secretary and the director. Just in relation to the Minister’s comment about the secretary, he is definitely right—she has just been appointed in the last two weeks. The point is that she has been in the role for about 10 years. What happens when you have a system where somebody has got that institutional expertise and knowledge and also case knowledge versus a director that is no longer under the auspices of or accountable to the Ministry of Education? I think that’s really what we are trying to interrogate here in Schedule 2.
If we look at new regulation 41(1A), in Schedule 2, it says that “the Secretary is the Minister’s principal policy adviser.”. Then we’re looking at what is the relationship between those two roles. I guess the questions we’d like to know from the Minister is, really clearly for Hansard, who sets the standards, who monitors them, who do affected parties appeal to under the regulations? Say, for example, there’s a revocation of a licence or a change to the circumstances of a licence under the previous early childhood services regulations 39 and 39A, who handles complaints, and also who really does oversee the director? I think the critical question here was difficult to bring out in the previous debate because there were a number of clauses that we didn’t get to. The question is: who does the director report to? It is correct to say that, in reality, it is the Minister, because once again we are seeing from this Government a lot of power vested in a particular Minister. Particularly, we’ve got a director who is no longer beholden to the ministry.
I still haven’t heard an answer regarding whether Te Tiriti obligations are implicit given that Schedule 2 extends the director’s authority over kōhanga reo, puna reo, and bilingual units. The Minister has danced around the topic, but it would be very useful for those in the sector to understand, given that those are referred to. Does that mean Te Tiriti is extraneous, as he has said previously this afternoon, or is it implicitly conferred by this bill? I think he just needs to take a position—and I can guess what it is. It would be good for the public to know what that is, because then we have to query how the director’s authority extends over those when there are no Te Tiriti obligations to underpin those kōhanga reo, puna reo, and bilingual units.
The other question is: how will the ministry ensure system stewardship when they are no longer regulating early childhood education services? That is really what this debate is about. We’ve got this clever division of power between a secretary and a regulator, and one of them is beholden to the ministry and one of them is quasi-independent. There is some fuzziness around what the role is, particularly when it comes to secondary legislation and the regulation and the transitional arrangements. All of that looks like a way to avoid public accountability and scrutiny and to, really, allow more privatisation of the sector. Now, if that is not the case, I’d like to hear that from the Minister.
There is no other reason to wholesale replace “Secretary” with “Director of Regulation” under the schedule, which is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing, because it’s making it look like it’s distinguishing policy leadership. That is how the Minister has described it. In fact, it is all about avoiding accountability that the ministry needs to be accountable for—suddenly there’s this director out there in quasi-autonomous role, with some fuzzy kind of duties, who doesn’t have to respond to the ministry. It does come to policy, Minister, because that is essentially what the schedule is doing wholesale.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I can only reiterate, and it might be helpful for people at home: Schedule 2 says things like “in regulation”, “definition of contact person”, “replace ‘Secretary’ with ‘Director of Regulation’ ”, and it carries on like that for about two pages. We debated, in the previous part, what the Director of Regulation will do. We debated what the relation of the Treaty of Waitangi is. All we're doing here is making the consequential amendment that since we agreed, in Part 1, that the Director of Regulation would exist and fulfil roles similar to those currently fulfilled by the secretary, we're going to replace the word “Secretary” with “Director of Regulation” in quite a few different places. That's all we're talking about.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next speaker, can I just say that I had been on select committee prior to coming here, so usually I would watch this kind of debate before I take on this role. But I do understand that this part is actually much more narrow and that a lot of what has been debated was covered in Part 1. However, we are in urgency, so, given that we are in urgency, I'll give a little bit of leeway, but I will actually ask everyone to, very soon, make it much more narrow.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Actually, my question goes back to a question that wasn’t addressed and resolved, and you made a determination on that that it was in scope, and that was from my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. It was around the relationship between the Director of Regulation and the deputy secretary.
I think this is really important because we need to understand what the relationship is between this new role and the entire ministry, and what it practically, actually means. I think we’ve heard a bit about the ideology around the reasons why the Associate Minister of Education has brought this to the committee, but we actually haven’t heard about, exactly, practically, how it would work. This part is narrowly defined, but there is that question around that relationship between the Director of Regulation and the deputy secretaries and, indeed, the rest of the ministry as well.
I also take the point made by Ingrid Leary around how these different regulations will follow through. We did talk about Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the previous part, but the question still remains around the benefits that come from Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I get that that side of the Chamber is allergic to Te Tiriti, but what about the things that it actually brings to the education sector—the quality of te reo Māori, making sure that kōhanga reo and puna reo are resourced? How does this practically work? And how does that relationship work between this new Director of Regulation and the deputy secretaries? It is fuzzy and it is grey, and that has been highlighted by members.
My questions are: what is that relationship between the Director of Regulation and the deputy secretaries, and, as an example, how will that work? For example, if we’re not going to have Te Tiriti o Waitangi—I think we should—how are you going to ensure language and cultural competency which matches Māori pedagogy, Māori-medium pedagogy, which supports the wellbeing of those tamariki and mokopuna?
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): I move, That debate on this question now close.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the debate on this question now close. All those in favour, say Aye, to the contrary No. A party vote has been called for. The Clerk will conduct a party vote.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. Sorry, but you didn’t declare a result. Did the Ayes have it or did the Noes have it before a party vote was called for?
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Can I call it again—
Tom Rutherford: Yes.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): —because I wasn’t really listening to who was louder, which is usually carried by voice.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Part 2 stand part.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 2 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting the words “in other legislation” into clause 126 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting the words “and responsibilities” into clause 126 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting “and responsibilities” into clause 127 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting “previously” into clause 127(1)(a) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting “and is not near completion” into clause 127(1)(b) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting “or persons” into clause 127(1)(c) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting paragraph (d) into clause 127(1) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 127(2) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, replacing “all” with “and” in clause 127(2) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 127(3) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting paragraph (c) into clause 127(4) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, relating to documents still considered to be given by the Secretary, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 126(5) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting paragraph (c) into clause 127(5) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting paragraph (c) into clause 127(6) of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, inserting “and is still held” into clause 128 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 128 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1 to insert text relating to privacy protections, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, deleting clause 129 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 129 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1 to insert text relating to early childhood education as a public good, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
Shanan Halbert’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1, amending clause 129 of new Part 7 of Schedule 1 to insert text relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 2 set out on Amendment Paper 440 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to Schedule 2, inserting the words “and consequences” in two places, are out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 2 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.
Clauses 1 to 3
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we now come to our final debate, which is the debate on clauses 1 to 3: “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to be a little bit unorthodox and start on clause 3, regarding amending the principal Act. The reason is to question whether in fact this is ultra vires because of the Legislation Guidelines 2021 edition, where any amendment to a principal Act must serve the purpose and objective of the original Act or the policy objective of the new Act. It should not be inconsistent or contradictory. I’m quoting there, pretty much, from what’s known as the LDAC. That is the best-practice guideline for writing legislation, and there is a caveat that, if an amendment significantly changes fundamental features, the policy rationale must be clear, and coherence with existing law must be addressed.
As the previous debates have shown, and as we can see with the regulatory impact statement (RIS), this really does call into question whether clause 3—or can say that this Act truly amends the Education and Training Act 2020. When I read section 4, the purpose of that Act is to support the learning and development of every learner. It honours the partnership under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and it supports Māori-Crown relations, and it also talks about having equitable outcome for learners. We do not see, particularly around Te Tiriti, anything in the amendment that supports the principal Act, and in fact by omission, and has been heard from submissions, that is undermined and is completely inconsistent in our view.
When we look at the RIS, we can also see that the bill is undertaking large structural changes that may have been better with a new Act rather than something disguised as an amendment Act with a completely different policy purpose. In fact, we haven’t really heard what the problem definition is. I would quite like to hear it from this Minister. We didn’t hear it from the previous Minister in the chair, but that may help us to be able to understand whether this clause 3 actually does conform to the LDAC guidelines.
Going back to the RIS, we can see that the reform says it’s to improve regulatory effectiveness and reduce compliance burden. We haven’t had an explanation of what regulatory effectiveness means, and that certainly doesn’t sound like it supports the primary function of the Education and Training Act, section 4, which is around the learning and development of every learner, supporting and honouring Te Tiriti and so on—equitable outcomes. We do not know what a compliance burden is under this amendment Act. We don’t know what it means in relation to accident reports, food handling, police vetting checks, and so on. We don’t have a list of what is in and what is out.
Page 8 of the RIS talks again about the limited analysis of the impacts, costs, and benefits, so how do we know this does what it says it’s going to do on the tin when the very purpose that it is saying that is going to achieve does not align with the principal Act as far as we can hear, particularly with the emphasis given to the labour market facilitation?
The other issue, I guess, is the legal problem that this creates, because, in our view, given the weak answers to the previous debate on the regulatory decisions and also this misalignment that is clear with the principal Act, it does call into question judicial reviews. It probably calls into question the defensibility of future regulatory decisions, and we really want to know how the Minister can justify making these major legislative amendments when the RIS has acknowledged such limited analysis on page 8, and also the lack of consultation on page 48.
Those are questions that are quite fundamental, but I think it’s really important because, really, what we are seeing is a misalignment between this amendment and the principal Act. Why did the Minister not just introduce a bill to repeal the principal Act or create a new bill? Why are they calling it an amendment bill when it does not align and therefore is not good lawmaking if we apply the standards that are set out in the Legislation Guidelines 2021 edition? We will have more questions, too, on the title and commencement.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to make a contribution to this debate on the title and commencement. When you look at the title “Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill”—we have a number of education and training amendment bills come through this House on a regular basis—it isn’t what it says on the tin. I think we need to think about other terms to more accurately reflect what this bill does.
There were a number of contributions made through the select committee process, but also through this committee of the whole House stage, and I think the Associate Minister of Education didn’t adequately resolve those questions—in particular, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As numerous people said, our kōhanga reo and our puna reo have a very, very specific cultural pedagogy and language pedagogy built on the foundation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I get that that side is allergic to Te Tiriti o Waitangi; they’re allergic to the constitutional founding document of this country and can’t see that, actually, by including that in this legislation, it could go some way to helping to do the policy intent of this bill. We had a number of questions in the committee of the whole House which did highlight that as well.
If you’re not going to have Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a part of the bill, how is the Director of Regulation going to ensure language quality assurance, cultural competency, if that isn’t factored in? The ability to be able to speak te reo, the ability to do that in a fluent way which is matched with expertise, is something that would be required in order for this Director of Regulation to be able to do their job properly. My first suggestion for an amendment to the title and commencement is: “The Education and Training (Allergic to Te Tiriti o Waitangi Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill”, because I think that will address more accurately the concerns that were brought to the select committee process but also brought in contributions by members across the Chamber today, as well.
The other thing I would like to think about, as well, is around the opaque nature of some of the questions that were posed. I think they were reasonable questions that were posed to the Minister, questions around the impact of ratios—that came up a number of times. I’m sure it was me that was bringing it up, as well, because when I talk to early childcare providers, they talk about making sure that the working conditions of our teachers are the learning conditions of our tamariki. If you have good working conditions for your teachers, those are good learning conditions for your tamariki and mokopuna, so making sure that the ratios are well set for our babies and for our toddlers is incredibly, incredibly important. When we put questions to the Minister about whether this Director of Regulation would be able to intervene if they found that there were unsafe working conditions, the answer was “Well, actually, they don’t make policy; they just follow up on complaints.”, so on and so forth, and kick the can down the road, when there is an opportunity to actually address that and to make this bill more useful.
At the heart of it, this bill is ideological. I get it; we come to this House with ideas where we want to change our communities and our societies for the better, but those changes have to be practical. Those changes have to work. When we made contributions from this side of the committee to ask the Minister “Well, actually, how is this going to work? How is it really actually going to work? You’ve got this Director of Regulation—how does it work with the Secretary of Education and the Deputy Secretary of Education?”, what I can see is that this person will roll up to kōhanga reo, puna reo, and also to other places, and not have the skills to be able to do it, not have the ability to actually engage not just with Māori but with everybody else, as well. The real risk here is that the regulation that this Minister wants to dismantle within the Ministry of Education will just be replicated somewhere else.
My other question to the Minister is around the commencement date. Given these concerns that have not been resolved by the previous Minister in the chair, will the Minister push out the commencement date so that these issues are resolved? After the Royal assent of this bill, what is in place to make sure that this Director of Regulation, and everything else with them, will be able to do the job properly? We cannot see that. I do not commend this bill.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to follow from my colleague Teanau Tuiono and just to also check with the Minister if the Minister is happy to consider one of my amendments on the commencement date, particularly because, in the commencement date, this Act comes into force two months after Royal assent, but as my colleague Teanau Tuiono and also as the previous speaker, Ingrid Leary, has expressed, there are actually still a number of issues that haven’t really been teased out throughout this stage. I think the Minister’s response actually doesn’t give the committee any confidence that the right settings are in place to ensure that something like this could be done within a two-month period. My question to the Minister is whether the Minister would consider my amendment, which pushes out, not by long—not saying that it shouldn’t, but it pushes it out from two months after Royal assent to six months after Royal assent. We have seen a number of other bills brought to the House which introduce new roles into a particular agency, etc., that do allow for a six-month period.
Now, my second thing is around the title. I do have another amendment on this that I genuinely want to engage with the Minister on, because, when we’re looking at the bill, the title itself, in terms of early childhood education reform, doesn’t necessarily express the content of this bill, mainly—
Simon Court: That’s why we suggest you read it, Lawrence.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Would you like to take a call and just explain what the bill is? Because, frankly, I have read this bill thoroughly—every single clause. What’s clause 5?
Simon Court: Madam Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order!
Simon Court: Point of order, Madam Chair. I think the member just offered to yield so that I could take a call.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I did not hear him offering to yield. I heard him offering you a chance to make a speech, so I will go back to Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Thank you. You too can take a call, Mr Simon Court. Now, in terms of this bill, the majority of the bill is to do with regulations. You know, we have a new Director of Regulation. We have changes to the regulatory systems in terms of Schedule 2. I think just saying “early childhood education reform” makes it sound much broader than it really covers, because there are certain areas here that are quite narrow. My changes to the title that I’m proposing to the Minister are simply changing from “(Early Childhood Education Reform)” to “(Early Childhood Education Regulatory Reform)”, because that seems to be more in line with what we’re seeing in Part 1, particularly clause 5 to clause 13, in fact, as well as Schedule 2 and Part 2. Those two are my two amendments that I would like the Minister’s engagement on.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Vocational Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I will answer the member Ingrid Leary’s questions first, and I can confirm that the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill does indeed conform to legislative guidelines. I can also advise that there is no misalignment with the principal Act; it does support the purpose of the principal Act, and remind the member that the principal Act goes across the whole of the education sector: early childhood education, compulsory, through to tertiary.
I thank the two members of the Green Party for their generous offers of amendments, but we won't be accepting those. Thank you.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some supplementary questions regarding the commencement and then the title. Basically, the question is: what is the basis of the two-month period? What is the evidence base that the Associate Minister of Education used, or was it a time frame as part of a coalition deal that perhaps wasn’t on paper but occurred behind closed doors?
The reason I bring that up is that, once again, we are an urgency in this House. We’ve got a very rapid time frame, and it’s not just us who are saying it and it’s not just the submitters either—it’s the regulatory impact statement (RIS). On page 47 and page 48, the RIS highlights that the implementation time frames are compressed, and it even says that the Minister intends to bring changes in rapidly. My question is: why do we need to have these changes introduced rapidly rather than go through them in a less hurried way and have better lawmaking?
Also, on page 8, it talks about tight constraints on the options considered. It talks about a rushed timeline. We have already raised the confusion risks that arise, but unfortunately the RIS also, on page 30, raises those as arising from structural transitions that are going to be exacerbated with a rushed timeline.
Then we have concerns that have been specifically raised with insufficient planning for Māori medium and also for rural providers. I say this as the member for Taieri, where we have a number of rural providers who have got very small infrastructure and who are feeling really shocked at the prospect of having to suddenly conform to this new amendment within two months. Why the rush for those? They are amongst those who have capacity risk, which the RIS has highlighted on page 47 and page 48—that’s the rural sector, but also actually Māori-medium providers.
The question is: where did the time frame come from? Is it like many of the things we hear in this House, which is that it is part of a coalition agreement? We’ve already had the Auditor-General say that executive decisions should not be based on coalition agreements; they should be based on evidence and the good executive powers of lawmaking, not political agreements. If there is an evidence base for it or another reason apart from the coalition agreement, we would really like to hear it.
My second request is that, if the Minister is not going to entertain the really useful suggestions by the Green Party members about a short stay of execution, if you like—a little bit of charity or perhaps compassion, particularly towards some of those Māori-medium providers and rural providers—would the Minister entertain a carve-out so that the commencement date could be for bigger providers who probably have been planning and will have bigger infrastructure to be able to respond to the changes that are required; that maybe they could have the two months, but as a fall-back? Perhaps Māori-medium providers and rural providers, in particular, could have a longer period of around six months just to be able to get their systems in order so that they are not left behind.
The other question I would have about the commencement is: has she received any advice about what the impact of the commencement date two months after Royal assent would have on any of the transitional arrangements to do with, for example, licensing? We’ve seen in Schedule 2 that many of those changes where the powers go from the secretary to the director involve licensing arrangements, and those are not to be taken lightly—they’re things that allow early childhood centres to operate and the framework in which to operate and to ensure that they do so safely.
Also, if some of them are involved in complaints processes or want to take a judicial review, is there a way that there could be a carve-out so that, if they are currently in a transition and they can identify that in a sensible way, perhaps the Act does not apply to them for the six months, in the same case as the rural early childhood centres and playcentres and also the Māori-medium providers?
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): I move, That debate on this question now close.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a final question, really, on the title, and I have heard some really good titles coming from the Greens. As you’ve heard, I have some reservations about whether this actually even aligns with the original Education and Training Act, and although the Minister for Vocational Education, the Hon Penny Simmonds, referred to the umbrella, I guess, almost omnibus kind of character of the original legislation, she did not explain how this legislation conforms with the Legislation Guidelines. I haven’t heard an assurance that there has been a quality assurance on that or what kind of checks have been made, particularly because we are in urgency. I’d like to know, for example, whether Parliamentary Counsel Office did do an LDAC check or whether we just take the Minister’s word for that. That would be really useful.
In terms of the bill names that could perhaps be used to replace “Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill”, it could be something shorter and pithier like “(Profits Before Kids)” bill. It could be the “(ECE Minus Te Tiriti)” bill. That one in particular I think would be quite useful, because it really spells out that Te Tiriti is not there, and we did not get a clear answer from Minister Seymour about whether Te Tiriti obligations were implicit, even though they were not explicit. To really get around that confusion, we could just say that and say “(ECE Minus Te Tiriti)” bill. We could have “(Risking Kids’ Wellbeing)” bill. I'm not sure that one would land, so probably won't do that one.
Perhaps a more sensible one, and this would apply depending on the answer to the previous question around the timing and whether that's part of a coalition deal, would be the “(Coalition Education Agreement)” bill. That would be really useful, because it would also highlight that many of the things that have been agreed to in the bill are not on an evidence basis, because the consultation hasn't been done. If they are to be done through coalition agreements, let's be transparent about it. I think capturing the name of that in the title of the bill would do that. It may possibly, then, also call into question whether there needs to be an Auditor-General process to actually see if the executive should be doing that, because certainly, in the case of some of the other things that have happened, they've been told they shouldn't rely on that, and that has come from the Auditor-General. I'm thinking about the Gumboot Friday agreement.
My final suggestion would be “(Centralising Education Powers)” bill. I thought about this one really carefully, because it does centralise the power of—it vests a lot of power in the Minister. Even though on the tin it looks like it's separating the powers, and the Minister himself tried to say this is around good regulation that requires separation of powers between the secretary and the director, what we know from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report is that, in fact, in education it's better to have one regulatory system. When we get forensically into what those powers look like and what the reporting lines are, we discover that, in fact, there is a lot of say with the Minister over the director and there is virtually no say from the Ministry of Education, so in some ways it could be called “(Centralising Education)” and in another way it could be called “(Obfuscating)”—but that's a very hard word to say. That's why I didn't put it in the title that I was going to suggest.
I think “(Centralising Education Powers)” bill would be quite good, because I think also then it just kind of points to the trend under this Government, who have a centralising direction of travel in Ministers. We've seen it with fast-track legislation. We've seen it with taking decision making away from localities. We've seen it with the undermining of local government. There is all of this kind of vested power in Ministers. Then what we're seeing is the creation of this director role, which is purported to be one thing but is actually really just about vesting more power in the Minister. I probably could have called it the “(Vesting Power in the Minister)” bill, but I don't think that would get through.
I really would like the Minister to consider the “(Continuing Education Power)” bill or the “(Coalition Education Agreement)” bill, and if the Minister was inclined to do the latter, then giving us some certainty about what agreements took place around the timing, what the rush is about—the two months. Why are we trying to do it this side of Christmas? Has it got anything to do with election year? And why can we not support our rural communities and Māori-medium providers in particular, who are really going to have to grapple with the stress that this is going to cause them with a very short time frame.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 1 replacing “reform” with “centralisation” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Arena Williams’ remaining two tabled amendments to clause 1 are out of order as not be objective descriptions of the bill.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1 replacing “early childhood education reform” with “early childhood education regulatory reform” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 440 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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendment agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 2 is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
Arena Williams’ three tabled amendments to clause 2 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 2 as amended agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Arena Williams’ two tabled amendments to clause 3 are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the report be adopted.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This bill is set down for third reading immediately. However, it is time for us to stop for the dinner break. The House is suspended until 7 o’clock.
Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Third Reading
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Right, the House is resumed. Welcome back, everyone. When we finished, prior to the dinner break, we were about to start the third reading.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Education: I move, That the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: I’m pleased to bring this bill to its third reading. Today marks an important milestone in reforming the early childhood education (ECE) regulatory system. To recap for the House: this bill is part of the Government’s response to the Ministry for Regulation’s regulatory review of the early childhood education sector. The review identified a number of issues with the approach to regulating ECE, in particular the following: a lack of clarity around regulatory decision making; a lack of role clarity and accountability of the regulator; and thirdly, a reactive approach to compliance monitoring.
The bill addresses these issues so that parents who use licensed or certificated early childhood services can have confidence that their children will receive quality education from a service provider that is supported and incentivised to keep children safe while in their care. The Director of Regulation, a new role established by the bill, will be responsible for licencing and certificating services and for proactively monitoring and enforcing compliance with regulations that are underpinned by a clear legislative purpose and objectives. The Director of Regulation will also be required to adhere to guiding principles that make children’s health, safety, and wellbeing paramount.
The bill has clarified the purposes and objectives for the regulatory system. Service providers will have greater clarity and certainty about regulatory requirements. They will also receive information, support, and guidance from the Director of Regulation on how to meet these requirements. The bill enables regulations to be made that would allow the Director of Regulation to use a graduated set of enforcement tools. This would enable more proportionate approaches to be taken to enforcement than is possible under the current regulations.
The bill’s commencement date was amended at committee of the whole House to be 23 February 2026. On this date, the role of the Director of Regulation will be established in the Ministry of Education. As has been said at first and second readings, responsibility for these regulatory functions and the role of the Director of Regulation will be transferred from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office by a separate bill. This will address the lack of clarity and consistency the review identified in relation to regulatory decision making.
The Government is committed to the successful implementation of this bill, which will update the early childhood education regulatory system and align it with good regulatory design and practice and improve its effectiveness. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution in the third reading of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. Sadly, in the committee stage that we have just completed, none of our suggested name changes made it through the amendment process, so I suppose that's the one we're going with.
I just want to make a few high-level comments before going into some of the detailed points that we want to make in terms of this bill. I think it's really important for those that are listening at home to understand that this bill shifts the focus away from children, who should be at the heart of any changes to early childhood education. The role early childhood education plays in a child's life is immense, and what happens in their early years, including how they learn, affects them forever.
Narrowing the focus on the kids and loosening the rules from centres may result in greater risk of harmful situations and lower quality of education, and this opens the door to early childhood education (ECE) centres operating at the bare minimum for profit, which will erode the quality of our youngest children's learning.
It was really concerning to receive really thoughtful submissions and contributions from the public and two that I want to highlight, in particular, in this contribution, are the submissions from the ECE Parents Council Aotearoa. Early on, they say they are disappointed in the lack of consultation in the development of this bill, that it has been rushed, it was opaque, and it compromised consultation. What the ECE Parents Council of Aotearoa say is that it excluded the very stakeholders it claims to serve—that's parents, families, and whānau. They say that by sidelining parents’ voices and experiences with ECE, the process undermines the legitimacy and any resulting changes.
They also pointed out in their submission, as was pointed out by many of the contributions in the committee of the whole House stage, that this waters down Māori as tangata whenua and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Many times, the opportunity was put to the Minister to engage in debate on that, to consider amendments put forward by my colleagues, to answer questions, but the Minister was very dismissive, yet submitters highlighted that there is an omission of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. One of the central criticisms is its failure to acknowledge Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We talked about kōhanga reo, we talked about puna reo, but we also talked about all early childhood centres.
So the bill does not recognise Māori as tangata whenua nor ensure Māori participation in decision making, and the concerns persist that Māori language, culture, and pedagogies will not be adequately supported and the omission threatens aspirations for bicultural and culturally responsive ECEs. The ECE Parents Council says that the design hides major quality reductions behind intimidating jargon and complexity for whānau.
One of the key concerns raised is not having children at the centre of the purpose of early childhood education. Many submitters pointed out that the inclusion of and embedding workforce participation as a core purpose—a core purpose—shifts ECE away from child development and learning and family support. Education legislation, they say, should have tamariki and their learning at its centre—social, emotional, physical and cognitive—rather than adult employment needs.
I want to also draw on the submission that we received from Mana Mokopuna, the Children’s Commissioner. They too pointed out that this was being pushed through while things were still being worked through, that it fails to ensure the rights of mokopuna are the first and primary consideration in ECE regulation and decision making, and also that it fails to ensure that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a primary consideration in ECE regulation and decision making.
They recommended that actually this bill be paused until work on all the proposed reforms had been completed and further consultation was undertaken with key stakeholders on final reform proposals. They also recommended that the Government undertakes a child impact assessment on the final reform proposals to ensure they uphold children's rights and prevent or mitigate negative consequences for children.
They also, though, given that the Government is clear that it wasn't going to pause or slow down, or—you know, we had questions and contributions on the commencement date and those suggestions around that were also dismissed. So Mana Mokopuna had made recommendations that if the bill were to proceed, there were a number of things that it should be amended to, which included recognising and protecting all children's rights under the children's convention—sadly, that was ignored in the previous stage; explicitly stating that children's rights are the first and paramount consideration in ECE regulation and decision making—sadly, it isn't, and parents working is in there with the primary objectives of these changes; clearly state Te Tiriti o Waitangi must be given effect in ECE regulation and decision making—I don't think anybody in the House is surprised that the Minister David Seymour rejected that suggestion; and require the director of regulation to undertake the child impact assessments to ensure they are exercising their functions, duties, and powers consistently with the children's convention and Te Tiriti o Waitangi—again, all ignored in the previous committee of the whole House stage.
There are real concerns that this is going to lead to the lowering of the quality and the deregulation in the early childhood sector. Recently, I attended a kindergarten meeting on behalf of the Hon Jan Tinetti, who cannot be here today to give the speech as she is remembering, along with others, Pike River and the anniversary of that event. So I attended that meeting on her behalf, and they played a documentary about what has happened in Australia—the prioritising of the privatisation of early childhood education, the profit-making in early childhood education, the deregulation in the sector, and the disastrous impact that that has had.
It was really concerning to all of us who were at that meeting that it feels like and looks like, and here tonight we have in the third reading steps that could be working towards a very similar situation that we are seeing in Australia. So we only have to look across the Ditch to see the disastrous impacts of deregulation in the early childhood sector education sector could have here in Aotearoa.
So we raised these concerns these points we put forward amendments for the Minister to consider. We outlined the concerns of submitters: parent voices ignored, the voice of Mana Mokopuna, the Children’s Commissioner ignored. Whose voices are being prioritised in this legislation change? Once again, I have to remind the House that this is actually as a result of a coalition agreement. The regulatory impact statement pointed out that there is a problem definition, that there has been a rushed process, there hasn't been sufficient consultation, there is evidence lacking in many areas, and we should all be very concerned here in the House tonight that this type of lawmaking is once again going on.
Last week, I stood and talked about how policies were not educational; they were ideological, and here is another example of that. It is political and ideological and it is based on something the Minister campaigned on and negotiated into a coalition agreement. It does not put children, our babies at the centre of this decision making. We do not commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Before I call the member, can I just remind members about referencing members who are not in the House. Just a reminder.
Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Madam Chair. I'm aware of the convention and Speakers’ rulings on not mentioning the absence of people who aren't here, but the Speakers’ rulings do also point out that there is a balance to be struck and that there are instances where the absence of a member is so significant that it's appropriate to identify the fact that they've chosen not to participate in the House at that given time. So I'm just wondering whether you're saying that the member’s reference recently didn't meet that threshold, or whether you're just making an observation for our guidance.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Well, wonder away, but it was a general reminder to members. I've done it on several occasions in the last couple of weeks, but obviously we need to keep remembering.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. For the committee, the context of this bill is that the Associate Minister of Education essentially wants to—to put it plainly—destroy our education system. But how did we get to this stage in the first place? Well, like the previous speaker said, it all started with the coalition agreement and also with the desire that they are going to get the Ministry for Regulation to do this survey and then consult on what is going to be happening. Yet, as we see from the report of that bill—and as I see when this bill went through select committee stage—when we did ask the Minister questions, when we did ask officials questions, that there wasn’t a clear link between what they are being produced and what is being produced here as the final form of this bill.
Despite the fact that, during the committee stage, the Minister said on multiple occasions that this has been consulted, we’ve done a survey, that survey is not the same thing as a bill and a consultation on a particular bill—as we’ve seen in the regulatory impact statement and as the officials themselves have expressed. The bottom line of this—and, again, as we are drawing on different resources because, as we said, the consultation process has been opaque—is the fact that the bottom line is it’s about cost, but not actually about children nor safety.
One should expect that children is being placed at the centre when we are making decisions on education, but it is not the case with this bill. In fact, for a political party and for a Government who love to talk about red and green tape, we’re seeing an awful lot of blue and yellow tape when it comes to bills like this and the introduction of a ministry or the introduction of the Director of Regulations.
But on this bill and what some of this bill is doing, I think it needs to be mentioned, first and foremost, the lack of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in this bill. The fact remains that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is for everyone. We have a Minister in the chair who wants to talk about, “Well, what happens for the Chinese people?” You know, as a Chinese person, I can say, hand on heart—which the Minister couldn’t—that Te Tiriti is for everyone, that tauiwi [non-Māori] of colour are here to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
What we are seeing is the Director of Regulation will also be seeing overseeing kōhanga reo and puna reo. But there is no requirement for this director to have any understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; any understanding of what is expected of that person when it comes to the oversight and potentially setting policies and potentially even intervening and assessing and quality controlling kōhanga reo or puna reo without an understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. As we see in the state of te reo Māori report by Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the number of kōhanga reo or Māori-medium early childhood education (ECE) centres in Aotearoa has reduced. That should be a concern for everyone in this House. That should be what we’re discussing here. That should be what we’re seeing in terms of the bill in front of us, how we place our tamariki and mokopuna at the centre of our decision making.
But no, instead what we see is a bill that creates more bureaucracy and shifts the obligation from the Ministry of Education (MOE)—from the Secretary of Education—into this ephemeral Director of Regulation that the Minister himself, through the committee stage, could not clearly articulate what that person is really going to do. To be fair, the Minister spent a lot of the contributions in the committee stage throwing little comments and patronising comments here and there about like, “Oh, that member isn’t listening.” You know, that’s fine. Kei te pai. We forgive that Minister. We know the Minister has been a little bit sensitive recently considering all of the other projects within education have failed and fallen flat on that Minister’s face, but it still doesn’t excuse that Minister and the Government from introducing a bill that is going to actively harm our tamariki.
What is also peculiar about this bill—and, you know, again, the Minister liked to, during the committee stage, talk about the fact that, in terms of the principles, the purpose, in terms of the objectives, that’s existing in the current legislation. But you know what isn’t existing in the current legislation? The idea that ECE is there to support parents to work. That is the most peculiar thing to put in the Education and Training Act. The Government is saying, “You know what? We want our early childhood education system to be in place, and its sole purpose is so that you can spend as little time from your children as possible.” That is what is happening here and that’s what that clause is really saying. Rather than saying we want to provide jobs, we want to provide sufficient resources so that way for families, for whānau, they’re able to spend as much time as possible with their children, with their tamariki, what we’re seeing is now a purpose of this bill is, “We want you to just work and leave your child to be babysat by ECE.” That is what it’s saying here in this bill.
The thing is the Minister talked a lot about what’s happening here. But to be honest, talk is cheap. There is no substantial evidence in here and no international evidence that we can see where, if we have an ECE system that does not centre the experience of the children and the staff who work in those ECE centres and the teachers, but instead focuses on the privatisation of ECEs and how we can squeeze as much money out of parents as we can, there’s no international evidence that that is going to provide a safe space where tamariki will have a sense of belonging, where they’re able to learn, and where they’re able to thrive.
We have seen evidence in Australia of what happens when you deregulate the ECE sector. We have seen harm to their children, and we have seen systemic harm to their children. Because, you know what? For the governing members, this is going to be their legacy: the legacy of putting our children in harm’s way. Every single parent, when we’re looking at the survey that’s being produced, I do acknowledge the fact that for parents, the most important issue—the most important thing for them—is to ensure that their child is safe in the ECE centre. Because that is their taonga that they are placing in the hands of someone else. That should be what’s really important here. But what are some of the criteria that ensure safety and health? Not a Director of Regulations. No, it is having good ratios, it is having qualified teachers, it is putting children above profit. They are the things that are going to be benefiting. They are the things that are going to be most reassuring for our parents.
I gave the Minister an example of the play sand and asbestos that we’re seeing currently that’s a live issue. And the Minister couldn’t even respond on how the Director of Regulation would work with MOE in that situation to resolve the issue. If the Minister himself could not even respond on a bill that he has introduced, what confidence should the public have on this bill and on their vision and this Government’s vision for early childhood education?
But what I will finish with is the Green Party has a solution. In our Green Budget, we have made a commitment that we will bring ECE into the public system like schools. We will make sure that there are qualified teachers in our ECE centres. We will ensure that Te Tiriti is front and centre in ECEs because it benefits all children. We will ensure that the teachers are well remunerated and well resourced for the work that we do, because we are here for our children.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. On the same day that the Education and Workforce Committee sat in this building and heard from the Education Review Office on the implementation of maths and English, and the success that that has been—unprecedented success—we continue to have an Opposition that says “No”, that doubts, that doesn’t want to have confidence in a Government that’s actually delivering educational results for parents. So trust that this tin, in relation to early childhood education, does what it says on the tin. For once—for once—I ask the Opposition to just say “Hey, we’re going to support this because this is a Government that’s delivering for parents and for education.” I commend it to the House.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): I think the Opposition is reading a different bill to the bill that I think we on this side of the House are reading. They talked about profit in the early childcare centre area; that’s been around for years. There’s been a strong private sector component to the delivery of early childhood education.
The second thing they talked about is saying that the child is not at the centre. I invite them to look at new section 14, inserted by clause 5 of this bill. What does it start with? “set and implement minimum”—so you’ve got to be above that “standards to provide for quality early childhood education that allows all children to establish strong foundations for learning, well-being, and life outcomes;”. That sounds like putting the child at the centre.
The second bit there they talked about is the choice of parents to go to work. Well, guess what! That’s the reality. Most parents want to get out and go to work and have their children be looked after properly.
The next two things—they’ve also talked about the safety of their children. That is one of the supporting objectives right below that, and then improving educational development outcomes for those children.
I think they’re reading a different bill to the one that we’re reading. I commend this bill to the House.
HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato):
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Te Pāti Māori opposes this bill, which in our view applies regulatory standard principles to early childhood education (ECE), in a violation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, while placing profits over the wellbeing of our mokopuna. This bill completely flies in the face of proven kaupapa Māori movements and efforts to restore the rightful place of tikanga and te reo Māori in the only country that will forever remain the permanent home of taonga tuku iho, inherited to us by our tūpuna. E te iwi, we continue to see sustained attacks on Māori initiatives, undermining kaupapa Māori education, pushing policies on to our whānau, and championing privatisation over whakapapa. Te Pāti Māori stands with our people, who are the only true kaitiaki safeguarding one of the most important Māori institutions ever created by our kuia and koroua. We stand with you in full opposition to the direction this Government intends to take on Māori education.
Education should be led by experts, not economists. The whakapapa of this bill shows that these reforms never had the best interest of our tamariki at heart. Econo—econom—
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Lowering safety, building, and teaching standards will reduce the quality of our early childhood education. This bill will push the wages of early childhood educators down by removing the need for qualifications. Now our kaiako, holders of one of the most important roles in society, who have been historically underpaid, are having their wages diminished even further. They will suffer, the quality of teaching will suffer, and, ultimately, our mokopuna will receive a worse-quality education, all because of this Government's agenda to maximise corporate profits. There is no table fit to make decisions about the education of mokopuna Māori with our kōhanga reo and
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at it. They are more equipped than any Government body to know what our tamariki need, not just in the classrooms but for their future.
This bill is a violation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It will remove the legal requirements for the ECE sector to acknowledge Māori as tangata whenua, to support children's rights to cultural confidence, and to teach our tamariki about Te Tiriti o Waitangi and our history. This is a continuation of the assimilation agenda that has dominated the education system since the Native Schools Act 1867. We cannot afford to take a step backwards in early education. We cannot return to a time where mātauranga Māori was sidelined and speaking te reo Māori was punished. Research shows that a strong sense of identity is central to the success of tamariki Māori. Instead of removing Te Tiriti responsibilities, defunding key programmes, and continuing to allocate just 1 percent of the total education budget funding to Māori education, the Government should be investing in the Māori educational systems that are already delivering for our tamariki.
In conclusion, as it currently stands, this bill will violate Te Tiriti o Waitangi, harm our kaiako, and harm our mokopuna. The Government must be held accountable for its commitments to the recommendations made in Wai 2336. That's means creating standalone legislation with policies specifically designed to support Māori education and give whānau real, meaningful choices. Our mokopuna deserve an education system shaped by their needs, which must be led by the total immersion Māori education sector. Te Pāti Māori remains
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TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens, supporting the comments by my friend Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. I begin with a whakataukī. The whakataukī goes,
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The people over there might appreciate that. The bird that partakes of the berries of the forest, their domain is the forest, but the bird that partakes of the berries of knowledge, their domain is the world. The issue there is, of course, what happens if you privatise those berries? What happens if you swap out those juicy berries and replace them with burnt school lunches?
As we were going through the committee stage, I was reading the select committee report and I was worried. I was worried about the digestive tracts of our National Party colleagues who once again have to swallow another “Burnt School Lunch Act Party Bill”, because we’ve had the Regulatory Standards Bill go through the House, we, of course, have the Ministry for Regulation, and now within this bill we have a Director of Regulation. It’s Orwellian in its reach. It’s Orwellian and its doublespeak because who is going to regulate the regulators? These people are going to trip over themselves trying to do the job, and trip over themselves to figure out what exactly they are doing.
When we posed questions to the Minister at the committee of the whole House stage, the answers were less than fruitful. I only have to look at the select committee report and notice that, actually, the commentary which comprises of the differing views outweighs the rest of the report. I could only surmise that there was a bit of Stockholm syndrome happening for our National Party colleagues who were forced to once again push through another Act Party bill under duress.
One of the questions that we asked the Minister, and I think it’s really important to put on record again in this third reading, was about the role of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I get that that side is completely allergic to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. They are allergic to the constitution, they are allergic to the founding document of our country, but it actually is important. It is an important document and there are a lot of people around Aotearoa who recognise that importance, but we understand that their allergy is very real on that side of the House.
So, instead, we asked the Minister, “Well, actually, what about the benefits that Te Tiriti o Waitangi brings? What about the benefits around te reo, around cultural competency?” You’re going to have this Director of Regulation, but how are they going to support kōhanga reo? How are they going to support puna reo? How are they going to be culturally competent to actually get in there and to help those Māori-medium setting early childhood education places? We did not get an answer. And so we’ve got the Regulatory Standards Act, the Ministry for Regulation, and this new Director of Regulation and no clarity from this Minister or this Government.
The other question, and it was picked up by my friend Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, was around ratios. This is an incredibly important issue within the early childhood sector as well. The health and wellbeing of our tamariki and our mokopuna is incredibly important. The working conditions of our teachers—those are the learning conditions of our children. So it is important that we do everything to support teachers as well. So we posed questions around the health and wellbeing: what is in place from this Director of Regulation? How can this person be used to actually address some of the health and wellbeing issues that are very live issues within the early childhood sector, particularly on ratios? How will they make sure that our tamariki and our mokopuna are well looked after? Because every parent in this House will know that looking after babies is a lot more different than looking after toddlers and a lot more different than looking after older children as well. So that’s why ratios are really, really important. But where is the follow-through? Where is the link-through?
We did get one response saying that “Actually, this is going to be a compliance thing, and those will be made by the policy makers.” But where is the link? We’re going to have all of this regulation, and we’re going to have all of this “yellow tape”, as it has been put, and the guise has been around deregulation, around getting rid of all this other sort of tape, but actually, we’ve got lots of yellow tape that is happening. There is no clarity at all about how this is going to help our tamariki and mokopuna, and how this is going to help those people that are in front of our tamariki to do their jobs. We do not commend this bill to the House.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is the third reading of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, and some people might have mistaken it for being a Treaty bill, but this is about making sure that there is actually a position that is created, which is the Director of Regulation for early childhood education.
No one is imagining that that person will be the one who goes into all of the different kinds of centres. There will be a team of people around this one person, so I’m sure that if there are other skills that are needed, they won’t need to reside in one person. This is a sensible change, and I commend the bill to the House.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Well, we follow the soothing tones of Vanessa Weenink. You know, Erica Stanford, the Minister of Education, she talks a big game on educational achievement, and that's OK—that's OK. She talks a big game, but we're up for more educational achievement. We want our kids to do better, and so with Minister Stanford, we can at least have a debate about how we get there. We all want our country to succeed. We want our kids to do as well as possible.
But with the Associate Minister of Education, with David Seymour, it's a whole other kettle of fish. This is the man who brought New Zealand millions of burnt plastic school lunches. He's the man who subjected the nation to months and months of needlessly divisive undermining of our country's race relations with the Treaty principles bill. He's the man who put in place the charter schools framework that allowed in West Auckland over the last few weeks a bizarre, hostile takeover of a highly regarded local high school, Kelston Boys’ High School, that has only just been resolved with this dodgy community organisation who was trying to mount the takeover withdrawing their expression of interest.
And so to let David Seymour loose on the early childhood education (ECE) sector is a cruel trick to play, because—I think for most people in this House, actually, and certainly for members on this side of the House—the early childhood education sector is one of our most treasured parts of the education system. We entrust our most vulnerable, our youngest children, into the care of an early childhood education sector. We want them to be safe. We want them to be well looked after. And yet this bill raises all sorts of alarm bells with right-thinking people, because David Seymour, with all of the kind of right-wing libertarian baggage that he brings to this Parliament, has set out to reform the regulatory system within which early childhood education operates. He's put in place a regulator that has—from our reading, our interpretation of the provisions in this bill—a mandate that has shifted away from education and the wellbeing of children.
He's taken the regulation of the early childhood sector out of the Ministry of Education. Well, why? Is it not education? Why wouldn't it sit with the rest of the education system? It doesn't deserve the same kind of priority that tertiary education does? It doesn't deserve the resources and the focus that our compulsory education sector does? Why? The Government benches haven’t been able to answer that in the course of these three readings and committee of the whole House stage. What are we supposed to think when not only is he taking it out of the Ministry of Education but, in the mandate and the framing of the mandate for the regulator, they explicitly say that the purpose is to give parents the option—the choice—to be able to enter the labour market?
Now, we all know that's a big part for parents all over New Zealand who want early childhood education for their kids, because it's very hard for working families to get by on only one income. Both parents have to work if they can, just to survive. But for that to be a key part of the framing of the mandate of this regulator—that says to us that, actually, the whole system is being dragged and dropped out of education into a more economic framing. That has sparked for members on this side of the House what is really a values clash that has been brought to the surface with this. If we were drafting a new regulatory framework for the early childhood education sector, we would be putting the wellbeing and the learning achievement for children at the heart of it. That would have to be the paramount objective—and yet it is not, under this framework. Why?
We are deeply suspicious that the regulatory framework and the appointment of this regulator is designed to do what we know from all his other public statements David Seymour wants to do, and that is run the early childhood sector on the basis of a competitive market. We know from experience that when you do that, inevitably, the quality outcomes, the safety of children, the quality of the learning environment, the educational experience that they have—the whole experience of setting our kids up for a successful life in those crucial early years is likely to suffer. We know that that Minister is not committed to having 100 percent qualified early childhood education teachers—and for us on this side of the House, that's an article of faith.
Many colleagues have commented in the course of this debate that the omission of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a glaring gap, and it's par for the course: this Government, in one bill after another that comes before the House, have been stripping out the clauses that would direct whatever institution it is—the other day it was our compulsory education sector that would have required schools to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi. That's gone. There's nothing in here that would say to the sector that delivers early childhood education that they should give effect to the Treaty; that they should be mindful and conscious of the special place of Māori as tangata whenua in this country, and the need for the ECE sector to give appropriate importance to the worldview, the values, the culture, and the experience of Māori in that system. There's a reason we talk about it as our founding document, but this Government is hell-bent on stripping out from every bit of law that they can—any kind of commitment to the Treaty.
Many submitters expressed real concern that a child-centred approach was being taken out and put to one side with this bill in favour of a more economic, market-based approach, and we share those concerns. One of the—well, I should say, if we were drafting a bill like this, we would be looking to put equity and access issues at the heart of the regulatory framework for the early childhood sector. Access is still expensive for many families around New Zealand and, of course, what that means is that lower-income families struggle to get access to early childhood education for their kids or to have good choices about where their kids are going to go, and so what we would want to see is a much stronger commitment to ensuring that the non-profit part of the early childhood education sector is supported and has the conditions that would enable it to thrive.
I mentioned the importance of qualified early childhood education teachers; that is something that is extremely important to us. There's nothing that even comes anywhere near talking about that as an important priority in this bill. It's a terrible gap. We think there has to be more support for teacher qualification for professional development and, above all, paying our early childhood education teachers properly so we can retain good skills. I'll leave it there.
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on this very important bill. I just find out rather ironic that here we are getting lectured on how to fix the early childhood education sector from the member of Parliament who couldn’t build one KiwiBuild house, let alone 100,000.
Look, moving on to the guts of this bill. Honestly, what we're trying to achieve here is to give great education for young children in New Zealand and break through the red tape to allow the people that are prepared to risk and invest money in providing these services so that we can have more options for parents and more affordable options for parents.
That is what it's about. It’s about the children being able to get provided with education. Up until we've got through this, to this opportunity here today, early childhood centres were shutting down and that is not what we wanted to see. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is a split call. I call the Hon Jo Luxton.
Hon JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to begin my contribution tonight by acknowledging all the early childhood (ECE) teachers out there in the sector, all the ECE teachers who chose early childhood teaching as a career and trained for many years to become qualified in this sector.
Being an ECE teacher is not easy job, but it is a very rewarding job. I know this because I was an ECE teacher before coming to Parliament. I was also an ECE centre owner. When I was an ECE teacher and then an owner, it was under the previous National Government—the John Key National Government—and even then I felt hugely concerned that that Government held no value against early childhood education and what it provided to our young people, and this piece of legislation just simply cements that in my mind.
I am really concerned that this is just the beginning of the deregulation of the ECE sector, and I am concerned that Te Whāriki our curriculum document will be next, and I think everyone should feel very concerned about that.
I am not a part of the Education and Workforce Committee so I wasn’t there to hear the submitters and all the things that go along with being a part of a select committee, but I was concerned to hear that the majority of submitters opposed this piece of legislation, and I was really concerned to read in the regulatory impact statement about the lack of consultation.
The Minister today said that there was consultation with the sector. There was consultation with the sector from the Ministry for Regulation but not on the specific piece of legislation. Actually, I think this piece of legislation is completely unnecessary and a waste of time, and as members who spoke before me have said, it’s just part of a coalition agreement and it serves no purpose to improving the educational outcomes for our tamariki.
And be aware that that is what early childhood education centres are all about—educating our children. And this piece of legislation has wording that says that the purpose is “supporting parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.” It sounds like some kind of robotic factory that will send our children off to stand in line to have nappies changed, be fed, and be put to bed without any value on the actual educational outcomes for our youngest and most vulnerable children in the years where their brains are just absolute little sponges. They learn through being curious, through making mistakes, through problem solving, through learning, and through building trusting relationships with other adults.
This piece of legislation simply makes it sound like, “Here’s a facility where you can drop your children off to babysit because we want you to get back to work.” And whilst it is absolutely necessary for a lot of families to have two-parent working families—it is essential—that is not what the purpose of the ECE sector is fundamentally about. It is about educating our preschool-age children.
I come back to the lack of consultation I was reading about in the regulatory impact statement. There was some real concern in the advice that was given to the Minister with regard to—I won’t be able to find the piece I’m looking for but one of the documents I have here in front of me relates to Treaty of Waitangi obligations. There were several limitations and constraints on the regulatory impact analysis, including limited time to both undertake detailed analysis of the impacts of the proposals and undertake consultation with key stakeholders. And it goes on to say that the Minister of Education advised Ministers that these limitations on the regulatory impact analysis create risk of policy failure and litigation.
This is an absolutely unnecessary piece of legislation. The early childhood regulations were very clear about the health and safety requirements, standards, and licensing requirements about ECE centres. Early childhood education centres are about educating our youngest and most vulnerable children. I do not commend this legislation to the House.
GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): It is my privilege to take a very short call on this bill. Let me mihi to the kōhanga reo and the many kindergartens and childcare centres in the electorate of Maungakiekie. There's over 70 of them.
We’re excited about this piece of legislation. We’re excited about what it brings to that sector. I also mihi to the childcare centre on whose board of the charitable trust is that I sit. I tautoko the many comments that I’ve heard about the fact that serving the early childhood centre is as much a calling as it is employment. We totally tautoko that on this side of the House, and that's what this legislation is about. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): This bill is really a race to the bottom when it comes to our kids’ education. For some reason, I have an image in my mind of chickens in a barn just being herded in. It’s kind of babysitting; it’s, “Let’s get the kids into a babysitting place so we can get the parents out to work.” It’s going to be deregulated, and the pedagogy is not going to be there.
Then I compare that kind of image with the Dunedin Study—an internationally renowned study—which has shown unequivocally the importance of the first 2,000 days. I had the privilege of having a walk through some really exciting programmes that have been rolling out through our ECEs around New Zealand—programmes like Enrich and Engage—which really are play-based and have a strong pedagogy, fantastic evidence base, and results to show behaviour regulation and decision making, the types of behaviours referred to by my colleague the Hon Jo Luxton. Enrich, as well, adds language skills so that, by the time our children go to school, they are really well set up to be able to continue to be curious and to learn in the best possible way.
What this bill does is flies absolutely in the face of that, and it’s hard for me to believe that it’s even allowed to be called the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, because when we look at the Education and Training Act, in section 4, the purpose of that Act states very clearly that this is about learning outcomes, it is about supporting Te Tiriti, it is about supporting Crown-Māori relationships, and it is about supporting equity. There is nothing in there that talks about the labour market and getting people into the labour market as being one of its fundamental values. In fact, it goes in the opposite direction because the failure to include Te Tiriti means that it flies in the opposite direction of what the primary Act has legislated. I have real questions around the potential ultra vires, if you like, of section 3 of the principal Act. When I asked the Associate Minister of Education about it at the committee stage, I had dissatisfactory answers. In fact, I don’t believe the Minister in the chair at the time even bothered to answer.
We heard numerous complaints that came via the submitters, the ones that I read, but also through the regulatory impact statement (RIS), about the lack of an evidence base for this amendment, the rushed process, and the lack of options that were able to be considered. It was no wonder the Minister was not able to answer our questions when we asked about specific things. At one point he mentioned that Te Tiriti was extraneous. He could not tell us whether the inclusion of kōhanga reo and puna reo and bilingual units meant that Te Tiriti was nevertheless implied, because it is certainly explicit in the primary Act. We have no Hansard recording for that; there will be confusion there. He could not answer our questions around that when we queried in Schedule 2.
The other concern I have, actually, is that we didn’t really get to the bottom of some of the critical clauses in Part 1; it was a fairly truncated debate, in my view. We had some questions around the role of the director and the secretary. The RIS makes it very clear that there is potential for confusion because the director is quasi-independent. There are question marks over their accountability to the Minister, but also there are questions over the decision-making hierarchy, particularly in the transitional period with the director and the secretary—and the RIS points that out. The Minister was not able to answer our questions on that.
We didn’t even get to clause 8 and onwards. I’m quite concerned about those because any time a member of this House sees words to do with enforcement powers and—let me have a look, I’ll find it in the bill—the director’s powers, which are much broader than the secretary’s, I have to say, we have sections that we couldn’t even ask about to do with administration of Part 2, with being able to use regulatory actions that could be seen as punitive, especially if the information demands were onerous. That was mentioned in the RIS at page 33.
We didn’t get to section 10, which expands warrantless entry and inspection powers. Now, warrantless entry and inspection powers are not things to be taken lightly in democracy. They deserve to be considered fully. They are human rights based. This is New Zealand. We expect this to be done properly, and yet there are multiple references in the RIS that we did not get to ask the Minister about: page 33 with inspections being perceived as punitive potentially; that major structural shifts could cause confusion over the regulatory powers—that’s page 30—that the State’s regulatory actions must be proportionate—as a warning on page 29—and that there was no consultation with the sector on expanded enforcement powers, on page 48.
There was a trivialisation, in my view, of the human rights elements of this. When people raised the rights of children, there was a bit of sneering from the other side of the House; the Minister looked disengaged and bored. Let’s not forget that we have just gone through an abuse in care royal commission. Let’s not forget that there should have been a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report on this. We did not get to ask questions about that because of the truncated debate. We did not get to ask questions about the ACC liabilities in the event that there was an overreach of these powers. What would the police involvement be with some of these extended powers of the director? What would the rights of appeal be? There was evidence in the submissions about more mistrust of the State by Māori. Now, if I go back to the primary legislation that this is supposed to be amending, one of the clear purposes in section 4 is Crown-Māori relationships and also supporting Te Tiriti. How on earth this can be seen to reconcile with that, I do not know.
We then also had a whole lot of information-gathering powers, which are broader than those of the current secretary. We didn’t get any satisfactory answers about how that would be managed, when it comes to privacy rights. Again, these are fundamental human rights in a democracy.
What I would like to do, though, is really challenge what the Minister said when he tried to suggest that this is about best practice and regulation. We have an OECD report that is widely recognised as best practice in countries that we compare ourselves to called Starting Strong. It repeatedly highlights that fragmented ECE governance systems can lead to uneven service quality, confusion amongst parents, regulatory inconsistency, weak accountability, and gaps between educational goals and regulatory enforcement. We can see, from the way this bill is written, that it absolutely does risk doing all of those things, because it fragments the governance so that you have a director who isn’t responsible or answerable to the ministry. That’s been done very deliberately and in quite a Machiavellian way, in my view, to essentially privatise, as has been said, and to avoid accountability.
There are numerous places in the OECD report that stress that child-centred and not market-centred regulation leads to the best educational outcomes. New Zealand was in the group of countries that had done that pre-2024—with Norway, Sweden, Estonia. The research was bearing out those results. Mark my words, when this comes into effect in the coming years—if there is even adequate monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of this, and that is questionable given the lack of accountability—we will see educational achievement go down and, most specifically, we will see it go down for Māori and for our rural sector, and they are the most vulnerable.
Andy Foster: You saw it go down for ages, and what did you do about it? It’s accelerated it. You wrecked the education system.
INGRID LEARY: Point of order, Madam Speaker. If the member would like to take a call, can he please take a call?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That’s not a point of order.
INGRID LEARY: Well, it’s really hard to hear myself think when someone’s yelling. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
We’ve heard a lot about Māori being the ones who have been most disadvantaged. When we asked about the rushed time frame, which was mentioned in the RIS many times, and there was no evidence base for doing that, we said, “Please, at least for our Māori-medium providers and our rural providers who would not be able to get their affairs in order to be able to respond quickly enough and for whom there was no impact assessment done, at least push the start date out to six months.” The Minister didn’t even bother to answer that question, and so I really feel for the rural ECE providers in my electorate of Taieri. I also want to acknowledge the tireless workers of the ECE sector who do the work for love, not for money. This is going to be a very sad day for them.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just like my colleague over here, Greg Fleming, I just want to start off, and I want to thank all those that look after and care for our young ones in the early childhood sector and thank them for their passion and their care.
This bill provides clarity. It provides clarity around regulating early childhood education. It introduces principles to inform the decision making while keeping children’s health and safety as a paramount objective. I commend it to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill
Third Reading
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
This Government has committed, as we all know, to restoring law and order and strengthening democracy and freedoms. I’m pleased that this bill has now reached its final stage because it supports both of those important goals. However, it’s unique in the sense that unlike our other law and order issues we’ve debated in the House, which arise from domestic challenges, this bill responds to a threat we collectively face that comes from outside New Zealand. It specifically addresses the growing issue of foreign interference. Foreign interference goes beyond the appropriate forms of State to State engagement. It is activity that is intended to deceive, corrupt, or coerce New Zealanders to unduly influence, disrupt, or subvert our national interests.
Our intelligence and security agencies report that foreign State - sponsored attempts have been made to deceptively influence policy makers and undermine the independence of our democratic and foreign policy objectives. Public submissions on the bill reported communities are being harassed and monitored and attempts are being made to prevent them from expressing views that foreign States consider subversive. This cannot be tolerated in our democracy. We must send a clear signal to the public and other States that foreign interference from any source is not acceptable.
Rawiri Waititi: Like America.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: This bill—thank you, Mr Waititi, for your commentary—strengthens New Zealand’s criminal law to support a justice response to foreign interference and espionage activity targeting New Zealand. It specifically introduces two new offences that criminalise foreign interference, and updates existing offences to better hold people accountable for disclosing information that’s likely to prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence. The measures are country neutral of course, and apply to anyone or any nation undertaking foreign interference against New Zealand and those who support foreign states through malign, self-initiated conduct.
The first new offence criminalises the act of foreign interference. To commit the offence, a person must know, or ought to know, that they are committing or acting for or on behalf of a foreign power. They must also be acting in an inappropriate manner and mean to compromise a protected New Zealand interest. All elements of the offence must occur to attract criminal liability. This ensures that the offence doesn’t criminalise appropriate foreign influence occurring through diplomatic or political channels, or when foreign States or their agents advocate for their country’s interests in an open and transparent manner which doesn’t show everything that people assume. It will also mean that the offence does not apply to people who do not know and do not have a reasonable way of determining that they’re being used by a foreign State to undertake foreign interference against New Zealand, and that’s important.
The second new offence further criminalises existing imprisonable offences where they are committed for or on behalf of a foreign power to benefit in specified ways. The offence recognises that some activities used to undertake or support foreign interference are already offences in New Zealand. The significance of these criminal acts and the harms that they cause increase when they are committed to support a foreign power. This will now be accounted for in our criminal law.
Safeguards, of course, will be in place to ensure lawful and appropriate conduct does not inadvertently attract criminal liability. This includes requiring the Attorney-General’s consent to prosecute. The Justice Committee also made important changes which further clarified the bill’s intent to target harmful foreign interference and protect the exercise of rights and freedoms. I appreciate and I welcome the committee’s contributions.
With respect to changes to existing offences, the bill clarifies and strengthens accountability for committing espionage and disclosing Government information that is likely to prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence without authorisation. The bill inserts a definition of “A person who owes allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand” into the Crimes Act. This definition does not apply to the new foreign interference offences, but instead provides greater certainty for who can be held accountable for committing espionage and a small number of existing offences that include this term.
New offences are being created to address criminal liability gaps under this bill. Anyone who owes allegiance to the Sovereign and right of New Zealand can now be held liable as a party if they assist others to commit acts that amount to espionage against our country.
Collectively, these changes strengthen our criminal justice response to foreign interference by providing a means to better hold people to account for committing harmful acts against our country and our communities. I’m proud that New Zealand will be taking this stand against foreign interference. We encourage cooperation and mutual respect between States, but we also must be clear that we will not tolerate acts that seek to undermine our sovereignty, security, and our way of life.
By passing this bill, we are supporting the resilience of New Zealand’s democracy and working to ensure our country remains a place where everyone can enjoy the guaranteed rights and freedoms afforded to them under our laws. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill, but not with the excitement that the Minister of Justice gave his speech, because this bill seeks to strike a balance between what’s, essentially, national security and the rights and freedoms of its citizens. The area of national security is one which is particularly challenging to do because the interests protected, the interest of national security, is somewhat amorphous. And in terms of foreign interference, the conduct, which is by this bill criminalised, would, in many settings, be innocuous, and I want to just outline how innocuous it might be.
Some people might be aware that the Economic and Cultural Office of Taiwan had an event the other day, and some MPs attended. Some MPs received a letter from the Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, which was, essentially, a reprimand. Now, if it went no further, the ambassador in a, perhaps, ham-fisted way, is trying to influence the conduct of parliamentarians. So far, nothing in particular to see here, in terms of this legislation, but you only have to add one ingredient. If, for example, the Ambassador asked someone, a New Zealand citizen, perhaps an immigrant, what MPs were there, then let’s run that through this piece of legislation because the question is: is the passing on of information improper conduct? And the short answer to that is that, under this legislation, it is because it’s passing on private information, or information about a person, without that other person knowing. Are they doing it knowing that they’re going to assist a foreign power? Well, if they’re handing it on to someone from an ambassador’s office, they’re clearly doing it because it’s useful to that other person.
What is the effect of that? The effect of that, if we look at the letter that was sent, is to seek to impede the conduct of a public official. The members of Parliament who are there, members of this legislature, the ultimate aim was to seek to interfere with the discharge of their duties through influencing their behaviour. If you peel that back, we’ve got something that looks pretty innocuous: “Yes, I saw Duncan Webb at that event”; you wouldn’t think that that’s criminal, and that’s why I say this is a difficult piece of legislation.
We support it, but we want to be clear that we need to strike a careful balance. What I don’t want to see is people who are doing innocuous acts, perhaps carelessly, perhaps even recklessly, because that’s the test: was that person reckless as to whether or not they were assisting a foreign power in seeking to exert influence? I think we need to approach this with a degree of caution, because, ultimately, it will be, I assume, the police who will be enforcing this, and they will need to strike a careful balance between not just the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protected rights but also the importance of the freedom to act in what we would consider to be a normal way. So if we think of the test—“they know or ought to know”, so they could be acting innocently, but a person who is, perhaps, a bit smarter or a bit switched on, or perhaps just not quite as thick, would know. So that person ought to know.
Then, of course, we’ve got this test of “the person engages in conduct being reckless as to whether doing so is likely to compromise a protected New Zealand interest.” Now, an ordinary person in the street is unlikely to understand what a protected New Zealand interest is and is unlikely to see the nuance of what is a national security interest: defence, easy; selling submarine designs to the Russians, easy. But telling people who was at an event, or things of that nature, who met with who, that’s hard to understand, but, nevertheless, it could be interfering with a protected New Zealand interest, because a protected New Zealand interest includes not only the economic wellbeing of New Zealand but also the functioning of the executive, judiciary, or legislature. Saying who Ministers met with or who parliamentarians met with or where judges play golf—those kinds of things could all be seen as in breach of this legislation. It even goes further down the Public Service because, interfering with “the exercise or performance of any public function, duty, or power conferred … on [any] person or body”. So even if you’re talking about the conduct or the behaviours or the relationships of a public servant, particularly senior public servants, that’s going to run into problems.
Of course, the conduct in itself—there’s some conduct which we know to be problematic: coercion is an obvious one, threatening to disclose harmful information if someone doesn’t give you a secret; of course it’s going to be wrong. That’s the kind of coercion in foreign interference that, clearly, falls over the line. But what about just concealing a person’s actions or identity? Not telling someone your real name in a conversation? If you’re working for an embassy and you’re at a party and you don’t tell them you work at the American Embassy and you, therefore, get disclosures about what they do, who they are, their role in Parliament, some staffer talking about the work they’re doing for a senior minister, well, simply by not saying, “I work for the American Embassy”, when you’re talking to staff at the Ministry for Economic Development office, that is concealing a person’s identity. Similarly, “obscuring the existence of an association or relationship”—that also falls foul of it. Or, in the one I referred to earlier: “collecting or sharing information about a person without their knowledge or consent”—it doesn’t say private information; it just says information.
Foreign interference is a problem, we need to absolutely address it, but one of the challenges at select committee, and one of the things that I, to be honest, wasn’t entirely satisfied with was that the boundaries of this criminalisation, the fringes, are not clear. The centre is clear. The prohibition on spying and illegitimate influence is clear. But at the fringes, the kind of small behaviours that actually are the bread and butter of the intelligence community are not clear. We need to be constantly vigilant that we don’t have a kind of authoritarian creep where things which we ought to accept as an ordinary incident of living in a free and open and democratic society all of a sudden become subject to, essentially, criminalisation—and criminalisation in a way which is hard to defend against, because there’s not a great deal of mental element here in the actus reus: the actions which are prohibited are broad indeed.
This bill is needed. Addressing foreign interference is needed. But when the courts come to interpret this, I am hopeful that they will look at it and say we need to interpret this not just against the background of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but also against the background of how a free and democratic society operates and what kinds of behaviours are assumed to be permitted, what kinds of interactions are presumed to be permitted, and to ensure that only people who really know that they are leveraging a foreign power’s influence in an inappropriate way are criminalised by this legislation. So, on that basis, we will be supporting this bill, but we will look with interest at its implementation.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just to acknowledge the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, he made a lot of really, really good points, he always makes a lot of good points, enough points, actually, for me to not support this bill—surprise, surprise! The Green Party do not support this bill. While we while we understand it’s important to ensure New Zealand is protected from genuine threats of foreign interference, this legislation does not ensure sufficient protections for civil liberties and democratic freedoms.
The point made around being influenced by foreign entities, by foreign countries, I think is an important one, the illustration by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, a very specific one. I don’t have anybody from a major foreign power following me on social media, who might comment or watch what I am sharing on social media, but I think it is an important point, because if you add the extra influence of a foreign country on to somebody whose conduct is reckless, then the court can actually pile on a lot more penalties, up to around seven years I think it was.
In the committee of the whole House stage, I did propose an amendment to clause 10, which I thought would actually rectify that. It was to replace “funding, or agreement” with “or funding” to make sure that it’s not necessary to actually have the agreement of a foreign power, because people are sometimes reckless and are doing wrong, but they might not be conscious that, actually, a foreign power is influencing them, or actually agree that this foreign power is agreeing with them. So, actually, having something in there, I think, would have been quite useful.
The committee of the whole House stage was interesting, we canvassed a whole range of ideas. We had this really interesting discussion around the definition of owing allegiance, and despite the debate and despite the discussion, I still found it quite unclear and unclear exactly how this legislation will apply that particular part of the bill. One of the interesting examples that was brought up was around people with whakapapa or a heritage connection to Aotearoa New Zealand. There’s a very live case at the moment—and I noticed the Hon Minister Tama Potaka in the House as well—where a family took this through to the Waitangi Tribunal in order to get their passport. The contention of the Waitangi Tribunal in that case is actually that you should be able to get New Zealand citizenship within two generations as well. So in that particular case, this could apply to somebody overseas who has that whakapapa connection within two generations if the Minister and the Government would agree with the Waitangi Tribunal, and I think there are really good reasons why the Government should do that.
There were also discussions around owing allegiance around various visa types as well. These are very interesting questions; people come here on different visas, so what does that actually mean for them? How do the owing allegiance provisions specifically impact them as well? I felt that those questions were not resolved very well by the Minister.
We also were concerned around the discussion around foreign agents who become residents, but not citizens, who might fall outside of the allegiance definition as well.
There were certainly some conversations around how this would apply to people who hold allegiance that live outside of New Zealand. I have a particular interest in that because I am also from the Cook Islands: we have New Zealand passports; Niueans also have New Zealand passports. What does that mean for us? You have a large number of us living here in New Zealand. Then, you also have people in the Ross Dependency as well. It wasn’t very clear; I think that the answer that we got to was: determining what the type of citizenship somebody, like myself and my relatives over in the islands, might have is a question for the courts.
There was a discussion around how common law could be applied to people, to citizens, as well. But here’s the thing around access to the common law: you actually need some resources to be able to go to the court to determine whether you fall under the provisions or not. So that was, I felt, a question that was also unresolved by the Minister as well.
There’s also lots of different questions around temporary allegiance as well—that was something that was that was brought up, which I thought was quite interesting, I think that was Vanushi Walters that brought that up, I had actually never heard of that before until that particular debate as well—and historical legal concepts of temporary allegiance where non-citizens owe allegiance only while present in the country. That’s an important point to make, because if you owe allegiance and you fall under the auspice of this legislation and you’re at a meeting and you’re a bit reckless at the meeting and someone likes your stuff on Facebook, you could be facing even more penalties. So I think that was really unclear as well.
Also, there were questions around how this would apply to migrants, visa holders, and people with dual obligations. I’ve heard of people in this House that you have dual citizenship—I think maybe even triple citizenship, but I’m not too sure if that’s actually possible, it probably is. So these questions were also canvassed at the committee of the whole House stage as well, but I still don’t think that those were adequately addressed.
There is the wider question around the influence of Five Eyes countries as well. The submitters that came to the Justice Committee were very specific about a particular couple of countries, and that was what the focus was. If you’re getting foreign interference from anyone, from any other country, then it’s appropriate that things need to be put in place. But there was no resolution for the vast number of submitters who came to the select committee who were concerned about the importation of culture wars—for example, the influence of groups like the Atlas Network. We only have to see what happened just outside in the last Parliament, when they burnt down the playground as well. People influenced by social media, and the influence of social media on New Zealand citizens as well. These are all examples of foreign interference, of foreign influence by outside entities, whether we agree with the people that were influenced by that or not. This bill does not address that as well, and I think that continues to be an important question for this House as well, particularly when you give the trajectory of the Government—they’re cosying up to the Trump administration, I would say too close to the Trump administration. I think it’s really important that we have an independent foreign policy, and getting too close to the Trump administration I don’t think is a good idea, particularly when it doesn’t pay the dividends that you think it would.
I recall the announcement of the Wellington FBI office: everybody was surprised it was open, but no one was more surprised than Todd McClay because, the very next day, New Zealand got pinged with 15 percent tariffs. So we roll out the red carpet—well, the Government rolls out the red carpet for the FBI, and they can’t even give us a good tariff rate. So we’re being influenced to roll out the red carpet for the FBI, and it doesn’t even do anything for us.
These really important questions need to be resolved, these really important questions need to be put to the House, about how you do actually deal with that situation. We do not want—or I don’t think we want—to have the impact of cultural wars being imported into the country, culture wars predominantly via America, influencing our society. I think that’s incredibly, incredibly important. This bill doesn’t do anything to resolve that. This bill does nothing to resolve that at all. It was very, very specific and targeted at one particular group, and pretty vague in that way as well.
We won’t be supporting this bill. There were too many unresolved questions around who owes allegiance to who, the potential legal gaps and loopholes as well, how this will impact people who are dual citizens or triple citizens, access to the common laws so you actually can figure out what your rights are, because not everybody has got money to actually to roll up to the court and say, “You know what? I was a bit reckless, I was a bit disorderly, I went to a function, I met the Hon Duncan Webb and I put something on Facebook and a foreign power liked me on Facebook.” Those things are not clear. We don’t this bill hits the mark, and the Greens will not be supporting this bill.
Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand on behalf of ACT and support the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. This Government made a commitment to restore law and order, and that comes in many shapes and sizes when it comes to dealing with criminal offences. Part of this is around strengthening New Zealand’s ability to detect, deter, and respond to foreign State interference by creating new criminal offences, modernising espionage and treason laws, and tightening protections around sensitive information and national institutions. This all makes sense because it’s important to protect New Zealand’s interests. It’s important to make sure that there’s accountability when there is foreign interference in our country that actually threatens our national interests.
We are strengthening the law to provide a better means to hold people accountable when they are undertaking foreign interference. Whilst it is OK and normal for diplomatic activity to happen—transparent lobbying and other forms of open and cooperative engagement are welcome, but when it becomes hidden and when it becomes deceptive and quite corrosive and corruptive, we need to have a way of dealing with this.
I’m really proud to be part of a Government that’s looking at all areas of law and order and making sure that we’re protecting New Zealand’s interests and making sure that everybody is safe in this country. I really commend this bill to the House.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. The bill directly affects New Zealand’s ability to uphold and defend our sovereignty. Criminalising and applying harsher penalties to new kinds of covert acts intended to compromise our sovereignty will protect New Zealand, New Zealanders, and our New Zealand interests.
This is a very clear piece of legislation, which is raising questions as to why it’s causing so much consternation. This is about the deliberate deception, corruption, and coercion of individuals. It is the undermining of our ability to secure our sovereignty, protect our democracy, and protect our way of life. I think, ultimately, that is the message that we are sending. For any questions around criminality, as those who understand law will know, this is about combining mens rea with the actus reus—so there is a combination. When you break down an offence and talk clause by clause and ignore the fact that this is an “and, and, and” piece of legislation and that all of those components have to exist in order for the criminality levels to be met—again, always, as with any law, the threshold of reasonable grounds to believe before any prosecution can take place and, further than that, beyond reasonable doubt to achieve a conviction, I think will provide the assurances that those across the House have questioned in debating this bill.
New Zealand First supports this bill because it gives our enforcement agencies the powers they need to tackle any kind of foreign interference. As we know, we are more connected globally than we ever have been, and, therefore, with that comes the risks of foreign interference. We need to ensure that we can trade openly, that we can engage equally, and that we can grow our identity across the world, whilst having the protections from foreign interference that would seek to undermine our way of life and our democracy and our national security. Therefore, New Zealand First has no hesitation to commend this bill to the House.
RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Well, I’ve heard a lot this evening, and what we have here is a Government that continues to use scaremongering tactics with our people here in Aotearoa, without any true evidence. We’ve had a few bills passed through this House this year. One was about regulating space because there was an imminent threat—we weren’t told what that imminent threat was. The social engineering that this Government continues to do to the New Zealand public is actually frightening, because what you actually do is you start to prepare and you start to create legislation that, in actual fact, if you were to peel it all back, you will find that the foreign interference happening here at this particular time is actually aligned with the Americanisation of this country. It’s Trumpism. It’s Trumpism at its best. Just like everyone else in Aotearoa, we do not want foreign powers. When you start to criminalise owing allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand, you have got iwi in this country who understand what sovereignty is—we never swore sovereignty to the Crown of England, and so that is—
Andy Foster: That’s a matter of opinion.
RAWIRI WAITITI: That’s not a matter of opinion. Read Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This is your problem, sir. This is your problem. That member hasn’t read Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It never ever said that Māori ceded sovereignty. We’ve got Ngāpuhi over there, and we’ve got Mōkai Pātea over there. You go and have a conversation with those iwi. I can tell you right now that those particular clauses in this particular bill will be damaging, and we cannot support this bill. We cannot support this bill because it fundamentally goes against our vision for foreign policy in Aotearoa.
There was inadequate consultation with tangata whenua in the development of this bill. Te Tiriti is absolutely absent in it. This looks like another step in Aotearoa cosying up to the United States. Our policy is straightforward. Te Pāti Māori will assert our mana motuhake in a foreign policy grounded in tikanga Māori and anti-imperialism. We will reject the war agenda and reaffirm military neutrality for Aotearoa. We cannot let foreign powers turn Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa into a strategic war zone, and we cannot align ourselves with Government committing or sponsoring war crimes.
How can our people trust the Government to act in the best interest when they are not even willing to engage with us on matters of national security and when they are actively harming our people with their domestic policies? How can we trust that this bill will protect us from foreign interference when this Government has a track record of aligning Aotearoa closer to the United States? They’ve set up an FBI office in Pōneke. They’ve refused to recognise Palestine’s statehood, and they are laying the groundwork for joining AUKUS. This is just a realignment to Five Eyes—all while the United States enabled and funded a genocide. This is shameful. This is shameful. The reason that this Government cites for alignment is the pressure from traditional security partners—Five Eyes, AUKUS—growing geopolitical competition in the Pacific, hence the bullying tactics over the whanaunga in the Cook Islands, cybersecurity and shared intelligent concerns, dependence on trade with China versus ties with the West. China is our biggest trading partner, but you treat them like the second cousin sitting over there. You align yourselves to the US.
Regulation of our space territory was another one. Not only did you allow the protection—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I haven’t done anything, Mr Waititi.
RAWIRI WAITITI: It’s all part of it. It’s all part of it, Mr Speaker. It’s all part of counter - foreign intelligence because it all aligns. It all aligns. All the legislation you’ve moved aligns with this because what you’re doing is allowing one country to have interference in ours, and your alignment with that—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Waititi, just less use of the word “you”.
RAWIRI WAITITI: OK. They are aligning with the—are you happy now? They are aligning with the Americans and allowing our country to be sold off, not just in our security, and our social security but also in a commercial instance. You constantly align yourselves with Five Eyes and AUKUS. Absolutely. Absolutely. We are unequivocally against this bill, and we will never, ever support a bill that goes against the true sovereign of this country, te iwi Māori. Kia ora tātou.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Lawrence Xu-Nan—you need to call, Mr Xu-Nan, so that the people in the booth know who has the call.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think I want to start by talking about some of the issues that we have explored in this bill during the committee stage. I think the first thing that we're looking at is the definition of who is supposed to be covered in this bill and the meaning of “person who owes allegiance to sovereignty, to New Zealand’s Sovereign”.
Now, there was a lot of discussion but, to be honest, we didn't get the clarity that we were hoping for from the Minister when we’re looking at some of these definitions, and I think a lot of them have been pushed down lane as saying, “You know what, that's more of a case law to determine.” But we have seen in Aotearoa that there is a barrier for people when it comes to access to justice, and that barrier is particularly high for those where English is a second language. So that first and foremost, wasn't something that we were particularly impressed by during the committee stage.
Once we were looking more into it—and I think specifically that my colleague Teanau Tuiono has explored some of these areas around what does “recklessness” in this case mean? You know, mens rea is a particularly important component when you're committing an offence. I propose the example: what happens if an MP were travelling abroad, took their devices, and then that somehow got left behind or some of the data was accessed? Is that considered recklessness under 78AAA, subsection (3)? That is a really important question because that's an actual, genuine example that may eventuate if we are looking at this bill that potentially has a very broad scope.
We also did ask the question because, I think, when you are looking at a bill like this and the kind of advice that the Government has received, it’s also who is the target of this particular bill? We do want to explore the fact that if you're looking at the definition under 78AAA, subsection (6), in terms of who would be considered a foreign interference or a foreign interference body or a foreign power, you could include things, like a foreign public official like Elon Musk when he was part of the Department of Government Efficiency. You could be looking at a company, body, or organisation like the Atlas Network, and the way that it has infiltrated even some of the decisions that Aotearoa New Zealand makes in this term.
Hon Casey Costello: Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: This is an important question and this is an important point, and I love the fact that people are saying, “Well, what is the fact?” To be honest, we are already seeing that. We have seen that this very week and also last week, in terms of some of the bills that get passed in this House. So what is considered a foreign interference? Because, clearly, the Government has a particular target in mind.
Now, foreign interference is a serious issue and it should be something that people take seriously. Particularly for the migrant community, this is something that is being taken seriously in terms of what it means. But I'm also fearful for my communities because this sort of fear mongering will be reverberated on them. Nothing in this bill and nothing we have heard so far talks about the impact this will have for my community when they are being targeted by racism and by people who do not understand what this bill is trying to do but have bought into the fear perpetuated by this Government.
People always say like, “Well, you know what, sovereignty is really important?” But they are also the same people that we have seen who are quite comfortable selling Aotearoa to overseas powers. Te Tiriti is our defence, but we have not seen Te Tiriti once in this this bill; we have not seen tangata whenua being consulted, and hapū and iwi being consulted in the making of this bill. Why? Because the biggest colonial power and the biggest foreign interference of Aotearoa is the colonial power, and it's perpetuated and permeated in the history of Aotearoa. But we are seeing the Government continuously undermining that. So, no, the Greens will not support this bill because it's two-faced, frankly.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The deeper that we get into this evening, the more we see drama, theatre, performance, and fiction, and over here, we see fact and a Government that is looking to get things done to get this country back on track. Let me give you some facts this evening. This bill does a few simple things: it ensures we’re clear on who owes allegiance to the sovereign and the right of New Zealand; it clarifies the effect of dual citizenship; it replaces the term “enemy alien”; it makes it a question of law whether a person owes allegiance; it makes simple amendments to the offence provisions; and it ensures safeguards for protests, advocacy, and industrial action. It is a simple bill. Let’s forget the fiction; let’s focus on fact. I commend it to the House.
Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and thank you very much for this opportunity. Foreign interference grows and evolves when our communities let their guard down. Foreign interference takes many shapes and forms in our communities far and wide. For the most part, New Zealanders go to bed at night and sleep well, blissfully unaware of what is happening out there in this country and indeed around the world.
In my years as defence Minister, I saw firsthand the challenge that our services face and, of course, the challenges that this country faces when it comes to matters such as espionage and foreign interference. The hardest part during that time was trying to decipher between the overt kind of foreign interference and the covert kind of foreign interference.
In terms of the overt, when you're engaged in espionage-like activity, it becomes pretty clear that it’s not the right thing to do, and there are mechanisms to ensure that that person or those people who are found to be engaged in that kind of espionage or those kinds of acts certainly come before the judgment of the courts and indeed the public scrutiny this country should expect.
However, the more covert part is the challenge, and I take the point of a number of colleagues on this side of the House in particular, who talk to the fact that for the large majority in our community, simply scrolling on social media becomes a part of that grey area, because a large part of that interference, a large part of that influence, comes through social media and other mechanisms which might not be overt to all of us here in the House. But it is a challenge and it is a question that should be asked.
I understand that through the course of this bill, there is some good engagement, and, indeed, I know members on this side of the House offered a number of amendments and suggestions that could make this bill strengthened and make it in the shape where we could support it, which is what we will be doing this evening. But we still do have some questions.
What we know too when it comes to matters such as foreign interference is that they evolve quickly, they change quickly, and, of course, they'll outpace anything that this House does with respect to legislation. It just does; it’s a fact. So in order to make sure that we can give ourselves the best protection, we must make sure that legislation, this particular bill and any future legislation that can be proposed in this House, can look towards making sure that it is fit for purpose.
Now, I know, and we all know in this House, that, particularly led by this Government, there seems to be a very big stick approach to these matters—increase the fine and that'll deter them. That's usually what we hear—increase the fine and that'll deter them. Well, my experience in this space as a former Minister is that fines don't deter them because the outcome of foreign interference is far greater than any fine that can be thrown at them by this House. That's just a fact. So we've got to ask ourselves, then: are bills fit for purpose?
A number of the amendments in this particular bill are, I think, smart ones. They'll continue to look towards making sure that we can have a bill that is fit for purpose, but there are still questions and those questions must continue to be answered. We are welcoming many more people onto these shores to fill key roles in our workforce and in our community. These people find themselves in our community. They become a big part of our community, and what we don’t want is the kind of reverse effect where everybody looks over their shoulder or takes a second look at our whānau, takes a second look at people in our community who call New Zealand home. And they have every right to. They raise their families here. They're involved in our community, they're a big part of our community, and most people think that’s just in Auckland. That’s not true. We have so much diversity right across this country, yet the views across all those different places can differ significantly from Auckland all the way down to the South Island. So it's important that we make sure that in this approach, in this particular bill, we can continue to have a mind towards communities to keep them safe and those who call our communities home.
I take the point made by Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan with respect to his community and how we can make them feel safer here in New Zealand. This bill does part of that and we support that, and that’s why we should. But we also know that there are other matters that continually come up in this House that aren't necessarily covered by this bill but are looked to be covered in other parts that a Government might explore in its legislative agenda, such as matters like free speech.
We’ve already been very clear on this side of the House and in the Labour Party that the right to protest is part of being in a good democracy, to make sure that whānau and people right around this country can stand up for what they believe in, as long as they do it safely and as long as they don't impinge on the rights of others. But they can make their point really clear.
However, the problem when we talk about foreign interference in the manner that I've heard this evening and indeed through the passage of this bill, is that, sadly, that brings more question marks with respect to parts of our community, and I'm sure that's not the intention. However, that is the language that we're hearing and that is a concern to us.
Steve Abel: I think you should vote against it.
Hon PEENI HENARE: I appreciate Mr Steve Abel and his approach and the Green Party's approach to this. I understand my colleagues in the Labour Party worked really hard to make sure that we could express our view in particular. But what I want to be very clear on is I can't stand here in the House and agree with much of what my tuākana Rawiri Waititi said, and that’s simply because of my experience as a defence Minister. It’s easy to stand up and say, “Oh, it’s an alignment that looks like this.” Well, actually, if you look into those particular agreements and those treaties of the past, they are very different, and while I understand his concern, I can't support much of what he's said this evening simply because, for the most part, it does seem rather inflammatory. It does seem as a view towards gaslighting, something that is actually very serious. It should be considered by all members of the House as something that we can engage in in order to protect citizens in this country.
As I’ve said, we will be supporting this bill. We want to make sure, though, that we continue to keep an eye on these very important matters to make sure that however this bill moves forward into the future, and indeed any bill that might come after it that looks towards matters around countering foreign interference, it is for purpose given the quick and evolving nature of foreign interference around the world.
During this urgency session, we spoke on a number of bills around the national interest. The national interest is something that must continue to be a test where we look towards protecting the national interest at all costs. I think that for a number of the bills that have been passed through this urgency, we'll continue to debate them. We'll continue to make sure that we test them and challenge them so that that particular matter of national interest is held to the forefront.
Finally, from me, many of the members in this House won't know it, but there is a significant and somewhat large community in the intelligence and security space in this country. You may not know it but you'll walk down Lambton Quay and you may pass some. But that's the beauty about the skills they have—they, seemingly, are just a part of our community. You wouldn't recognise them if you're walking up the road with your whānau, but they play an important part in our country's security network and architecture, and I want to acknowledge all of them. There are a number of agencies that are involved in that. They all have different parts—from information to the matters that the New Zealand Defence Force will cover off. So I want to acknowledge all of them. They've gone through a number of changes in the past few years. There is a strengthening of the architecture of security in this country, which I encourage and support. Why? Because we’ve spoken many times in this House about the growing geostrategic competition, and it's important that New Zealand continues not only to protect itself but also play its part in an international network to protect sovereign countries around the world. That is the least we can do. That is part of making sure that a rules-based order is something that this country and this democracy continues to believe in while also protecting our own interests.
So in that vein, I will support this bill for my part as the speaker for the Labour Party, and we look forward to the next bills as we sit here in urgency.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. That was quite a balanced and reasonable contribution from Peeni Henare, and I commend him for it. But the gap between his contribution and the others that we’ve heard, particularly from Te Pāti Māori, is extremely stark. The tinfoil-hat wearers over on that side better have a listen to actually what their potential coalition partner just said in his contribution, because the gap is incredibly large. Actually, the reason we support this legislation and are bringing it about is because there is real common sense behind it. There is no the scaremongering, which those on that side of the House are so concerned about. The Trumpism that Rawiri Waititi talked about and the Atlas Network and all of this sort of stuff that they constantly go on and on about is just complete rubbish—it is complete conspiracy theory playbook 101. This legislation strengthens New Zealand’s criminal law to better prevent and respond to foreign interference which is targeting New Zealand. It is a good thing, a common-sense piece of legislation. That is why I commend it to the House.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am the co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). This is a cross-party group, which means that it is supposed to not be political, which looks at the influence of China around the world. One of the things, from my about five years in that role, that I’m very clear about is that the best protection from any foreign interference is to be country agnostic and to assume that there is interference from people from all over the world, from State actors everywhere, and to safeguard and protect your own sovereignty. I think, for those reasons, I do support this bill but very much with the caveats that were raised by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, because it is a fine line in terms of drawing the net to make sure that human rights are observed.
I’d like to make the point that I had concerns in my IPAC role about potential unintended consequences of this bill for Chinese New Zealanders. There is evidence, through IPAC internationally, to show that sometimes, while the intention of a bill like this may be to provide more support and freedom of speech and safeguard from coercion, in fact the experience can be one where they tend to go underground and will be less likely to engage with New Zealand officials, such as the police for example, and may also face more stigma and harassment. I guess we have to watch and wait and see, and the fourth estate will have a very important job to do in terms of assessing what the real impact of this legislation will be.
It is intended to provide those safeguards, but I have to say that sunlight is the best disinfectant for foreign interference, and my nervousness is also that the Government members are trumpeting this as if it is a bit of a silver bullet when, in fact, as the Hon Peeni Henare said, foreign interference comes in many forms. It can be a real slow burn. We see influence via business, via funding, via university research, via land acquisition, and also actually in the interests that make our strategic assets vulnerable. We have seen, for example, legislation go through this House this year that has weakened our overseas investment rules, which I think puts in peril some of our strategic assets—or, at least, at risk. These are things like ports, airports, infrastructure, and so on, not only because, ultimately, in some countries they can be taken over by a foreign State in conflict but also it does make countries more vulnerable to the funder. That’s just a reality of life, and that is country agnostic. We need to think very carefully about the strength of our national interest rule.
Also, the bill is pretty narrow. It is targeted at individuals around covert activity, deception, coercion, corruption, and so on. To me, it seems a little bit like the anti-smacking law: while the intent is good, it is very difficult to draw the lines, and it’s going to take some real judgment from the authorities in terms of how this is applied. In the area of foreign interference, that is extremely difficult, because it’s inevitable that politics will come into play and that the executive of the day, depending on how they see the world, could have a bearing on the way these laws are interpreted. Again, I would stress that being country and actor agnostic and really looking at behaviours and safeguards is the only way to approach this when applying the law.
The other thing I would say is that we’ve got numerous things we need to do apart from safeguarding our national security laws. I think we need to really resource strengthening cybersecurity. We’ve seen data breaches already. We need more awareness. I feel that, when I speak to IPAC colleagues from around the world, there is a level of naivety in New Zealand around the exposure to foreign interference from all sorts of States. We probably need to have stronger lobbying disclosures, in my view, and that raises issues, but it’s a discussion that needs to at least be had. There needs to be more interagency sharing of data. We need to really monitor disinformation and misinformation campaigns, and there’s some great models of that, for example in Taiwan, where they have an active unit set up to assess the veracity and to provide counter information where that information is shown to not be credible. As I’ve said, I think we need more resourcing for our intelligence agencies.
This is not a silver bullet. It’s a good start. I hope that it has the intended consequences, particularly for our Chinese nationals living in New Zealand.
PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill strengthens New Zealand criminal law. It ensures New Zealand criminal law sufficiently addresses the harm of foreign interference, and it will better equip relevant agencies to hold people to account. I commend this bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, like my colleagues in the Labour Party, rise to speak in favour of and support of this bill, but I would just like to start by saying, in reply to Tom Rutherford’s comments that he made earlier congratulating Peeni Henare—quite rightly so; I thought that was an excellent speech as well—I think, in terms of that big gap in the question of balance, I would have liked to hear more of an acknowledgment from that side of the House that, yes, this is something that we need to do, but, eyes wide open, we are touching on rights here. There is genuinely some broad language—for example, in the intent space, there is “ought to know” that they are concealing their identity, etc. There is quite broad language, and when we move into a space like legislating in the security and intelligence space, there are times when we must do it, but we have to also acknowledge that there are rights in play, and there are pieces of legislation that should deservingly be under review and active monitoring. This is certainly one.
I am often concerned that, sometimes, when we shift the lines of the law, it will shift behaviours as well. What we’re seeing internationally is the growth of transnational repression by some States. Often, we’ll see the hard end of that in the news. I read an article by Human Rights Watch, and it was titled “We Will Find You”. It was a story about how some Governments continue to actively monitor dissidents when they leave their countries and find ways to pressure them, or even, at times, execute them. One quite famous example of this is Jamal Khashoggi, who was a Saudi national who left Saudi and went to Istanbul, and he was entering a building to get marriage papers for him and his wife when he was executed inside, while his wife was waiting on the outside. Those are the stories that make it into the news. In reality, what is happening more and more—and Freedom House reports this—is that Governments are often putting pressure on students to undertake various seemingly innocuous activities, which they must do or they lose some of their benefits in their home country, or family members might be losing benefits as well. That is happening, and I do think we need to be aware of shifting behaviours as we put this legislation into place.
I often look to Canada in this space as a model of a shift in terms of legislation and policy and what we could be doing or what, perhaps, we might do next. This year, Canada appointed its first foreign interference commissioner, and they did so off the back of a public review on foreign interference last year. This was one of the steps that they took, and the quote that came out with the announcement included: “We put the world on notice that Canada is an independent, sovereign nation with a clear ability to ensure the safety and security of Canadians.” They were basing this move very firmly on data that showed that it was happening to a huge extent. We haven’t done that in New Zealand—we haven’t done a public review that shows us all the corners of where interference might be. This piece of legislation is coming out of a Government piece of work, but there hasn’t been that broader public review. The Justice Committee does often include this as a component on its election review, but my view is that it’s timely to do a more public review, over a number of years, and that this piece of legislation should also become part of such a review to test whether it’s working in the way that we wanted it to.
There were a number of amendments that were proposed—both by submitters but also at the committee of the whole House stage—which weren’t included, and also questions for clarification that I agree with my Green Party colleagues about. We were referred back to common law principles, and I made the point that, well, common law defences in particular can only be incorporated if they are reasonably clear. In this case, they aren’t, in terms of when you can denounce your citizenship and whether you still owe that allegiance or not. There are certainly things in the law as it’s written now that do need to be tested, potentially challenged in the court, and then brought back to the House in terms of a final review, a periodic review, at some stage.
I thought other proposals that the select committee made were excellent, including one that many have referenced about ensuring that the question of allegiance is one of law. The difficulty is that, regardless of that being clarified in the legislation, we will still have a question of fact largely before the courts because it isn’t defined as well as it potentially could have been. The other issue that was raised was about the definition of improper conduct and also clarifying the scope of committing an imprisonable offence to benefit a foreign power.
The Law Society also made some very interesting points, I thought, including a very novel argument. They suggested considering providing a defence, equivalent to a proviso that they had suggested earlier in their document, that if there is conduct counselled or procured that’s lawful in the jurisdiction where it occurs but unlawful in New Zealand—and they gave the argument of someone who had been instructed through the military to do some action that might be considered mutiny, but they were directed to do it lawfully in the third country—we should therefore take into account circumstances where we wouldn’t necessarily want to have liability incur in those circumstances.
I want to make just a point about the House’s consideration of issues like this. We haven’t seen the Government members engaging with some of the rights issues that were raised in select committee—not in this discussion. Granted, some of them did engage, in the select committee process, with those rights issues and where the balances ought to be. I did think that it was unfortunate that the section 7 report didn’t conduct an adequate analysis of whether the limitation of the right to freedom of expression was reasonable or not. Looking at section 22 of the section 7 report, it says this: “The right to freedom of expression has been interpreted as including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information of all kinds. However, it is accepted that the exercise of the right needs to take into account other rights and interests and may be subject to necessary restrictions, as provided by law.” That’s it—that’s all it says. “One such restriction is the protection of national security.” It’s possibly the broadest framing of how you could justify a limitation on the right. It goes on to say: “We consider the limits on [section] 14 embodied in the amendments … are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
I’m a bit troubled—especially given the importance of the right to freedom of expression—that there has been such a loose and light assessment of (1) whether the limitations that are set out in the existing drafting are reasonable and (2) whether there are other ways of drafting the limitations to ensure that there isn’t an over-impediment of freedom of expression. Again, I go back, as the final example of that, to the new section 78AAA, where one of the mens rea for the offence is that “the person knows, or ought to know that they are engaging in the conduct for or on behalf of another foreign power;”. You can imagine, with that many degrees of separation, that there may be cases where individuals simply do not know.
Once again, while I am supporting this bill, I do so with eyes wide open. There are rights issues here, and I urge the House to consider a more thorough review of security, intelligence, and interference—including transnational repression. For now, I commend the bill to the House.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I feel really privileged to be in this position, where, as the last speaker, I am ushering the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill from a bill stage to an Act of Parliament stage. As our excellent Minister of Justice said earlier, foreign interference is not acceptable. As someone of a Lebanese background, I know first-hand what foreign interference does to countries like my beautiful parents’ homeland of Lebanon. Sometimes it’s very inconspicuous; it’s masked as the greater good. But it was, in fact, foreign interference and still is in Lebanon, so I’m glad that we are passing this tonight. I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I declare the House in committee for the consideration of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill.
Bills
Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to Crimes Act 1961
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. We start with Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 and 4, “Amendments to Crimes Act 1961”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity. I'll be upfront: there's been a number of people waiting a long time for this legislation to pass, so we don't intend to hold this up. We want it to proceed because it has been well overdue in being implemented. So I will briefly speak to the three amendments in my name that were tabled. All three amendments relate to clause 4, new section 2160(1)(b) and that's in relation to the mental component for the offence of stalking.
One of the main issues that has been repeatedly raised by advocates within the sector is that quite often the accused stalker—in situations where there is an ongoing, repeated pattern of stalking—that person who is doing that behaviour is often deluded or unaware of the impact on the victim. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren't. So our concern—and it is not just on the side of the House; it is in with advocates in the sector, as well—is the mental element of “knowing” may not be able to capture a prosecution, because quite often someone thinks that their affection is wanted or even reciprocated when it is not.
This tabled amendment amends the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill—and I've provided three different options for the Minister to consider in the three separate amendments. That would be to replace “knowing” with—the first option is to “having reasonable grounds to believe”. The second one is “without believing on reasonable grounds”. The third one is when a person “knows or ought to know”, so a reasonable person test being introduced as the mens rea component to this offence.
The primary reason is that we believe that it will be difficult to prove that the person was “knowing” that they were likely to cause fear or distress. To prove that a defendant did know their behaviour was causing fear of distress would potentially require proof beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew that they engaged in a pattern of behaviour that caused that fear and distress to another person. For example, if they were intoxicated, if they were cognitively impaired at the time, the defendants could argue that they did not knowingly engage in that behaviour that causes fear of distress to that other person.
So while we are strongly supportive of this legislation proceeding, we do believe that the mental component of this offence could be strengthened by replacing “knowing” by a reasonable person test, to make sure that—in a situation where the accused is saying they didn't know or they weren't aware of the impact of their actions—that would not result in there not being a prosecution when there should be one. This is specific to this offence, for the fact that potential offenders to be captured under this legislation are, more often than not, not in a rational state about the reciprocation of their feelings to another person.
We believe that it's quite a specific ground and we've had direct feedback from previous victims and from advocates within the sector that this change would strengthen the legislation and make it stronger for victims to be able to have their safety protected and to prevent situations where stalking is ongoing.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. We echo the same sentiments as my colleague Ginny Andersen, in terms of advocates who have pushed so hard for this bill have been waiting for decades for this, so we don't want to prolong that any further. My questions are around a similar aspect to Ginny Andersen’s, around the mental component of knowing that your actions might cause harm to somebody. I wanted to ask whether the Minister would consider inserting provisions around “ought to know” or, potentially, “knowing that an act might cause harm to person B or any reasonable person.”.
The reason that we're interested in these kinds of amendments is because stalkers can be delusional, and they can be completely unaware, whether deliberately or not, of the psychological impacts of their actions, and so we want to capture that so that if a perpetrator tries to deny, that they didn't realise it would cause harm or distress, that that isn't a defence in that case.
The other tabled amendment that I want to speak to in relation to clause 4—it's under my name—is around police notification. I'm really hoping that the Minister might be open to collaborating on this aspect. Obviously, this bill introduces police notification upon the first reporting of any of the specified acts under this bill. We are asking that the constable that is involved in any investigation informs the victim before they provide the notice under that police notification. The reason that we want the police to give this information to person B is because this will give them a heads-up that their perpetrator will be informed. This means that they can make preparations themselves to ensure that they are safe, to ensure that they know what is coming, to insulate themselves against any retaliation that person A might undertake in order to intimidate person B.
Those are really the only questions we have on Part 1, but we really would like the Minister to consider our amendment around the constable having to inform person B before serving the notice to person A.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Yeah, so just looking at this bill and there are only two points that I have got, two Amendment Papers that I would like to speak to. Potentially, we’re happy for the Minister to ignore these Amendment Papers if the ministerial intent is already such that these are being considered.
The first one is around the new section 216P(1)(a)(v) inserted by clause 4, which is “damaging or undermining person B’s reputation, opportunities, or relationships:”. I’m just seeking the Minister’s advice, I guess, because my Amendment Paper says afterwards “including through sharing information person B does not want to share with others”. The intention of that is to ensure that the recording or tracking of person B will adequately address the kind of information—sorry, I just realised that that was looked at in a section. But the idea is that when you are looking at something like this, the amendment is hoping to address the behaviours are adequately covered. So the idea is that when we’re looking at opportunities or relationships that are damaging for person B that it also includes through sharing of information that potentially might be publicly available, such as social media.
For the other Amendment Paper we are looking at section 216P(1)(a)(vi), which is after “to a reasonable person”, insert “in these particular circumstances”. Again, this comes from submitters and organisations who have had a lot of experience dealing with cases like this just to say that, for example, women with additional vulnerabilities, the threshold for person A to cause fear or distress may be lower than a reasonable person and defence attorneys on whether a reasonable person should be expected to tolerate may also be unfairly prejudicial to minority groups.
Again, for both of these two amendments, if they are things the Minister thinks are already covered under the existing definition: that’s all good; we’re happy to leave the amendments. But we just want to get a steer from the Minister.
I think, lastly, just to my colleague Tamatha Paul’s point in terms of her amendment. This is something that we’re hoping that we have adjusted this particular amendment from “constable must consult” to “inform” but considering this is something that we’ve seen in overseas jurisdictions and it’s hugely beneficial, we do seek the Minister’s support on this particular amendment.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m very pleased that we’ve got to this point of the committee of the whole House stage. As members have already noted, this is something that petitioners, and particularly women’s groups, have been asking for, for many years. The good news is that we as a Government said we would aim to have this legislated before the end of the year, and I’m very delighted that, with the support, I think, of all sides of the House, we’re managing to achieve that. I want to thank all members in Parliament for that support.
The issue that has been raised a couple of times already is around the question of mens rea. People tuning in might be wondering what that is. There has been great debate about the test, because what this legislation does is criminalise stalking and harassment. It includes a very wide range of behaviours: watching, following, loitering near, or obstructing a person, recording or tracking a person, contacting or communicating with a person, damaging or devaluing or moving or entering or interfering with property—a long list of things. Of course, a lot of those things people do on a regular basis in many ways, and so we held it was important to include a standard that “[knowing] that pattern of behaviour … is likely to cause fear or distress”—knowing that the pattern of behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress—and doing two of such things within a two-year period.
We think that’s important. If you took that away and just said “ought to know”, or lowered that threshold, there is a real risk—you know, there is potential maximum five-year prison sentence. If there was a lower standard, there is a risk, given the wide net of specified acts, that we would subject people who are annoying but innocuous to being liable to a lengthy prison sentence. That’s why we do think that the clear hurdle of knowing that the pattern of behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress is important. Of course, I mean, a lot of behaviours where it’s a threat of harm made to a victim would obviously be that, but in other situations, a prosecutor would only need to show that a victim or a friend or a family member told the stalker that they were scaring the victim and that would deliver that. And, of course, we’ve also developed a Police notice system to take that even further.
I just want to mention briefly that the National Party has decided to agree to Tamatha Paul’s Amendment Paper 439, that a constable must inform person B before providing a notice under the subsection of the Act, so that police can inform victims. Now, that was something that was raised by committee members and submitters. The advice I’ve had is that Police operational guidelines already require staff to consult with victims when decisions are made to issue warnings or other notices. We don’t think it’s strictly necessary, but we’re prepared to accept that one. Otherwise, we’re keen to get this legislation through. I’m happy to answer any more questions.
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Yeah, thank you, Mr Chair. Just a question for the Minister of Justice, just in relation to the Amendment Paper by Tamatha Paul, it does seem sensible, but I do want to just understand in more detail what the actual term “consult” does mean. You referred to police operations already consulting, but what does actually consulting mean in this case with “person B”, and would that actually—yeah, I mean, we just want to understand a bit more about what that means, just to make sure that this isn't going to inhibit people actually being charged under this regime.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Well, my reading of Amendment Paper 439 is that the constable must inform—the word “consult” is not used; it’s “inform”, 439. Have I got that?
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): No, and that’s why I'm asking for—it actually does use the word “consult”.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Oh, we might be able to explain.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Minister, feel free to take time to consult, if you’d like.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you. Mr Chair. Just to clarify for the Minister of Justice and also for the member Todd Stephenson, Amendment Paper 439 does in fact say “consult”, but that's not the paper that we're going to be looking at. It is a new tabled amendment that we just put forward. It should be available on there, and it's also under the name of Tamatha. We're no longer looking for support for Amendment Paper 439; it's the new one.
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): OK, thank you, well, that’s helpful clarification, but maybe if the Minister of Justice can just make sure he has the right amendment and we are clear about what we're agreeing to.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes—yes.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Feel free to take time to sort out—you're right?
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes, I’d just like to know the number of the—
TODD STEPHENSON: Well, they’re both called 439; that’s the issue.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): All right, well, Todd Stephenson, you’ve still got the call; I think I'll go back to that.
TODD STEPHENSON: Oh, well, thank you. I mean, yeah, Minister, once you've got the right amendment, and if it is “inform”—is that now the term, rather than “consult”?—maybe the Minister just wants to comment on the term “inform”, but it does sound then that it's like a very straightforward amendment.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes.
TODD STEPHENSON: But it's probably good that we have that clarity at this stage.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): This is the interaction we really want in a committee of the whole House.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Again, just to reiterate, the Amendment Paper—that is, 439—is not the version that we're hoping to seek the support of the Minister of Justice for; it is the new tabled amendment that has just been put on the Table that we’re seeking the Minister's support for. Thank you.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: With the same number?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: There is no number because it's a tabled amendment, so I guess the tabled amendment that is 9.15.04 on 19 November 2025 is the most accurate code I can provide.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau): Thank you, Mr Chair, tēnā tātou e te Whare. To the Minister of Justice: I want to get, if I could, some sense of your confidence in the application of when—like, in this instance, if we’re talking about “inform” or “consult” or whatever it is, probably the key word is “before”—that sentiment or that expectation is. When patterns are as they are in stalking, or patterns in family harm, or patterns in domestic violence—patterns when they’re set are hard to break. I did want to check if the Minister could just elaborate on that a bit.
My own experience in this field tells me that it takes a lot of practice, and shift of attitude and mind in this space, whether it’s about stalking or family harm, but in this instance it is about stalking and patterns. Simply making a change—some good changes, by the way; I support it. But it’s always in how these things end up being applied on the ground and what confidence you have, and I’m sure you do—that then when we’re talking to advocates that are continuing to contact and go, “Minimal—is this far enough? How secure can we actually feel when these things kick in? How safe can I really feel?” So I’m keen to get some confidence, if you’ve got some confidence, that when it’s applied, it’s true, it’s safe, it’s genuine, and women—mainly women—that are survivors, or not survivors, of this terrible situation can feel safe or better off because of it. Thank you, Minister.
.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s amendment to clause 4, new section 216O(1)(b), to replace “knowing” with “having reasonable grounds to believe” be agreed to
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s amendments to clause 4, new section 216O(1)(b), to replace “knowing” with “without believing on reasonable grounds” and replace “likely” with “unlikely” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s amendment to clause 4, new section 216O(1)(b), to replace “knowing” with “when Person A knows or ought to know” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s amendment to clause 4, new section 216O(1)(b), to replace “knowing” with “in circumstances when they know or ought to know” is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to clause 4, new section 216O(1)(b), to replace “knowing” with “that person A knows or ought to know” is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.
The question is that Tamatha Paul’s amendment to clause 4, new section 216O, set out on Amendment Paper 439 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 216O, inserting subsection (3A) be agreed to.
Amendment agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 216P(1)(a)(v), be agreed to.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Kahurangi Carter’s amendments to clause 4, new sections 216P and 216Q, set out on Amendment Paper 351 be agreed to.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 216P(1)(a)(vi), be agreed to.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Tamatha Paul’s amendment to clause 4 inserting new section 216QA, set out on Amendment Paper 438, is out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.
The question is that Kahurangi Carter’s amendment to clause 4 inserting new section 216T, set out on Amendment Paper 352, be agreed to.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Part 1 as amended be agreed to.
Part 1 as amended agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments to other Acts
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 2, the debate on clauses 5 to 27, “Amendments to other Acts”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
The question is that Tamatha Paul’s amendment inserting new clause 24AA set out on Amendment Paper 437 be agreed to.
Amendment not agreed to.
Part 2 agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to our final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Stalking and harassment is vicious, sinister, and can be deadly. After years of discussion, this Government has strengthened the law to put a stop to this insidious behaviour and to keep victims safe. Stalking and harassment, sadly, can affect any New Zealander. However, women are greatly over-represented as victims by the deluded, the sexist, and the abusive. Even worse, their children are frequently exploited to surveil victims, pass on threats, or even be threatened themselves.
This bill will help to protect everyone, but especially women and their families. This bill would not be possible without the tireless advocacy and help of many people. Last year’s petitioners championed this cause, and I want to personally thank the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children for organising the petition. I’m pleased that as a Government, and indeed as a Parliament, we’ve been able to keep our commitment to pass legislation before the end of this year.
I also want to thank the more than 600 submitters to the Justice Committee. Many of them bravely shared their own stories, experiences, and the impact of stalking and harassment on their lives. The Justice Committee itself deserves special thanks: they listened carefully to those stories to improve the bill for everybody’s benefit. The committee’s work shows that when an important issue comes up, the House can work together to make a difference for all New Zealanders.
I’d like to take a moment to step through the important aspects of the bill. The bill amends the Crimes Act to create a new offence of stalking and harassment. The new offence is defined as a pattern of behaviour which the offender knew was likely to cause the victim fear or distress. The pattern of behaviour is defined as two specified acts within a two-year period. These specified acts are listed in the bill and are broad. The police notice system and relevant offences are also built into the new offence.
Supporting amendments are made to other legislation. These changes increase protections for victims and their families. Protections include allowing the Harmful Digital Communications Act and restraining orders to be made at a sentencing for the new offence, adding the offence to the Firearms Prohibition Orders regime and preventing intimidation when giving evidence. Together, the offence and these supporting amendments provide a comprehensive response to criminal stalking and harassment.
This has all been drafted very carefully. Stalking and harassment is difficult to address because it can be done by any person in any way to anyone, and can occur through an open-ended list of behaviours making up a pattern of behaviour. The bill cuts through this problem with a solution: a wide net is drafted to be absolutely clear that a wider range of behaviours can be stalking and harassment. What really matters is the impact of that behaviour, and so it casts the net in three ways. First, the specified acts are drafted broadly; they capture many different forms of stalking. As an example, many people asked if the specific behaviour of making intimate visual recordings would be captured by the bill. I’m pleased to say absolutely: this behaviour is captured by the widely defined specified act of tracking or recording. The specified act could also capture audio or any other kind of intimate recordings made in public or private.
Second, the bill states that a specified act is captured if it is done “in any way”, including directly or indirectly. This makes it clear that a stalker or harasser cannot work around the offence with technology or covert strategies. To continue my previous example, people asked if using spyware apps to film victims through their phones would be captured. Again, this is captured by the specified act of recording or tracking with the assistance of these “in any way” rules.
Third, the bill states that a specified act is captured even if it is done through a third party. This might include a friend, teacher, relative, or even a business. This addresses an especially worrying problem I mentioned earlier: abusing the trust and innocence of children to stalk parents. This might be asking a child to pass on threats to their parent, spy on their parent, or even stalking the child itself.
Of course, the other defining feature of stalking and harassment is its repetitiveness; in this bill, a “pattern of behaviour”. It’s been a subject of extensive debate in the media and in this House. As a result, the bill has changed through the select committee process and has a wider pattern of behaviour of two specified acts in two years. This is an important refinement of the bill.
Similarly, the mental element, the mens rea for this offence, which has also been heavily debated and just also in the committee of the whole House stage—I do remain satisfied that the current standard, “[knowing that] the pattern [of behaviour] is likely to cause fear or distress”, is appropriate for two reasons: first, that the standard does capture the many motivations behind stalking and harassment. Those opposed to the standard argue that defendants will get away with stalking through their lies and delusions, and I understand that worry, but I have every confidence that our prosecutors and ultimately our juries are not so easily fooled. In many cases, knowing fear or distress was a likely outcome will be implicit by the nature of the behaviour—for example, where threats of harm are made—but in other situations, a prosecutor might only need to show that if a victim, a friend, or a family member told the stalker they were scaring the victim. And then, thirdly, there’s a police notice system that takes it further if it’s issued to a stalker but the behaviour continues. A presumption of knowledge is established against the stalker.
Second, as lawmakers are responsible for maintaining proportionate offences, the offence has a significant maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment. If we lower the standard to such as “ought to have known” alongside the very wide net of specified acts, we risk losing proportionality. I understand why people feel very strongly about it, but I’m convinced that the current draft and legislation achieves the right and appropriate balance.
I’m mindful that laws are only as effective as their enforcement and to give the police agencies time to properly prepare for the new offence. The bill will come into force six months after the Royal assent. Time will be used to set up the systems necessary for an effective response.
Before I conclude, I’d like to thank advocates, submitters, and members of the House who have supported this bill. It’s been a long time coming and this has been a very busy Government in the justice space. We’ve passed a lot of legislation, but I’m very pleased that we have been able to find the space and the time to get this legislation through. I want to thank the House for their support in doing this. This is a victory for the people who have argued for it for so long, for their families and for our broader society because it sends a very clear message. It sends a message to people who think that it’s appropriate to get away with these sorts of activities that society does not accept it, will not tolerate it, and will deal quite harshly with people who stalk and harass their fellow New Zealanders. I’m proud to say that I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. This bill is for Farzana Yaqubi. I was the Minister of Police when I was informed by officials that there would be an Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) report coming out on her death, and the IPCA report found that there were significant failings in how her case was investigated and brought forward, and this legislation is the direct result of that.
Farzana was a young woman full of life. She knew that she was being stalked and she took every action she could do to keep herself safe. Despite her efforts and despite doing everything that we would ask of someone in her position, she lost her life. Farzana’s death is a stark reminder to us all that stalking is not a minor irritation or an interpersonal misunderstanding. It is harmful, it escalates, and without clear legal tools to intervene early, the risks can be fatal.
To Farzana’s family, friends, and community, our thoughts are with you today. The best way this House can honour her memory is by ensuring others, hopefully, do not face the same failures and, hopefully, this legislation takes some steps towards achieving that.
Stalking often begins with behaviour that can appear insignificant. In isolation it can be a message, someone waiting outside a home, an unwanted visit to a workplace, or even an online contact from someone who comes up as anonymous. But victims experience these acts as part of a wider pattern that creates genuine fear within people’s lives—predominantly women’s lives.
Too often, victims minimise what has been happening to them because they worry that they will not be believed. For many, they are right—the existing tools have not been fit for purpose, particularly with the rise of digital tracking—technology-enabled harassment, and the use of cameras as well, as we heard at the select committee.
This bill begins to address some of those gaps. By creating a clear criminal offence of stalking, for the first time stalking will be clearly defined as a pattern of specified acts, and, after the changes made at the select committee which I will speak to later, that is two acts within a period of 24 months. The act will be directed at a victim and carried out with knowledge that the behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress.
This clarity matters. It reflects how stalking accurately occurs, and it ensure that police and the courts have the power and the tools they need to act. The bill sets out a modern list of specified acts, including tracking someone digitally, repeatedly contacting them, watching or following them, interfering with property or pets, or any act that could reasonably cause fear or distress. It also recognises that stalking can occur directly, indirectly, or through digital means such as devices, spyware, and even drones.
This bill, I hope, will incentivise early intervention and will also prevent harm. A key part of this bill is the ability of police to issue a formal notification when they believe someone has already engaged in one or more specified acts. Once that notice is issued, the individual is presumed to know that any further acts could amounts to stalking. This enables earlier intervention and removes the excuse of ignorance when behaviour continues over a period of time.
I believe that this bill provides accountability and fair protection as well. The new offence carries a maximum penalty of 5 years’ imprisonment. The bill also includes reasonable exceptions for lawful purpose, reasonable excuse, or public interest, ensuring balance and fairness remain central. This is a modernised practical approach that strengthens victim’s protection without undermining legitimate activity.
I’d like to acknowledge the process to date, and first and foremost I would like to acknowledge two women in particular, and they are Alison Towns and Leonie Morris. Their relentless advocacy in this space is probably the single greatest reason why we are here seeing this legislation pass tonight in the House. They will be aware—and I hope they are watching—that the Government clearly stated that passing stalking legislation was not a priority for this Government. When they advocated and organised and got over 8,000 signatures delivered to the front steps of Parliament, and when they worked with me to draft a member’s bill that introduced stalking as an offence and put that into the members’ ballot, we saw a change in the Government. The Government changed its position and committed to passing this legislation. It is a rare and beautiful thing to happen, and good on you, Paul Goldsmith—you got there in the end. I’m really pleased that we got this far.
There were significant changes made at the select committee and they strengthened the bill and made it more likely to be able to achieve a prosecution. There is key change that I’m proud we got. Previously, it was three of the specified acts in a period of 12 months. Now that is two in a period of 24 months. So for those who are subjected to stalking behaviour when they celebrate an anniversary—it might be a birthday or something where it’s a common occurrence to have an annual reminder—having a period that exceeds 12 months was really important, and that was feedback that we had from victims.
The strength of submissions we received at select committee were phenomenal, and I would just like to acknowledge all those people who stepped forward and told their personal stories. That made making these changes even more convincing as to the reasons why we needed to do that. The advice and support we received throughout from advocacy groups was amazing. The level of advice and the intricate knowledge of where legislation overseas should be brought here to New Zealand and how that should work really assisted us to achieve this bill in the form it takes. This bill is not perfect. There are many areas that could be improved, but it's a good start and it's a lot better than the first draft we got at the first reading.
I’d like to acknowledge Andrew Bayly as the chair of the Justice Committee. He was pragmatic. He listened to victims. He understood where we could strengthen the bill and made positive changes. So I'd like to thank him for his work.
It’s important that we state why this bill matters. This bill is about real people whose lives have been disrupted, constrained, put at risk because someone has refused to leave them alone. It is for those who have changed jobs, who have moved homes or altered their daily routines in an effort to try and feel safe. It is for those targeted online or monitored through technology, and it’s for the families who have already paid a price that is too high. We cannot undo the past, but we can ensure the law is no longer silent in the face of escalating harm.
This bill brings our law into the modern era. It provides clear definitions, earlier intervention, and stronger protection for victims. It gives police and the courts the tools they need to act decisively when behaviour starts to escalate. While no legislation can change what has happened to past victims like Farzana, this bill takes meaningful steps to ensure others have better protections in the future, and that is my hope for what this bill does. This is real victim-focused reform, and I commend it to the House.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): I might get a little bit emotional giving this speech, because I think this is a bill that’s gone through this term that I will probably remember for the rest of my life. I think a lot of the people in this room right now can be so proud of themselves for being a part of history. Finally, after decades and decades and decades of advocacy and campaigning and, above all else, women experiencing stalking and harassment and abuse and discrimination and harm in real life, mentally, physically, virtually, we’re finally here passing New Zealand’s first bill that defines and acknowledges stalking as a form of abuse.
Off the back of that committee phase, I want to acknowledge the Government—that will be the only time you hear that coming out of my mouth this term. But I do want to acknowledge Minister of Justice Goldsmith for accepting our amendment to this bill, and through accepting that amendment, strengthening this bill for survivors. I also want to echo acknowledgments to the chair of the Justice Committee, Andrew Bayly, for the way that he treated survivors with dignity and respect and believed them and heard them.
Most importantly, I want to acknowledge survivors who have endured experiences of stalking. In particular, there are two women that come to mind. The first is Zeni Gibson. In the second reading of this bill, I spoke at length about her experience—it’s been well publicised. But this is the story of a young woman who interacted with a stranger one time in passing, which resulted in her being violently, graphically, sexually stalked for nearly a decade, which I think really illuminates the nature of stalking in some instances. It can seem completely unexplainable that a stranger can grow such a strong, intense obsession with someone they don’t even know. But that is very real, as we’ve learnt from submissions, and that is something that was not priorly addressed within our legislation. So I want to acknowledge Zeni and her courage to speak up about someone who did, and continues to, stalk her—who is also a free person, from my understanding, this is a person who is walking around the streets. She spoke up fearlessly, knowing that that person was walking around the street, so I want to acknowledge her and say, Zeni, your courage contributed to us being here today.
But there are other, there are other survivors who are not here today to see this finally happening. I also want to mihi to Farzana Yaqubi, and just the regret in which we come to this, today, having lost so many women, because we experience too much violence in this world and in this society, but also because we didn’t have the laws in place, or the police protocols in place, to keep her safe.
Most importantly, there have been tireless advocates who have fought for this bill, and there is nobody who has been more vocal in getting us here today than the incredible, formidable, compassionate, amazing person that is Leonie Morris. She has met with all of us in this room, she’s met with every party, she has, more importantly, met with countless survivors and made sure that their voices have the driving force. And she’s done this for a really long time. Leonie—I know you’re watching at home—this is the fruit of your labour. What a legacy to be proud of and to share with people for generations to come.
I also want to acknowledge a few other people who have been instrumental in getting this law, including Awatea Mita, who led the campaign for Auckland Women’s Centre. Also, of course, our very own Jan Logie, whose work in the sexual violence space has set the groundwork for laws like this to come into place. Obviously, Ginny Andersen, who was a massive part of this bill’s inception, and every other woman who has fought tirelessly for this bill, and of course allies.
This bill is unique because it acknowledges the impact of psychological harm. It’s also unique because of a point that Awatea Mita, who was an advocate for this bill, continued to lament throughout submissions on this bill, and that is that this bill establishes and recognises patterns and context. If you look at “specified act”, some of these things might not seem obvious as crimes, you know, things that could come across as innocent, or acts that could come across as innocent, if you were looking at them objectively without context—things such as sending a message or dropping a letter in someone’s mailbox, these things might seem relatively innocent. However, this bill acknowledges that when you have a pattern of behaviour is when the psychological harm can come about, and it acknowledges the context in which these behaviours happen. Those are two things, pattern and context, that weren’t formally recognised within our laws.
I really want to acknowledge positive changes that have been made throughout the Justice Committee process, and following that. I think that this bill represents the best of our democracy. It’s an example where submitters were heard, and their changes, which were pretty substantial changes, have been incorporated. So thanks to those submitters, and thanks to the willingness of collaboration from the Government and from all parties, we’ve managed to get the threshold of specified acts down from three acts to two acts, we’ve managed to get the timeline expanded from 12 months to two years. We also tried new techniques of collecting submissions for this, Ginny and I proposed that we use social media as a way to elicit submissions for this bill. We also have been, through the select committee process, pioneering the use of anonymous submissions, which I think is something we need to do more when it comes to sensitive matters around family and sexual violence.
As we just did in the committee of the whole House, we accepted the amendment around police notification, which I’m so happy about. In June, it was pointed out that there was a gap in this legislation, which meant that when police serve that initial notification to the perpetrator, they did not have to consult, inform, or gain consent from the victim. We were really concerned about this, and here’s a quote from Leonie Morris, “One thing that we’re very concerned about is that at the moment police can notify a stalker that he has been stalking and that he’ll be breaking the law if he does it again. We’re happy with that, but we don’t want police to do that until they’ve notified the victim that that’s what they’re going to do and they’ve talked through with the victim a safety plan—because otherwise if just out of the blue he is told that she’s gone to the police and the police are now saying to him ‘You need to be much more careful with your behaviour,’ he could retaliate against her.”
We worked through different iterations of this amendment to make sure it was one that everyone was happy with. We went from requiring written consent, which was just going to be too hard, was going to be too difficult, and not necessarily victim focused, so we moved from that to “consult”, and then we were informed by Government advisers that “inform” is the best language for that. So another example of collaboration, democracy, and what committee of the whole House should be for.
I’ve only got a minute left, and it’s so hard to wrap up the last year working on this bill in a minute. But there’s still work to do. I think the online space, where a lot of stalking and harassment takes place, is an area that we really have to cast our minds to. I know there are some bills that will be coming through the House that address some forms of this around deepfakes, and we look forward to supporting that. But there’s still massive gaps in the way that people can use social media and online websites to stalk and harass other people, so we need to address this. We need police to get this right, and that is why we put our amendment forward. And we need more funding for things like the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, who deal with people who have got the psychological illness of obsession with people and abusing them through their obsession.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, thank you to everyone in the House today, we can be really proud of ourselves when we go home tonight. To all of the survivors, we hear you, and we’re here because of you.
Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in strong support of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. I agree with the previous speaker. There are moments in time that we will look back at and see this as a massive win for victims of a pretty horrible crime that has been ignored for far too long. For years, stalking has fallen through the cracks in our laws. For me, this is rather personal, and I’ve spoken about this before, but I don’t think it can be said too many times. The effects that this has on not just the person who’s been harassed and stalked but on their family, their children, and their wider network who are constantly worried about their loved one and whether their loved one is going to be safe that day, whether their loved one got home safe, whether their loved one is at home, scared and crying and worried about what’s going to happen to them that night. It changes a person. It takes away their life force. It takes away everything within themselves that sees the world as a good place, and often the light disappears from that person. I don’t think, until you see the extreme end of what harassment and stalking can do, you can fully comprehend the damage it does to a person.
I myself have witnessed this where I have seen a person who I really care about not be able to put a sentence together, because their brain had shut down through years of fear—to the point where their brain could no longer put a sentence together, they couldn’t say their name, and they could not look after themselves. This is not a crime that should be taken lightly, and I am grateful for these changes because now it won’t be. It will be seen for what it is. It is destructive, and it needs to stop.
This is a crime that is not just about a single moment in time. Instead, it becomes a lived experience. It changes how people walk to their car, it changes where they shop, it changes how they’ll organise their day, and it also changes the way they think when they go to bed at night. It changes the amount of times that they check the locks on the doors and make sure that the windows are closed through fear of somebody entering and harming them. It changes the way family members look when they are visiting the person who is going through this. It changes how everybody behaves in their everyday lives.
This is something that has been very close to my heart in making sure that this is done right. This is what fixing matters truly looks like when it comes to law in this place. We often talk very technical. We often talk about crime with statistics and numbers, but we often forget that there are names, faces, and families behind the statistics that we’re speaking to. I feel really privileged to stand here today and know that women and men will get justice when it comes to this horrific crime.
I listened to some of the stories across the time that this has come through the House, and I heard some of the stories that were brought to select committee. Those stories were gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and sadly showed that this happens far too often. They’re everyday New Zealanders who have lived through months and years of suffering only to be ignored or brushed aside, and that’s not OK. Victims have often been told that the creepy, obsessive behaviour that they face didn’t meet the threshold of the offence. What this could mean in practice is that you may have had an order that that person cannot come on to your property, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t stand at the top of your driveway and stare down the top of your driveway to let you know they’re there. But they weren’t breaching any rules. It was intimidating, it was scary, but there’s nothing that you can do about it. You can ring and ask for help, but on the other end of the phone, you are told that they are actually not breaking any laws, and unless they step on to your property, they are not breaking the rules back under the old law. Under the new law, they will be.
The new charges under this bill will hopefully mean that women and men will feel like they can share the problems they are facing. It’ll bring some sunlight to this issue, take the shame away, and allow people to actually have a really open conversation about what this looks like. Hopefully, it will deal with other issues that come alongside harassment and stalking, where isolation, fear of leaving the home, and fear for your children will also be helped under this new legislation.
Last off, I would just really like to thank the brave people who came forward, shared their stories, were involved in the process of the select committee, and helped to shape this this law to be better and to make sure that it really did make a difference. Without those voices, we may not necessarily have a bill as good as it is right now. Again, I think this is an excellent piece of work. When we come into this place, as a member of Parliament, I often used to think, how can I help everyday people to make their lives better? I would say that this bill, in particular, is one I will be proud of for a very long time. I hope that I have made the person that I spoke about today, and who went through this, proud, too, so that what they went through wasn’t for nothing and so that their story that they shared with me and the journey I went through with them has also made a difference in this country for the betterment of all the victims of this crime. Thank you, and I commend this bill to the House.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Police): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. There has been much said in this House already around the importance of this legislation. One of the things that I know and appreciate strongly about victims and the reality that they face is that the ability to be heard and seen and understood is a big part of a healing process. I think what was achieved through both the bringing forward of this legislation and the select committee process was providing an opportunity for those who have been so badly affected to be seen, heard, and understood.
The specified acts defined in this legislation have been worked on to develop a robust piece of legislation that ensures that it's not just recognising what the acts are but how they can be done and through a third party to ensure we capture all of the components. This is an important piece of legislation, and I would applaud the Justice Committee on how well they work together to ensure that this is the best piece of legislation it can be. I can appreciate it would have been challenging and difficult to hear a lot of the submissions, but at the end of the day, we have reached a piece of legislation that is effective; it is timely; it is important; and it shows that when the Government and this House come together, we can achieve some very positive outcomes. On that basis, I have no hesitation but commending this bill to the House.
HŪHANA LYNDON (Green): I rise on behalf of Te Rōpū Kākāriki, with sincere gratitude in my heart, to tautoko the speeches tonight. I reflect particularly on our Minister Chhour’s kōrero tonight because, as wahine, you can affiliate with what has been shared, particularly the intergenerational ripples of the impact of stalking and harassment, not just on the mother but also on the children and mokopuna. I agree that there is a change—a change in the family, a change in the way in which they behave—and there are the constant stress levels that ripple through a home and through the lives of loved ones.
As I listened to the speeches tonight, I reflected on the stories of our wāhine who have endured many years of this type of violence, where they were never taken seriously and they were muzzled or muted in the way in which they could go to the authorities and seek help because there was just not enough evidence for it to be taken seriously at the time. Providing these levers legislatively now unlocks an opportunity for us to put some boundaries in place as wāhine in relationships but also for children to hold parents to account, as well. We can now see that a door is open for conversations for whānau to provide safeguards for their loved ones.
I just want to refer to the amendment that was agreed to tonight. It also ensures that the victim is at the centre of decision making, and when the police do make approaches to the offenders or to those who are suspects, yes, notify them that “We know, and we are watching.” But the victim, ultimately, needs to know what is happening around them and about the incidents that are being followed up on, because follow-up is so important, but we also need to protect the voice and the safety of the whānau of the victim as the police go about their work. So the agreement made tonight by the Minister of Justice and by members of this House is not something to be ignored, because we’re trying to provide a suite of tools so that the authorities—those who are tasked with implementing this legislation but also all the support networks that try and wrap around the family as they grapple with these challenges—have a decent set of tools whereby they can start dealing with this type of behaviour.
I do want to also bring to the House the consideration around treatment, around rehabilitation, and around support for the victim but also for the offender. What is the pathway to support all of those impacted by this, and I’m not sure that this legislation provides room for it, but maybe it’s an “and, and” so that we start looking at that side of the continuum too, because at some stage the offender will come out and they will need to be supported to be a good parent, a good spouse, and a good whānau member in the future. But the victim, the whānau, the children, and the mokopuna also need to have the relevant safeguards in place so that the behaviours and the experiences that they have seen, shared, listened to, and witnessed are coped with, but they are also supported so that they have the ability to not take on some of those behaviours that they may have fallen victim to over time.
We’re paying tribute to the victims and whānau, and the victims who were strong and who came forward in the Justice Committee to be the voice of those who are the voiceless, as it is a silent issue within whānau and communities. This is a silent issue. It is spoken about quietly amongst friends and amongst whānau. Shame still exists within this space, but with the way that this House has united, in a sense, tonight, it lets us know that we can do these things together, and this is providing safeguards, not only for the victims of today but for our mokopuna and those to come in the future. Kia ora.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Mr Speaker, thank you for the privilege of being able to speak in the third reading on this bill as we pass it this evening in this House. During the process of guiding the legislation through the Justice Committee and through the House I had the opportunity to meet with a group of women in my electorate who advocated for a change to the number of specified acts and the period of which those acts covered.
I just want to thank the coalition partners I worked with in ACT and New Zealand First as we worked out how we would respond and ultimately land on the amendment that was made to the piece of legislation that has been passed this evening. Therefore, I commend it to the House.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It has been quite gratifying to listen to the speeches from around the House as we come together, for a change, on this Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill.
As many people have said, the credit does go largely to the women who have advocated for this change for a long time, and their persistence—persistence above and beyond. It crosses the line sometimes, but at the end of the day, it brings results, and that’s what’s happened. Even when the bill was introduced, they didn’t see their job as done. They continued to advocate for what they saw as the best outcome. I know that, even now, they’ll see what we’ve done today and they will think that we haven’t done everything we should have, but that’s what this place is. I do think we’ve landed in a pretty good place.
I do want to recognise Ginny Andersen, who spoke earlier, who’s been working very hard. She did have a member’s bill on exactly this topic. I want to put it on the record that, but for that, I don’t think the Government would have been spurred into action. The Government was spurred into action, and good on Paul Goldsmith, as the Minister of Justice, for doing that. It was also good to see him here looking genuinely at the Amendment Papers that are on the Table and adopting one of those which he was of the view was good.
In the Justice Committee, we did hear a lot of personal stories that talked about the very significant impact that stalking behaviour can have, and we’ve heard others in this House do that as well. I don’t want to dwell on that, but I do want to just put on the record some observations about this new offence. It is an offence, and the reason it’s a challenging offence in some ways, unlike the kinds of crimes that we think of, is that it’s not a crime of physical violence; it’s a crime of mental intimidation, if you like. Where the harm occurs is, in fact, inside someone’s head, and as the Minister Karen Chhour said, that harm is still real and can have very significant impacts, but it’s not visible and it’s hard, from the outside, to understand that. That’s the first thing; we’ve got to have that effect: that someone does feel intimidated. Then the other thing, the critical second aspect of this offence, happens in someone else’s head, in the perpetrator’s head, because they have to know that their behaviour is likely to cause this effect: “to cause fear or distress”, in the words of the legislation. That’s a challenging area for the law to seek to intervene in.
Now, there are tools to assist with that. There’s a list of kinds of behaviour, almost presumptively specified acts, such as the traditional ones that come to mind: watching, following, loitering—that’s the kind of visual image we have of stalking—but also acting in any other way that would cause fear or distress to a reasonable person. Here’s the interesting thing: it is essentially recognising cyberstalking. A specified act might be done by or through any means whatsoever—for example, tracking devices, digital applications, spyware, drones, or the use of artificial intelligence. This offence which we have created is not just that offence of visiting someone’s workplace or following them home, or whatever it might be; it’s a whole plethora of possible activities, and I think it’s really important that we understand that.
Of course, I think the other thing to recognise is that, whilst some people who engage in stalking behaviour know exactly what they’re doing, one of the other challenges that we recognised in select committee, and the Police recognised, was that there’s a large portion of people who aren’t quite wired the same way as a normal person. They don’t understand that, when they are rebuffed, to send someone flowers at their workplace is creepy and disturbing and distressing to them. That’s why the ability of a constable to notify a person—essentially, to sit someone down say, “Hey, what you’re doing is creepy. It’s stalking behaviour. It’s really causing distress to the other person. You’ve got to stop.” And, of course, now they can go to that next step and say, “Look, if you do it again, you’ll be committing an offence.” That’s why we needed that extra measure to allow constables to, essentially, put someone on notice. Tamatha Paul’s amendment, which I referred to earlier, is a good one, because it does make sure that, in doing that, the victim of the behaviour is aware of what’s going on and can participate in that decision-making process.
Having said that, the warning isn’t a necessary part of it, and, of course, the other thing that really cropped up that we struggled with and made some changes to is the number of incidents and the span of time needed. There’s no perfect solution here. The danger that was identified was that, if you have a strict limited period, two stalking behaviours in two years, there’s a danger you’ll get two stalking behaviours in two years and one day, and by dint of that day, which does seem arbitrary, the offence isn’t committed. I think, in having a limited period, we’ve probably landed at a reasonable position. The two incidents: again, you could say, “Why do you have to have more than one?”, or “Should it be three?” Again, I don’t think that there’s a perfect solution there, but we’ve probably landed at the right place.
I guess what I’m saying is that this is a good addition to our criminal law, but at the same time it’s not a straightforward piece of legislation. I’m sure that operationally—and I think this will be the actual challenge, more than legally, operationally—the police will need some time to work through exactly how it can assist them in both keeping people safe and also keeping people feeling safe, which is, in many ways, what stalking is about. Of course, stalking can lead to genuine violence, but in many cases it’s just, essentially, harassment and intimidation, which equally people, especially women, deserve to be protected from. As I said before, it’s going to be a challenge. The legal questions will roll out, and I think the mental element—what it means for someone to know that it’s likely to cause fear or distress—will need development.
My sense is that sometimes it’s so blindingly obvious that what you’re doing, following someone, following an ex-partner home at night, is going to cause fear and distress that saying, “Oh, I thought she wouldn’t mind” is not going to hold any water. There will be other cases where it’s perhaps not quite so clear cut, but it’s good legislation, and, again, to those people who have for a long time advocated for this to become part of our law, to go alongside harmful digital communications, the harassment Act, and our other family protection legislation, I think well done. I do think there’s space to get a more uniform approach, because it’s very patchwork, and there’s always a danger, when you’ve got a patchwork, that something falls between the cracks.
This is a good legislation, and once again, congratulations to Ginny Andersen for the work that she’s done, and also the select committee. It gets a bit feisty from time to time, but we actually did knuckle down on this one, and whilst we had good discussions, we worked cooperatively. I think, at the end of the day, we’ve got a pretty good outcome for everyone, most importantly a good outcome for women predominantly, who will feel safer and be safer as a result of the work that we’re doing tonight.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The only shame about passing the legislation right now is that it is 10.40 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and ensuring that people have an understanding that this legislation is being passed; it's coming into force next year; and it’s got the support of every political party in this place—it says we take it seriously, particularly for women across New Zealand. They are not the only victims of stalking, but they are predominantly most of the victims of stalking across New Zealand. To say we’re doing something about it—it’s not about a particular political party taking a win, but it’s actually about this Parliament saying that we’ve listened to the victims across New Zealand who came and spoke to the legislation, who've numerously shared their stories with many, many members of Parliament, and finally, Parliament has come together and said we’re going to do something about it. It is a really good day; therefore, I’m going to commend this bill to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wanted to start by acknowledging that this week is a week that we remember how violent New Zealand society can be, and that children have paid the price this week for violence being not addressed in our communities. I wanted to make a case for the correlation of things like stalking with that violence. Sometimes I think it gets a little bit lost; it’s seen as something lighter. In fact, it’s a precursor. The people who end up in women’s refuges, I think 75 percent of them are recorded as having been stalked before they left the relationship, and 65 percent afterwards. I suspect, actually, that is an underrepresentation of the number, because there are also, now, new methods of stalking people, and there is an incredible use of things like spyware. It is quite shocking. These kinds of things just weren’t available before, and we have a culture which has changed in some ways so that children are being taught that it’s OK that their parents know where they are all the time, etc., and it’s one of the issues that’s raised: that we’re actually changing our norms and values in our society so that we think that knowing where somebody is all the time is our right. It is a method of control and it is an addiction to control.
We also have a wave of misogyny out there, an absolute wave coming to our shores. It is everywhere on social media. It is a violent space on the internet, and people are learning new violent behaviours and thinking that they are acceptable. So it is an important time for a piece of legislation like this, and it’s important not to see it as a lighter form of issue but see it as a precursor and a form of violence, because that’s what it is.
So it’s important, I think, that this legislation recognises how important fear is in people’s lives. We all have a right to feel safe, and being afraid erodes our actual sense of being. We’ve had some of the other speakers tonight talk about how they’ve seen that happen, but I think it’s just really important that we acknowledge that that form of safety, that is the right of every woman in this country, and it is under attack; they are under attack. We have to get to the root of that and say it is completely unacceptable. We are seeing it in leaders in other countries, we are seeing it out there being seen as an OK thing to do, and it is never going to be.
I wanted to say that and I wanted then to just talk about the collegiality of this House on this issue, because I think that’s a wonderful thing. That’s not something that we see a lot of; it’s really great that it’s happened over a bill like this. Thank you to Ginny Andersen, who was the person who started this process. Thank you to the activists who were involved in bringing this issue relentlessly to every party in this House.
But I just want to say that it’s actually significant that it’s over an issue like this—that this is something that is moving beyond any issue that is party political, in some ways. But it needs to be recognised that we face a crisis. We are seeing more of this violent behaviour, and we’re seeing a normalisation of it. So this is a kickback against that. This says, “Actually, those behaviours are controlling, manipulative, violent, and totally inappropriate in New Zealand society.”, and so I am extremely pleased and relieved to see this House on the same page with regard to this.
Thank you for passing this bill tonight—the entire House. Thank you to Ginny Andersen for bringing it here. I commend the bill to the House.
PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to be able to stand and speak to the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill on its third reading. Stalking can be randomly triggered, escalate quickly to dangerous levels. This bill seeks to clearly define the elements of stalking and harassment. By doing so, it also recognises the vulnerability of victims and the real harm and risk they face. The bill will also enable timely and effective interventions and prosecution of offenders. I commend this bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to start by acknowledging the advocates and stakeholders and family members who will be watching tonight after having advocated for this law change for years. To Ginny Andersen, who championed this issue so early, but also to the House, just reflecting on the comments made across the House, it’s clear that members all across the House recognise how important this is. I was thinking of the comments made by Minister Chhour about the all-encompassing impact that stalking can have on people’s lives and the importance of this change we’re making.
The Hon Ginny Andersen talked about being the Minister of Police and receiving the Independent Police Conduct Authority report when Farzana Yaqubi had passed and there was the inquiry into it. At the time it happened, I was the member of Parliament for Upper Harbour, and I still remember getting the call about that happening and how extraordinarily traumatic it was for Farzana’s family. Ibrahim Omer and I went to visit her family the following day, and the grief that they were steeped in was just incredible. I remember speaking to Farzana’s sister, and we talked a little about what had happened but also the criminal prosecution that would follow. She continued to say, “But it won’t bring her back—it won’t bring her back.” This won’t bring her back either, and I’m very, very acutely aware of that, but I do hope, as the Hon Ginny Andersen said, that it will do some justice to her memory in terms of what it will prevent.
Farzana’s funeral we also attended several days later, and the impact on her community more broadly was also extraordinary. She was a law student at Auckland University of Technology, very well respected. We spoke to some of her friends as well as her family, but it was just a huge number of people feeling that grief. Comments have been made about the ripple effects when things like this happen, but also those early stages of stalking and how much they impact families. That was certainly the case.
I think what’s striking about her case, though, is that as others have said, she did everything right. She did report it, and I wanted to walk through some of the timeline of her reporting to demonstrate that, because I do think it’s absolutely appalling. She made her first complaint on 25 October 2022. She made a 105 online report to the police. She took screenshots of the messages that she was being sent; she sent them through. On 3 December, she updated her online report. She told police that she was extremely fearful for her life. On 6 December, she made a formal statement in person at the Henderson station and she was told the file would be moved on, and just a number of days later, on 19 December, she was murdered. So, yes, it is important that we change the law, but it’s also important that we change the way we listen when complaints are made, and that is in many ways a bigger problem.
Some of the submitters who wrote to select committee made submissions in that regard, and as I was reading some of their submissions it occurred to me how the submissions that related directly to proposed legal changes instantly got recognition but some of those equally important other changes they were arguing for didn’t. One such submitter was the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ submissions. They argued against some specific parts of the bill as it was then, including the link to three separate occasions within a period of 12 months—they argued it should be broader. They then made a whole set of recommendations about policy, behavioural change, including developing sector guidance and educational resources for police, justice, and mental health services to ensure front-line staff recognise stalking behaviour and respond appropriately. They made a recommendation about developing a specific support framework for victims of stalking to ensure appropriate psychosocial support is available.
This is also something that Kim McGregor has spoken about in the past, our former Chief Victims Advisor, and Ruth Money has spoken about as our current Chief Victims Advisor, that need for more comprehensive support for victims. They both speak about a victims’ commission and actually having an advocate who’s funded well enough in the system to be your advocate at those very early stages of a complaint. While we do have places like Community Law, and certainly you can access lawyers, often that happens after the fact, and I do think there is real merit in us looking at some sort of framework like that.
We also had submissions from others like WAVES, the Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services. One of the points that they made which I think is absolutely valid is that while the bill as it is now is excellent, we need to consider how people can be manipulated through a broader set of relationships. Their argument was that the definition of “family relationship” as is outlined in the Family Violence Act 2018 is too narrow and you need to look at the other relationships that can be used to really target someone. I think this is, interestingly, also relevant in a political context where many of us have electorate office staff who are very regularly dealing with people who do frequent the office because they’re frustrated about certain issues, etc. So I do think that that’s one area where we will need to monitor whether the bill is as effective as it can be.
Several people have spoken about how broad the Acts are that could fall within the framing of this new offence, that it isn’t existing criminal offences; it is about looking at the context, and that is hugely important. Something that came up several times was the idea of gifting and whether it was problematic to include gifting as one of the potential Acts, but in fact this is something that frequently does happen when you get an obsessive relationship, particularly where you have a relationship breakup that then results in stalking behaviour.
There were some interesting studies done, one of which was quoted in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) and it gave us a table of victims of intimate partner stalking and the types of behaviour that those people were engaged in. It was things like sending dozens of text messages, sitting outside their school or home or work, phoning them often, asking friends to follow them. Often dropping off gifts and notes was almost 60 percent, so a really significant thing in terms of what can seem innocuous subjectively but really does have an impact on people.
The other thing that stood out to me in the RIS when I read it was the table that showed the difference between stalking behaviour of members of Parliament between 2014 and 2022. On every measure except for alarming behaviour at an electorate office, the percentages in terms of how that had been experienced have gone up, some quite considerably so, including inappropriate social media contact. This is absolutely a live issue. Changing the law is important; changing behaviours must also follow, so we do need, as a Parliament but as Governments, regardless of which Government is in place, to put in place education and other policy measures to ensure that there’s a culture shift.
I’d finish just by recognising the folk who came in for the glass prison exhibition here this week from Massey University talking to people about their experiences of harassment and stalking. These were alarming quotes to read. We do need more of this research. Unfortunately, that might not be the case for them, but, again, this is an important piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a little bit difficult to articulate the feelings that a lot of us are feeling tonight as we progress with this bill. It is, in a matter of minutes, going to become a law. I remember during the campaign, in 2023, seeing the now Minister Paul Goldsmith on the news announce that we will be implementing a law which makes stalking illegal, makes it a new offence, and I reflect on that as I reflect on how with the conversations we had and we’re lucky to have with our Ministers, as the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children were approaching the steps of Parliament, he made the decision that, yes, we are definitely going to do this as a matter of urgency. I’m so grateful to the Minister—and Ministers Upston and Mitchell as well—for the conversation to progress this. I’m grateful for everyone that's participated.
I want to say that whenever I look at a picture of Farzana Yaqubi, my heart weeps. It weeps. It weeps for the life lost; it weeps for her mother and her father. What I’ve learnt is that for a mother and a father, the worst nightmare is to lose a child. But through the loss of this beautiful girl, we can say, really, it was the catalyst for us to move fast with this bill. So I’m thinking of her parents today. I’m thinking of the loss of life. I’m thinking also of David White, who gave a submission because he also lost the daughter, and he said that stalking is a psychological weapon, wielded with purpose by the perpetrator. It is a mind game that can reduce a victim to fear and tears in a crowd when the perpetrator is seen, and so I’m really proud of what we’re doing here tonight.
Nothing will take away the pain that every parent has endured when their child is lost because of crimes like this, but I’m glad that we’re commending this bill to the House.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau): I guess I will start, Tom, by saying I will say good things because this is a good night to say good things. The good of it is that there is a combined thinking and feeling and heart for this particular piece of legislation.
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This bill won’t bring back those that we’ve lost, but going forward, what it will do is it will continue to remind us and have the lives that have been lost matter. I recognise the number of stories that have been shared tonight. I think, sometimes, we might get a bit like, “It’s another story, and people say certain names often.”, but what is critical about it is telling the story, lest we forget. I want to acknowledge all the women that have stood in the House tonight to say the names, to repeat those stories, and to keep the reality of these things front of mind.
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Then, probably, I might say that I want to acknowledge the men in the House tonight and just acknowledge tāne mā. Keep speaking up. Please, keep speaking up, speaking into the circles—the men circles, the male circles, and the tāne circles—because I think that’s a critical space where only men can influence men in your own way. I just want to acknowledge that.
This is the final stage of this bill, and it is a pleasure and a duty to stand and speak to it. This bill tackles one of the most insidious forms of violence: stalking and harassment. This is merely not just theory; this is about real lives and real harm. It is about accumulated harm. It is about accrued harm. It is important that, tonight, this is settled. It seems to me that it is recognised well across the House.
I want to acknowledge Tamatha Paul and her kōrero tonight. She started by saying she thought it was going to be quite emotional for her, but she held the line in telling the story, I think, in a very powerful and young wahine way. Again, I think it’s important to acknowledge Ginny Andersen for her efforts through her own member’s bill. Persistence is omnipotent—particularly for women with this kind of issue, because too often, I’m sure everyone would agree, when women speak out against things like this, we can often be, for some crazy reason, called crazy or neurotic. Unfortunately, those things, those attitudes, are pervasive, and it’s hard to get rid of those things. Again, I just acknowledge all the good men in this room for working hard to get rid of those attitudes that need to change.
I’m probably there, now, in just saying that I support this bill. A lot of it, I guess, for me, comes from working in family harm and the family harm and family justice sector for some years before coming into this role and then also working in rape crisis when I was 17 or 18. I understand the enduring journey that is carried in the harm that is carried by women and their families. I just acknowledge the work to get the bill to this point. Tom, I hope those were good things. To all the men and the women in this House tonight, tēnā tātou katoa.
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Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)
Second Reading
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2).
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That 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 second time.
The Government wants the clean vehicle standard to lower the cost of living, not raise it. This bill makes it cheaper and easier for vehicle importers to meet the clean vehicle standards so New Zealanders can benefit. I think members know that the standard is about fuel efficiency. It does help lower the cost of living by making it easier to buy cars that use less fuel and cost less to run, and the standard also contributes to our emissions reduction targets—but the standard is having the opposite effect at the moment. It’s actually making it harder and more expensive for people to upgrade to better vehicles. There are four changes in this bill as reported back. The Government intends to move an Amendment Paper, which I think has been well signalled, and we will do that in the committee of the whole House stage. My understanding is that that Amendment Paper has been tabled for members to have a look at.
Returning to the four changes: the bill lets the Minister of Transport recommend uniform carbon dioxide targets for vehicles. This will be quite important, actually, when weight-adjusted targets, which currently give heavier vehicles easier targets, are no longer fair or justified as more low-emissions vehicle options become available. The second change is to extend the life of emissions credits from three years to four to give importers more time to use the credits they earn from exceeding targets. This is about rewarding good performance and keeping costs down. The third change is that it keeps the option for importers to borrow credits from future years, so if they fall short one year, they can make up for it in the next year. It’s a common-sense way to avoid charges that would otherwise be passed on to consumers. It allows credit trading between new- and used-vehicle importers. Currently, new-vehicle importers can only trade credits with other new-vehicle importers, and used-vehicle importers can only trade with used-vehicle importers. This change will give importers of both types greater options to offset chargers. Ultimately, it will make it easier for them to meet the standard.
The bill is a short bill. I want to thank everyone who took the time to share their views during the select committee stage. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. The committee, as I understand it, received 25 submissions—not a large number—but the range of views was wide, and the depths of insights were valuable. It is fair to say that this bill and the changes that that Government intends to move during the committee of the whole House stage reflect the submissions that industry have made to the Government and the select committee around meeting the clean vehicle standard. With that in mind, I want to acknowledge the input of the Motor Industry Association and the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association. The feedback has made it clear that there are changes required to the standard if it is going to work and lower the cost of living for New Zealanders and, ultimately, green our fleet over time.
The Government intends to conduct a full review of the standard in the first six months of next year. We’ve now had two goes as a Parliament at getting in place a workable standard; the 2023 regime, which I think everyone acknowledges was deficient, and the changes made last year, in 2024, to bring the scheme in line with Australia. That also has not worked. We do need to kind of go back to almost basics and first principles and work out exactly what we are going to do in terms of making the scheme work. Anyway, that’s all for another day. In the meantime, this bill provides sensible, useful changes, and, of course, we’ve got an amendment coming to lower the carbon dioxide amounts that are charged, which will come at the committee of the whole House stage. That Amendment Paper is on the floor of the House for members to have a look at. I commend the bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Look, the Labour Party will not be supporting this bill this evening. That shouldn’t come as any surprise to members opposite, given our different view has been published in the select committee’s report.
I’ll come to the specifics as to why, at this stage, we are not prepared to support this bill, but before I do that, I do want to just make some comments on the select committee process that was undertaken. Much has always been referred to the fact that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee is a hard-working committee, and I do want to acknowledge the submitters that did take time to engage with the committee. The Minister’s correct: there weren’t many—25—and we heard from a handful of those. I also want to acknowledge the officials who advised and supported the committee through its work, as well.
It’s really interesting that this bill has been reported back quite early in the piece. It was meant to be no later than 22 December, and there were steps taken to expediate things—and, of course, it’s just about 11.10 p.m. on a Wednesday evening while the House is in urgency because, really, the Government is up against the clock in terms of trying to appease some of the concerns that have been raised directly with them.
I do have a question for the Minister—that’ll be in committee—but I am signalling the regulatory impact statement that has been tabled, whether it’s relevant in terms of this bill or not, because it seems to reference all of the previous pieces of work that was done with, I guess, bill No. 1. So just signalling that for the Minister.
But we are not supporting this bill, because it is yet another example of this Government who are stepping back from leadership in the climate space, who are watering down policies that have a real impact on our environment, our economy, and our communities. Let’s be very clear: the reason that the Government are pursuing this is because they made a decision to take some action in cancelling a clean car discount opportunity alongside the Clean Car Standard, and they have failed to do anything since they took that course of action.
That is the real reason why we are here under urgency progressing this: because the Government have been lobbied by industry participants and they simply have failed to actually do what was expected of them. That is exactly what the committee did hear from industry players and participants, is that the Government have basically made an absolute shambles over this. These were the very issues that we raised last year when Simeon Brown was the Transport Minister and was progressing changes, which is why this bill is called the “Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)”, because we had a No. 1 and the Government had failed to actually sort out the issues at that point in time, and they’re coming back to say, “Actually, we don’t care about the environment, we don’t care about community—about engagement in that space—and actually, what we’re going to do is we are just going to make things easier, change it, and actually set this country back at the same time.”
This is entirely over the actions taken by the Government, and they need to take responsibility in their failure in that particular regard. The genesis of this is about trying to ensure that whatever the framework, whatever the structure, whatever the threshold is when it comes to tackling emissions, that we are actually preparing for the future. What we want in the Labour Party—and this is why we introduced the Clean Car Standard in the first place, let’s not forget about that; the former Government—is because we actually believe in a future where transport is cleaner, it’s safer, and it’s more affordable, and it also actually tackles the issues around low emissions.
We all know that when we step back and look at the profile in terms of transportation, the emissions component is a huge contributor in terms of what this country does provide, in turn, as a community, and how we go about the things that we do. However, this bill is a backwards step. It really does weaken the integrity of the standard, and it really also delays the progress that this country needs. We need a Government that is going to be leading in this space, not seeking to continue to weaken the standard and other opportunities each day in the week.
This bill does a number of things, and I’m sure colleagues will touch on them specifically. The first one I want to speak about is it extends the lifespan of the carbon credits from three years to four years. This is effectively late in the piece as we head towards the end of the year, to say “Well, actually, we’re going to not stick to the three-year time frame now because it’s getting too—well, it’s not just getting too hard; actually, the time frame is coming up pretty quickly.” That is a very clear step that has been taken by the Government, as opposed to try and identify possibilities around incentivisation or working with industry in a different frame to try and reduce the change that is needed there.
The other significant change is the ability to—as it stands currently, there are restrictions on the ability for industry participants to effectively transfer their credits. While players will hold a certain number of credits in the bank, so to speak, there is currently an inability for those credits to be transferred between used vehicles and new vehicles across the fleet. This, again, is another example of the Government simply weakening the standard by adding to—yes—the delay in terms of three to four years, but also more flexibility to basically offset what is currently held across used and new vehicles. Further, in terms of time frames, this is a bill that seeks to extend the borrowing of future credits beyond the end of this year, as well—and so, yet again, this is painting a picture where this is a Government bill under urgency, where they’re up against the clock and they’re not interested in addressing and tackling some of the real issues that are so important in this country.
The final change, which did come a little bit late in the piece, was—we all know, generally, that heavier vehicles take a little bit more of a little bit more fuel or juice to get them around, whether that’s electric or whether that’s a bit more traditional, and so this will be a bill that will remove the weight-adjusted targets. They’re not going to just sort of tinker with them; they’re going to just wipe them all together so that there’s not going to be any weight-adjusted targets that will provide differentiation between heavier vehicles and lighter vehicles.
In tandem—well, the four of them together, I guess, indicates a real change in direction in terms of where the country is heading around really tackling issues around climate change, taking seriously our ability as a country and our desire as a country to be reducing our emissions when it comes to transport, as well. Now, on the surface, one could be excused for thinking that, actually, these changes that we’ve just talked through could be technical in nature—perhaps even harmless, some might suggest. But the reality is that these changes will simply make it easier for importers to delay compliance. That is the bottom line. It is loosening the standard by giving more flexibility to importers to simply delay what is expected, what has been asked of them, what has been signalled for quite some time.
I recall this House, with the former Transport Minister spending a lot of time looking at the comparability with Australia in terms of targets and getting some assurances from the Minister of Transport at the time that these were able to be delivered. It’s very clear that we’re in a very different situation because—even though he’s no longer the Minister, thank goodness—he has failed to be able to deliver in that respect, as well. Every single day, we must turn our minds to how all participants in terms of the transport sector are able to play their part and do what they can to ensure that we are effectively dealing with issues around emissions and the like.
The Labour Party continues to oppose this bill. It is a perhaps a small bill, but a very, very important one in terms of the impact that that will deliver for the sector. We have a number of Amendment Papers that we intend to progress and speak to as we work through the committee stage, but it seems unless there is a complete U-turn by the Government at this late stage in the piece, our opposition will continue to stand. However, that will not mitigate the desire of the Opposition to continue to hold the Government to account as we progress this piece of legislation.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): The amazing thing about electric vehicles and low-emission vehicles is that they are so great for New Zealand. It means we spend less money on imported fossil fuels just to get around. And yet New Zealand has lagged behind other countries because we had no fuel efficiency standard, no fuel economy standard, on vehicle imports, until a few years ago. At that point, we were almost the last country in the OECD to get a fuel economy standard. The only country now in the OECD who doesn’t have a fuel economy standard is Russia. But, of course, a fuel economy standard by itself was never going to be enough to get the transformation that we needed in our vehicle fleet.
Let me just go back—I’m just going to repeat this one more time, because members opposite, the Government parties, say they care about productivity. One of the simplest, easiest things we could do to improve productivity is to improve the efficiency of our vehicle fleet. There are direct gains from that, immediately. Importing fewer fossil fuels, using less energy to get around—just switching to electric vehicles, or even just more efficient vehicles, is a direct gain to New Zealand households.
The people who don’t benefit from fuel efficiency as much are the polluting vehicle industry. The polluting vehicle industry don’t want fuel economy standards. Why? Because it’s more profitable for them. So, of course, like every other industry that has lobbied Government successfully—like the tobacco industry, one that Minister Bishop will know a lot about—they’ve had this playbook where they come out and say that Government regulation is going to hurt consumers, that they’re going to pay the high price, when, in reality, it is the vehicle manufacturers who simply don’t want to have to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles.
There are vehicle companies now who are here in New Zealand because we brought in the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount—BYD probably wouldn’t be here. I know for a fact that back in 2021, my friends were trying to buy an electric Hyundai. They couldn’t get it and they were told it was going to be six months, at least, for them to be able to get this car.
Then the Government made its announcement amount the Clean Car Discount, and they got a phone call from the dealer saying they could get it in a month. So the reality is that these policies shape the choices that consumers have, and the whole point of those two policies is to make it easier for New Zealanders to access efficient, low-emissions vehicles. And it’s fair—it’s fair. It’s fair that polluters pay. It’s fair that they pay a little extra, because there’s no way we as a country are going to reduce the fossil fuel emissions from our vehicle fleet unless some people are incentivised to drop emissions faster.
Simon Court: What about the ETS?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The emissions trading scheme (ETS) doesn’t work on fuel, and that’s why—fuel is not in the European ETS. And there’s a really simple reason for this. It’s because people don’t make their decisions about which vehicle they’re going to buy based on what the fuel economy is, what the price of petrol is. It’s a small component of the price of petrol, the ETS. And, by the way, this Government just crashed the ETS price. So it’s a total joke. And we know who that member is really in here to represent, and it’s not ordinary New Zealanders and it’s not people who want action on climate change; it is the fossil fuel industry that funds people like the ACT Party—to come in and mess up—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just be careful with some of those accusations.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: But this is the playbook—this is the playbook. Industry lobbies Government, claims that consumers will miss out, and who actually misses out? New Zealanders. New Zealanders who don’t get access to more fuel efficient vehicles will now have more polluting vehicles, which cost them more money to run, which makes the air dirtier, which means we pay higher health bills. They’re in total denial.
Let’s just see what’s happening in the rest of the world, because, actually, with this bill, the Government is caving to a polluting industry one more time. No one’s going to be surprised about that, because that’s literally been the last two years of this Government: caving to polluting industries that are reducing our chances of having a livable, thriving future, and every time they claim it’s going to save New Zealanders money, it’s actually going to cost New Zealanders more money.
Grant McCallum: To buy their vehicles, yes.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It’s going to cost them more money because they’re going to be spending more money to run their vehicles.
Grant McCallum: To buy them.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Grant McCallum, I know I’m never ever going to be successful in explaining basic economics to you, my friend.
The funniest thing, Madam Speaker—I do have to refer to this—that happened at the select committee, and I’m sure all those members who weren’t at the select committee would love to hear this, is Isuzu New Zealand came in and said they were opposed to the bill because they’re opposed to the Clean Car Standard. I don’t think he understood that the bill was actually making the standard weaker, but the person who was submitting held up this graph, which I know no one’s going to able to see, because it’s on my computer—oh, maybe you can—but, anyway, he thought this graph was evidence: “We didn’t need a tax to achieve this.” Now, let me describe what the graph shows. It shows the incredibly high proportion of passenger and SUV imports from 2015 to 2021 that are an internal combustion engine, and the tiny, tiny percentage that are electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles.
Then, suddenly, in 2021, something happened—something happened—and it had nothing to do with Government except it had everything to do with Government and it had everything to do with an evidence-based policy, which was the Clean Car Discount. And suddenly there’s a dramatic increase in electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. And then, suddenly, at the end of 2023, it stops and it bounces back up.
So, look, you’ve got all the evidence right here, thanks to Isuzu New Zealand, who have no idea what they’re talking about when they come and present to the select committee. But the Government has torn away a policy that was the envy of many other countries in the world. I spoke to a car manufacturer today who said that a few years ago, everyone was saying, “How do we copy what New Zealand is doing? This is great. They have one of the highest rates of EV uptake in the entire world thanks to the Clean Car Discount.” With that, the industry was overshooting its targets. So, actually, that’s why the targets in the Clean Car Standard were set at the rate they were—(1) because we actually do have to reduce emissions from the fleet and we’re basically becoming a dumping ground for the world’s polluting vehicles with a weak, ineffective standard that will continue.
That’s not good for New Zealand: it means dirtier air, higher fuel bills, more fossil fuel imports—it’s stupid; it’s stupid. I will say it again: this is stupid and unnecessary. If the members opposite were actually committed to helping New Zealanders achieve a more productive economy with a more productive transport system, with lower costs for everyone, they would support evidence-based policies that would mean we wouldn’t be the laughing stock of the world—which we are, because look at this, from 2023—oh, again, unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to be able to show you the whole graph, but from 2023 to 2024, we were second to last in the entire world for the change in EV sales.
So for the change in EV sales—you can’t really read that—we are second to last in the world. And yet, here we are, a country with high renewable electricity production. We have high car dependency because the Government keeps wasting money on roads and not investing in rail. There was going to be one thing we were going to do that would benefit the economy and put us in a better position with respect to climate change: that would be to electrify our vehicle fleet, which this Government is comprehensively failing to do. It’s because they are in the pocket of polluting industry. They don’t listen to the evidence; they listen to the people who benefit the most, which is a tiny percentage of New Zealanders, because they can sell more highly polluting vehicles which have a higher margin for them. That’s it—they get a higher margin. Are we better off? Is the country better off? Absolutely not. We’re importing more fossil fuels as a result of it, and apparently they can’t understand that.
Again, it’s embarrassing for them. I say that every day. How embarrassing for this Government that their entire fossil fuel reduction strategy when it comes to transport is EVs, and they absolutely tanked EV sales, and now they’re caving to industry rather than doing something effective. And the industry came to the select committee and said, “There’s nothing we can do to influence consumer demand.”, never minding the tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars the vehicle industry is spending on advertising on high emissions, utes, and SUVs to create the demand. OK, so that’s where we’re at. It’s stupid. It’s stupid and unnecessary, and it’s very embarrassing for them. Embarrassing—they don’t understand economics, they don’t understand how to get EVs in this country—
Hon Members: Ha, ha!
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —and they laugh because they’re so unaware of their own mediocrity.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just before I call Simon Court for the next speech, I’m just going to say to the National Party backbench that when you all talk at once, no one’s got a clue what anybody is saying, so maybe one at a time might be a better idea. Simon Court.
SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, I want to acknowledge the previous speaker, Julie Anne Genter, and her passion for transport planning, for the environment, and for actually standing by and standing up for her values and principles. Now, I disagree with her on many issues, but I do agree with her on what she says or what the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand says in their differing view: improving the fuel efficiency of private vehicles imported to New Zealand has huge benefits. I know it does.
My first car was a Holden Commodore V8 station wagon—a V8 station wagon—it was a two-litre. I reckon it used about three times as much gas every week, or per kilometre, as my modern Subaru does. What that shows you is that over time, those vehicle manufacturers, making cars that are then imported, delivered to New Zealand, have actually improved fuel efficiency; they’ve improved their emissions; they’ve reduced the toxicity of their emissions to something that is negligible with catalytic converters. We have low-sulphur diesel; we’ve removed lead in petrol; and yet, it’s not enough for Julie Anne Genter and for the Green Party. But the ACT Party, we’re practical people. We’re here in Parliament, and we’re in Government to fix what matters. That’s why I’m proud, as an ACT MP, somebody who has recently sat on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for a short time to consider this legislation, along with my colleague Cameron Luxton, who was a permanent member on the committee.
I want to acknowledge Cameron Luxton for the hard work that he did on this report, along with the chair, Andy Foster, who graciously gave me the opportunity to ask a few questions of submitters during the committee stage. Cameron Luxton has made, like I said, a great effort. He, also, has suffered from having to drive high-emissions, low-efficiency vehicles for many years, but he won’t give it up. Cameron Luxton is taking me around Tauranga in his V6 Suzuki Vitara four-wheel drive, and I tell you what: there’s a guy who knows how to get every last kilometre out of his vehicle. He ain’t giving that thing up. He ain’t giving that thing up until Suzuki come back around with a new Vitara, and so we’re holding on, probably until towards the end of this century.
I just want to speak to some of the matters the previous speaker, Julie Anne Genter, raised. Firstly, her conspiracy theory—and that’s what it was—about members on this side of the House being somehow beholden to or under the influence of what she called the “fossil-fuel industry”.
Dan Bidois: Shameful.
SIMON COURT: That is an outrageous claim, isn’t it, Dan Bidois? It’s an outrageous claim, and it also ignores the fact that every single New Zealander is dependent on fuel suppliers, on energy suppliers, on the private sector to supply the energy we need: liquid fuels, solid fuels, gaseous fuels.
When Julie Anne Genter and her friends in the Green Party fly around the country or go to overseas conferences, like in the jungle in Brazil to COP30. They had to bulldoze a road through the jungle, through the rainforest to this remote city, apparently, for thousands of people to go and have a big, kind of, seance about the climate. You know, all of those fuels—for the benefit of the member Julie Anne Genter—are supplied by the private sector, and they help you get where you need to go. Madam Speaker, I didn’t mean to bring you into the debate, I was just referring to all of us; we depend on it.
Now, coming back to electric vehicles, the member, Julie Anne Genter, made a good point. EVs are great. I mean, I have rented one occasionally, when I’ve been going around the country on parliamentary business. Firstly, I just want to say they’re very difficult to work out how to start them, because when they’re electric, I’m looking firstly for the button and then with a key. Really, I mean, they’re actually quite technically challenging for somebody from West Auckland who is used to driving a petrol- or diesel-powered vehicle. So they are very advanced, and I do welcome this step change in technology into New Zealand.
But one of the challenges we have in New Zealand is that we are already using more electricity on some days than we can produce from our existing generation capacity. That is why we have to keep a million-tonne stockpile of coal at Huntley to make sure that the lights don’t go out. So while it’s laudable that many New Zealanders have invested in EVs and drive them, we do have these actual structural changes in the amount of electricity we can deliver to those people who want to charge them at home or charge them at their business. That’s only going to become more of a challenge as we move towards the much more digital-, data-, and energy-hungry world that we are moving towards, whether it’s data centres or whether it’s entire fleet transitions to hybrid or plug-in electric vehicles, as many commercial fleets are doing.
But I want to come to the issues of this bill. The reason this bill was at select committee was because a previous Government—a Labour-Green Government—introduced not only the ute tax—the “clean vehicle discount”, they called it; put a nice little unicorn sticker on it—but it was going to be about five to eight grand more for a van or a ute, the kinds of vehicles that tradies and farmers needed—
Cameron Luxton: I could only afford a Vitara.
SIMON COURT: Well, that’s why the former dairy farmer, and current licensed building practitioner, Cameron Luxton, probably couldn’t afford to upgrade from his Vitara.
The clean vehicle discount and this green vehicle standard was a double tax on actually getting the vehicles that Kiwis needed. If you think about the point I made—my interjection to Julie Anne Genter’s speech—about the emissions trading scheme (ETS), Kiwis already pay for their emissions through the ETS. They pay, typically, when the ETS is running at about 50 bucks a tonne of carbon, as it is now, somewhere between $9 and $11 every time they fill their vehicle up with petrol, and a similar amount in diesel. So what that means is for somebody who drives, you know, maybe 400 or 500 kilometres a week, like a lot of people do around town, if they’re going from one side of town to the other, like a tradie, like a parent, running kids to gymnastics or swimming after school and sports games on the other side of town. If your kids are playing sport, you’re probably paying your fair share—$10, $11 dollars a week, maybe more—for your carbon emissions. So when you had the clean vehicle discount—the “dirty ute tax”, which is gone—you’re paying once, paying the clean vehicle standard, if you replaced your family vehicle with a new one, and paying twice—well, that’s almost gone—and again, the emissions trading scheme is all we need.
I just want to come back to some of the submissions that were made. The manufacturers: I was actually really concerned. Many of them had made the point in the 53rd Parliament, when the legislation that the previous Labour-Green Government brought in to put this clean car standard in place came through the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which I sat on at the time, the manufacturers said it’s not necessary. All the vehicle manufacturers in Japan and Europe, they make vehicles that have a very low-emissions standard already. Any standard that New Zealand might like to stick on it just to feel good about itself isn’t going to shift the dial at all from an international or even a local emissions profile point of view. It’s not going to reduce emissions at all, because guess what, Julie Anne Genter? Japan and Europe are not making special cars just for New Zealand to meet our standard. Who knew?
The importers and the manufacturers told this previous Parliament—the 53rd Parliament—that. They predicted and they forecast exactly the situation we’re in now, where there is a huge deficit built up in trading accounts of importers and manufacturers, who have continued to deliver Kiwis the vehicles they need, taking the risk on this cost, that it’s going to land on their balance sheets and have to be passed on to motorists. Yet all of this prediction, all of this foresight, the previous Government ignored it. That’s why this Government is cleaning it up. That’s why we’re here to fix what matters tonight.
Now, it’s heartening to hear the Minister Chris Bishop say that there’s a paper on the Table where he’s proposing to reduce the amount of actual emissions charges per unit of carbon by about 80 percent. That’s going to save Kiwis tens of millions of dollars a year. But in the long term, what we do know is that the clean vehicle standard is unnecessary when we already have the emissions trading scheme. You’re already paying for your emissions every time you put fuel in the tank. There are already plenty of options out there, when it comes to EVs and hybrids. The Government does not need to be involved in this. The ACT Party welcomes this change, but we want it to go further.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thanks, Madam Speaker. I want to start off just by saying some thanks as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, because this is also reporting back from the select committee. Thanks to the submitters. There weren’t many of them, but they were very good submissions. Thanks to the officials and thanks also to the committee. In this one, we haven’t agreed with each other, but it’s still really important that we had some good discussion on it.
We had to report it back quickly, or we decided we would report it back quickly in response to the Minister’s request.
Glen Bennett: Who decided?
ANDY FOSTER: Now, the reason for that actually, and the Opposition is asking why? I think the reason for that was made very clear by the Minister in public, which we don’t always get, but the Minister made it very clear in public that he regarded the scheme as it is as broken. The majority of the committee actually agree: the scheme is fundamentally broken.
Now, how does the scheme work? Well, in simple terms, basically if you’ve got a low emitting vehicle, you’re going to end up likely having credits. If you have a high emitting vehicle, you’re likely to end up essentially having debits and you’re trying to manage the two together. The idea was that there should be those two should marry. But the reality is that the two of them are not marrying. That we have far, far more high emitting vehicles and much fewer low emitting vehicles.
Why is that? What we heard quite clearly from submitters is that submitters don’t want to buy the vehicles that are being imported to try and meet the clean vehicle standard. So importers, manufacturers are bringing in a certain collection of vehicles and the public of New Zealand—so it’s not the Government choosing, it’s not anybody being paid, you know, or say the fuel industry paying us to persuade people to buy particular cars. It is New Zealanders who are choosing to buy a particular set of cars.
What we heard from the industry was that that hits them in two ways.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: From the industry. That’s who you listen to.
ANDY FOSTER: One is—the industry who talked to us said that hits them in two ways. One is that they end up with a deficit, and that is a very significant deficit. They will have to buy credits which they have to pay for ultimately. So effectively that is a tax. The second one is that they end up effectively stockpiling a very substantial number of vehicles which they can’t sell. So they get hit twice.
As a select committee, we were tasked to consider three things. We were tasked to consider the way in which the credit system worked and how long the credits will be able to be used. Secondly, we were tasked to look at the weight comparison situation, and thirdly, about the conversion rate between new and used vehicles. But the reality is that whatever we did with those things, and we did make improvements to those things, really, it’s deck chairs on the Titanic for the industry, because none of those things, you do all of those things, it still does not make the system viable and workable.
The industry told us that they are bringing in cars to offset each other, but the Kiwis, as I said, don’t want to buy that particular mix of vehicles. Now, Julie Anne Genter said that this is caving to the polluting car industry. No, it’s not. What this is, is New Zealanders who are choosing to buy particular vehicles because the vehicles that they were assumed that New Zealanders would want to buy when the system was set up, New Zealanders, funnily enough, have said “Actually, those are not the vehicles that we want to buy.”
So what you need to do is to look at the assumptions behind the scheme. What the regulatory impact statement quite clearly says is that the assumptions behind the scheme when it was set up, basically, are wrong. That’s the fundamental thing that we need to be stepping back and actually reviewing the scheme and setting the fundamentals right and the assumption’s right, because we’ve got that wrong right from the beginning.
The industry actually, surprisingly to me, supports the idea of a clean vehicle scheme, but it doesn’t support the way in which it’s set up. So we do need to take a step back and try and make sure it’s done properly, because if we don’t do it properly, there will be really significant implications, not just for the vehicle industry, but also for New Zealanders who want to buy vehicles.
What this means, and I understand Julie Anne Genter said that we started off being way behind the rest of the world or much of the world. One of the problems with that is that we tried, or the last Government tried to catch us up very quickly. So where the rest of the world by and large had done this over 15 years, in New Zealand we tried to do it over five—over five.
The second thing we did is, the industry has said the last Government did not engage with the industry. Now, they have regularly complained about this side of the House not consulting with whoever it is that they want us to consult with. In this instance they didn’t do that either. They did not consult with the industry. [Knocks over glass] Guess what that means.
Hon Member: Woah!
ANDY FOSTER: They did not—there was no water in it, thankfully. Guess what! That means that they did not get the settings right.
The other issue which comes in there that Simon Court has actually highlighted is we have when you buy a vehicle, you’re paying the emissions trading scheme (ETS)—when you operate a vehicle, you’re paying the ETS—and that should pay for those, you know, pesky emissions. But not only are they being taxed once, they were, under the last administration, being taxed under this clean vehicle discount scheme.
Thirdly, we had not only the Clean Car Discount, we also had the flip side of that, which wasn’t even funded because the clean car discount actually costs more than the Ute tax, which we all remember as well. So it was a triple taxation. There’s an absolute lack of faith in the systems that were there. I agree, Julie Anne Genter, that, you know, it’s fair that polluters pay. It’s fair that polluters pay once, but it’s not fair that they pay twice and then three times. That is completely unfair. That is the system which was set up under the last Government.
As I said, I was surprised that the companies didn’t actually want to abolish the scheme entirely. The reason that they told us for that—and I had some meetings outside of this as well. Julie Anne Genter, you said that you spoke to a car manufacturer this week. Well, I spoke to some big car manufacturers this week and they basically said if we didn’t fix this, they will be out of the country and those whole ranges of vehicles would not be available for New Zealanders to buy. I don’t think that that would do New Zealand any good whatsoever.
Hon Member: Greens don’t care.
ANDY FOSTER: The Greens don’t care about a lot of these things. They talk about evidence-based decision making, but when it’s evidence they don’t like—when it’s evidence they don’t like—no, that’s not evidence at all.
The reason that these companies said that they still supported the idea of a scheme, but make sure make sure that it is set properly, is because they don’t trust that some future Government—on the left wing side of the House—wouldn’t impose some completely new scheme, some completely new random scheme, that would be utterly unviable and unsustainable for them. They would rather have something that actually makes some sense. That is the important thing that we need to do. That is where, I think, the Minister is going. That is one of the reasons that the select committee was already keen to support the early report back of this—[Interruption]—by majority. If we don’t fix this, what it will result in is more expensive vehicles for New Zealanders and less brands available for New Zealanders.
Just to finish off with, what the industry is saying is the industry may meet the standards in time, but they cannot meet it now. As we’ve already heard, New Zealand doesn’t make a whole lot of cars. We get those vehicles from other countries in the world, so we cannot drive what they produce. We have to receive what they produce, and we need to set our standards somewhere based on reality.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: A dumping ground for polluting vehicles, and we all pay for it—we all pay for it.
ANDY FOSTER: Yeah, thank you—thank you. I think what I’ll do is I’ll leave it there. But the key thing is that we do need to reset the system, because if we don’t reset the system, New Zealand consumers will suffer and there will be no great benefit to the climate either. I commend the bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call. Scott Willis.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: You nearly missed it.
SCOTT WILLIS: That would be a pity. That would be a pity, given that we have, now, the fantastic recognition of being the fossil of the day. The fossils opposite must appreciate that. We have global news that is not very happy. The world is dangerously close to overshooting the 1.5 degree climate target. Temperature records continue to be broken. We saw, in the Deep South, our farmers cut off from electricity, with storms running through it recently, having to rely on the wind farms, the solar, the battery storage that was there, and generators. Those extreme storms, the fires, the floods are happening more and more again. We know that scientists say that the window for stabilising the climate is closing really, really fast.
What we need is stronger action now, not policies that will slow or weaken our emissions reductions. New Zealand’s 2026 target is laxer than the targets of China, the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, and South Korea. Let’s question what this bill does. It gives vehicle importers more flexibility to meet the Clean Car Standard by extending carbon credit lifespan from three to four years. It allows credit transfers between new and used vehicle importers with a two to one ratio. It extends the ability to borrow against future overachievement beyond 2025. These are presented as just technical or administrative fixes, but they have real climate implications.
Why is this bill being introduced? We hear that importers are struggling to meet targets because the Government cancelled the Clean Car Discount. Low emission vehicle demand has plummeted. Electric vehicle importers were caught short when they cancelled the Clean Car Discount and had to sell them at a serious discount. We’re seeing compliance becoming harder because of the lack of a Clean Car Discount. This bill effectively lets importers stretch their old credits further, bank past credit achievements, and cover the current slump in clean vehicle imports.
Let me tell you why we oppose this bill. I think it’s pretty obvious really. Weakening our climate action when the urgency is on us to take every action we can now is not just stupid; it is dangerous. Greater flexibility usually means delayed emissions reduction. Near-term cuts are critical. We need cuts to our emissions to stay close to the 1.5 degree pathway, and we should be accelerating reductions, not slowing them. Furthermore, it is fixing the wrong problem. The problem, as has been discussed, was the removal of the Clean Car Discount, not the standard itself. Instead of reinstating an effective policy, the bill compensates. That’s what this Government is doing. It’s trying to compensate for their lack. It compensates for its absence by weakening the rules.
Furthermore, it risks undermining the integrity of the clean vehicle standard. The standard already has built-in flexibility, credits, transfers, and deferrals, and a standard with too much elasticity simply loses its climate purpose. What’s more, it’s going to cost more for those people who buy the dirtier cars, because they’ll be paying more for dirty fuel, not for the electricity that they could have off peak.
Our transport policy is guided by ecological wisdom. We’re at a point where the world is breaching climate thresholds. We can’t afford climate denial legislation that dilutes climate action. We oppose this bill.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's time we get back to Earth on this bill and, in particular, the select committee process. We heard very clearly from submitters two bits of feedback. The first is around the supply and demand mismatch for electric vehicles, and the second, and equally important, is that most importers are not going to meet the target and that will basically impose a hell of a lot of charges on the sector.
The changes that the Minister proposed in the select committee stage—and amendments in the committee of the whole House stage—aim to address this bill. I think it will, and I commend the select committee for recommending a review of the scheme. I think that will be timely, and I welcome the Minister’s review. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m just looking at the time; it’s approaching 12 a.m., but given I have 10 minutes, I fully intend to take that full 10 minutes. [Interruption]
Hon Member: Just give us four and a half and it will be sweet.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Ha! We’ll see what happens; we’ll see what happens. I may be regaled with such witty interjections that I change my mind. Who knows? [Interruption]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I can’t hear the member!
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Labour will be opposing this bill, not because we don’t support, obviously, a strong practical path, ultimately, for cleaner transport but because, quite frankly, this bill does the exact opposite of that and certainly isn’t what we need.
Through the select committee process, we heard directly from officials—and I agree with the member that’s just resumed his seat—and we heard directly from industry, and from environmental groups which we failed to mention. What struck me was that no one could point to a single piece of evidence showing that this bill would reduce emissions faster or make life easier for families in the long term. Ultimately, that’s what we should be aiming for.
What they did say very openly, however, is that parts of industry—a very specific part of industry—fundamentally wanted weaker rules and the Government, quite frankly, was just happy to oblige. So that feels a bit lame. We find ourselves, here, just before midnight on a Wednesday evening in November still, when it should be sometime in December, reporting back on this bill because all of a sudden it had to be reported back to the House in a rush because the Minister essentially instructed the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to do so. We think that was a pretty shoddy process. We’re disappointed in the select committee for doing that. It’s a pretty fundamental thing to expect that that doesn’t happen, but here we find ourselves.
The fact is that the committee’s own report, which is by definition a majority report, reads almost like an admission. The changes certainly aren’t about better policy; they’re about relaxing rules, because they’re essentially helpful to a handful of importers who asked for it. When the submitters pointed out that EV demand had fallen, which several members of the Government have pointed out—EV demand had fallen after the Clean Car Discount was scrapped. You know, that’s not rocket science; that’s incentives at play. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s a correlation, it’s all sorts of X and Y graphs; it’s pretty straightforward.
The Clean Car Discount was scrapped, and the Government majority simply brushed that off. Instead of finding another way to fix what was essentially a looming problem, the solution was just to give in, give up, and just go, “Nah, we’ll just have dirtier cars. What harm could that be?” So we’re left with this bill, which slows down progress, weakens accountability, and quite frankly, just creates loopholes. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee itself couldn’t justify any of that with any reason or any data.
So Labour believes that, quite frankly, New Zealand just deserves better. We should have higher ambitions, we should be setting ourselves better goals. We’ve already been incredibly slow in adopting any kind of standard whatsoever, and when we finally get something to be proud of, we just scrap it at the first hurdle, after the first quarter, when a certain sector of the industry complain that they’ve got too many cars that other people don’t want. There are several other ways to have fixed that problem.
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee confirmed, I think, via its majority report, that the bill weakens the Clean Vehicle Standards. Officials told the committee that the current targets were achievable if policy settings continued to support EV uptake, as I said, which the Government removed. The majority report didn’t dispute that the bill responds to importer pressure, and I think that’s quite telling, as well. Several submitters pointed out that loosening the rules now means we simply push costs and emissions on to those future households, which is a shame. The bill isn’t evidence-based, and this Government often claims that’s a priority for them. This is the opposite of an evidence-based bill; it’s a concession package for industry.
Secondly, extending carbon credit lifespans, there’s no other way to describe it: it just weakens annual accountability. Credits were deliberately time limited when the standard was designed, obviously. Officials confirmed that time limits are essential. They’re an essential part of that package to ensure year-on-year progress, and the Government again provided no real analysis showing how a four-year lifespan would achieve the same reductions. If you give importers more time to comply, they’re going to take more time to comply. That’s essentially human nature, and the committee heard nothing to suggest otherwise. Essentially, a four-year credit life let’s importers meet yesterday’s targets tomorrow, which is not how decarbonisation works, which is a real shame.
The other point that I wanted to make was about removing weight adjustments without strengthening the actual targets, which we just believe, on this side of the House, is irresponsible. Weight adjustments were transitional—agreed—but their removal was always intended to coincide with stronger targets, not weaker targets. Several importers admitted that they would meet targets more easily now because of this bill, and absolutely no analysis was provided on how the change effects heavy vehicle emissions, despite those emissions rising fastest. So the Government essentially removed the stabilisers and loosened the rules, all to make compliance easier, particularly for heavy vehicles.
When it comes to slowing decarbonisation, this bill slows that journey and gives nothing back to households. That’s a really important point because the other part of this argument is that ultimately we want a fleet of cars that are not only just ambitious but practically, on a day-to-day level, are able to relieve the pressure on fuel costs for households, for real families. Submitters emphasised that National’s previous repeal of the Clean Car Discount was a key driver in slowing down EV update, and it wasn’t the standard itself; officials made it clear that delaying compliance simply shifts those costs on to future consumers—and taxpayers ultimately.
On this side of the House, we absolutely believe that New Zealanders want a cleaner, cheaper-to-run vehicle fleet and they want lower emissions. They also want a Government that, quite frankly, takes climate change seriously. Time and time again, this Government has provided copious amounts of examples where you can watch them being more and more flippant with the concept of doing something about this really important issue. We don’t believe that New Zealanders want a Government that just simply caves in to any kind of pressure just when the going starts getting a bit tough.
This bill slows things down. It’s, you know—the Minister described it as a small bill. But my colleague Tangi Utikere said that whilst small, it’s incredibly important. It’s just really disappointing. It’s a missed opportunity to actually strengthen the standards and speed up transition. As I said, we’re already incredibly slow off the mark by introducing any kind of fuel standards whatsoever in the first place. It just means that we’re going to be in receipt of a bigger, more polluting, and more costly vehicle fleet in the future, and leaving it for someone else to deal with later.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption this morning. The House is suspended until 9.00 a.m. today.
Sitting suspended from 12.01 a.m. to 9. a.m. (Thursday)
TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025
(continued on Thursday, 20 November 2025)
Bills
Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)
Second Reading
Debate resumed.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Good morning, everyone. When we finished last evening, we were on the second reading of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2), call No. 9.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I’m not sure if it was too late last night for the members on the other side, but, clearly, they are still living in a dream, or perhaps in their own la-la land. The members on the other side tried to link falling electric vehicle demand to the repeal of the Clean Car Discount, yet almost every submitter confirmed that that’s not what’s driving the market. It is driven by the broader market factors, not the policy change. One thing is certain: the vehicle importers who made submissions all agreed that the previous standards, set by the former Government, were unrealistic and impractical, and this is why we’re here—to clean up their mess. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Good to see the caffeine levels have hit in this early in the morning. Shanan Halbert—a five-minute call.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look how backwards Mt Roskill has become when it comes to the progress in our transport fleet. Anyone in this discussion will know that 43 percent of our emissions in this country come from our transport fleet across Aotearoa New Zealand. And we are this morning debating a bill that certainly takes us backwards on climate and emissions. It takes us backwards on our transport across Auckland and New Zealand. But this is no surprise, and this is exactly the reason why New Zealanders are turning against this National-led Government.
Labour continues to oppose this bill because it takes us backwards and the select committee process confirmed that this bill in fact weakens the clean vehicle standard and undermines New Zealand’s progress in transport emissions. Our dissenting view makes it very clear that the bill does prioritise short-term convenience for importers over meaningful emissions reductions. It extends the carbon credit lifespans from three to four years, undermining annual accountability, and it will slow decarbonisation.
We spent a bit of time at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. A lot of mahi was done and there was a lot of consultation across the sector, and change is difficult, of course. Change is difficult, but what I know is that New Zealanders don’t want to go backwards. They want to protect our planet. They want to make sure we’re doing the right things now for tomorrow and for generations to come, and this bill simply weakens the standard of what New Zealanders expect.
This Government has been influenced. It’s been influenced by the big players in town, so they’re making decisions to move such legislation despite the fact that the majority view in the report makes no attempt to hide the fact that the bill responds to industry pressure. The bill responds to industry pressure for looser rules, not environmental or economic evidence. Now, that “E” word does go missing quite often under this Government. Evidence isn’t informing the decisions of the leadership of this country at the moment.
We’ve got to come back, move away from our political ideology and what we hear, and try and fight for relevancy in a New Zealand that is turning against the National Party, and start using evidence for the decisions that we expect, whether it be in transport or whether it be in health or whether it be in education. Evidence is incredibly important. But the thing is, we’ve got to listen to our communities. We’ve got to listen to our communities and find the right balance, listen to our communities and hear what they are saying, as well as to industry, I say to the ACT Party over there. Yes, industry is important, but we’ve got to make the right decisions for now and for tomorrow. But the new trading rules risk incentivising higher-emitting used vehicles. The majority’s recommendation enables credit transfers between new and used importers with a two-for-one exchange rate. And, of course, Labour highlighted to the committee that this flexibility risks flooding New Zealand with more used high-emitting vehicles.
Anyone who has sat on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee will know that because we’re at the bottom of the world, we will be recipients of the dirtiest cars in the world, and this was an attempt, of course, to change some of that, to do better, to protect our environment, and to actually demonstrate some evidence-led leadership in this country.
We do not agree with this bill. It takes us backwards. It doesn’t reduce emissions and, of course, this Government is making just another bad decision that New Zealand is turning against them on.
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Good morning, Mr Speaker. Well, there’s something that the people on the other side of the House haven’t worked out. It’s that the people of this country love their utes, and we need to be able to have our utes so that we can drive up to Northland—the electorate that’s miles above the rest—over the Brynderwyn Hills, and do it in an affordable manner. I commend the bill to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Good morning, everyone, and good morning, Mr Speaker. I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee when the legislation came through that both provided a discount, an incentive, for people to buy electric vehicles and brought in standards. One of the things that we heard was we heard an outcry that I was used to hearing in my previous job, where people would go, “This can’t possibly happen. This won’t work. We’re going to have this crisis.”, etc.
None of this actually happened. What we got was we got things like electric vehicles going down—one went down $20,000 because there was a market to meet. That was a van, and it was something that wasn’t on the market, and so, actually, the dealers reduced the prices of those and we got a whole lot more electric vehicles in the country than we had had before. So there was a lot of choice, and the Hon Julie Anne Genter talked about that. There were things like “build your own” electric vehicles, which just weren’t here, and suddenly they were here.
That’s the value of Government taking leadership: we can create a market. We can create an appetite. I look at the report that was done on this bill. It says, under “Other matters considered”, “We heard from the motor vehicle industry, particularly the new vehicle industry, that settings in the clean vehicle standards regime are fundamentally and structurally misaligned with the vehicle fleet that New Zealanders wish to purchase.” That’s a really interesting comment. It’s from a lobby group and it’s talking about what New Zealanders wish to purchase. Well, we live in a world where we actually can lead that desire.
When I think about my electorate of Mt Albert, which is, actually, very similar to Carlos’—in fact, Carlos Cheung’s electorate and mine will actually lose a bit of ground together in the next boundary change—and I think about those people who are living in somewhere like Wesley, which is an area that we share in that way, I think about the way that the motorway goes right next to the people in that area, and it dips. They’re being impacted by the emissions from those very vehicles. Their kids will die as a result—[Interruption] I’m not overstating it, and I need to be able to make this point. The children in that area will die at a greater rate because of the emissions from those utes that Grant McCallum just talked about.
And before you cry across the House, there’s actually good research on that: people die because of pollution in cities from cars, and, actually, when you remove a whole lot of petrol vehicles and diesel vehicles from the fleet, you actually impact on the wellbeing and the health of the children in the very electorates that you come from. It might not be such a problem for Grant McCallum, who comes from an area where there aren’t a lot of people, and so those emissions aren’t such a problem, because there’s a spread of people. But in intensified cities—and remember that Carlos Cheung’s and my area will take the majority of new people coming into Auckland because we’re building in a different way and we’re building more intensely. As we do that, it’s incredibly important that for the sake of Carlos Cheung’s children, for the sake of, hopefully, my grandchildren, we clean up the air.
Dr Carlos Cheung: Point of order. Mr Speaker, I accept that the other member can attack me but I don’t think she should be using my children as an example in the speech.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Sit down, Mr Cheung. Mr Cheung, this is a robust discussion and I’ve heard you, actually, being quite vocal in it. Given and take—just a little bit less sensitivity. Carry on, Ms White.
Dr Carlos Cheung: Point of order.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Sorry, Mr Cheung, this is a frivolous interjection, and I’m treating it as such, particularly for someone who has been actually making some considerable noise across the House.
Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order. I do take your point, Mr Speaker, but there is a long-held convention in the House that we do not introduce our families and family members into the debate.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Yes, well, I took it as a broad enough mention. But there’s obviously been some—just carry on with your speech and be aware of the sensitivities of the House.
HELEN WHITE: Absolutely, I will. My point was about the broader situation in both our electorates. We have children growing up in an environment where we know that children in this country in particular get asthma. We know we have higher rates than most places in the world. It’s incredibly important that we work on air quality.
I take the point that was made by Simon Court that cars have got better. They are better than they were; we’ve taken out the lead. But our job as a legislature is to actually lead changes that are important to the wellbeing of our people. We can drive an economy one way or the other, and this is very, very important to the people in our electorate, because it is a life and death situation. We know from the science that we have done; we know that those are real, real prices that people pay for the pollution in our cities. I remember waking up in the COVID era when we were in our lockdowns, and lots of people will remember this: we had a city where there were fewer cars and we actually had a cleaner environment than we’ve ever had, and it was a little glimpse of what we could build into our cities.
So while I am in favour of building more intensely in the inner city, I do see the value in doing that alongside initiatives like the Clean Car Standard. When we do that, we drive change that’s consistent with the communities growing in a different way, and that’s our job: our job is to lead that change. Our job is not to listen to a lobby group that says, “People don’t like all these vehicles; we have to sell them cheaper.” Actually, that’s a good thing. If there’s a glut of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles on the lots of the car dealers, if there’s a glut of those and they have to cut their profits to get those cars out—if they have to do that, and there are not a lot of car dealers going bust at the moment, they’re doing OK. If they have to move into the electric vehicle fleet, then, actually, that’s a really good thing. It’s a really good thing. That’s our job.
It's so interesting that we’re so tough on people out there who lose their jobs at the moment that we tell them they have to move regions. We tell them they have to be flexible, that they should go to Australia for that. We’re so tough on them, but we’re not tough on the people who are running these kinds of operations where they have to be mindful.
We had a person on the radio today talking about this law. He runs an electric motor vehicle company. He is bringing in electric motor vehicles. He was talking about the damage that this is going to do. That person is actually working to a value system. It’s not all about profit for him; it’s a balance. He’s making money out of those vehicles and he’s doing a good thing at the same time. Those are not things that we should see as some sort of dichotomy. We can drive this industry the right way, and we can actually save some lives by doing so. We can clean up our environments and we can meet our emissions targets, which is going to be really, really important.
Instead, what I’ve heard from this House is I’ve heard Grant McCallum, who’s a really lovely guy, get up and say he wants to drive—
Hon Members: Oh!
HELEN WHITE: He is; he’s a lovely guy. But he’s in the dark ages. He’s saying he’s got the right to go across the Brynderwnys in his ute. Well, that is an important right for Grant McCallum, but it is not as important as the right of the children in my area to have a clean environment. That’s a more important right. And we actually have to choose sometimes. It’s our job to choose, to be brave.
So it’s really interesting that the National Party came into Government talking about bringing people forward, and it’s doing the opposite. It’s burying its head in the sand in pieces of legislation like this. If there’s any issue in this area, well, it needs a solution that’s creative, it needs a solution that’s principled; it does not need this movement backwards, this visionless move. Find some decent solutions, do some work. If you’ve got a problem, fix it well, not like this.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call the next speaker, I just reflect on the interaction that took place, Mr Cheung. I accept, Mr Cheung, that, clearly, you felt that you had been impugned or your family had been impugned—you mentioned this. So I accept that, and this is to just reinforce that we do keep families out of this. Some of this is in the eye of the beholder, I realise that, so just a general warning that we do keep families out of our debate here. So I’ll accept that you were genuinely distressed at that comment.
CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): Look, I’d just like to acknowledge some of the comments that the member on the opposite side of the House made around providing practical solutions and choice. That is what this bill is all about, because, like she has said, people want choice. If they want to drive their ute across the Brynderwyns, they should be able to have that choice. If a consumer wants to buy an electric vehicle and drive around the streets of Auckland, that is their choice. This is about bringing down the cost of vehicles for consumers in a very tough time at the moment and providing choice. It’s a practical solution. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Mariameno Kapa-Kingi—the Te Pāti Māori call.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. Choice is often the realm of the privileged. It is not something that is extended to all, generally, particularly where I come from, in Te Tai Tokerau, and that’s not because we don’t want it. It is because, often, we are locked out of it, and this bill, with all it’s good intentions, I guess—this is how I’d like to speak to it.
When this bill was first introduced, we were told that it was about flexibility and balance. I haven’t found that in any way, regardless of the work that’s been put into it. The weakening of the clean vehicle standard, a policy designed to reduce emissions and prevent Aotearoa from becoming a dumping ground for inefficient vehicles rejected in countries with stricter environmental rules—that purpose is worth remembering, even if you do own a ute and drive up the Brynderwyns.
The Government claims that these changes will make compliance easier. In reality, they create loopholes, extending the lifespans of carbon credits from three years to four years, removing restrictions on transferring credits between the new and used imports sectors, and allowing the borrowing for future overachievement beyond 2025. These measures delay real progress and undermine the integrity of the standard.
We’ve heard rhetoric about affordability and choice, but the facts tell a different story. 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. That’s not affordability; that’s locking families into higher fuel costs and higher emissions for decades.
Climate change is not a distant threat; it is here, now, and it is hitting hardest. Why do Grant McCallum and I know that? Because we come from the North, and particularly if you’re in Whangaroa, Whangārei, or Te Kaipara, you’ll know about the flooding and all of the things that are meant to come every hundred years, but it feels like it’s every five years. They’re not just once-in-a-lifetime floods; they seem to be too many, too often. If you drive through Kāeo or Whangaroa today, you’ll see the decimation of homes, farms, roads, and infrastructure. These are not isolated events; they are a reality of a warming world.
Any legislation that prioritises short-term profits over the long-term health of our environment harms our children—especially mine and Helen White’s—and I say that because it must be said and stated like that in this space, where we make law and then we decide on resource for our future mokopuna rising. Hence my statement.
I think ka nui tēnā, Mr Speaker. I did want to make sure to stand and say that from a Te Tai Tokerau perspective, as the MP, the balance and the flexibility that was once offered is not a real thing, though I wish that it was, and I think that the Government should do better. Tēnā tātou.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee by majority be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendments agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2).
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the House is in committee on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). We come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 9, “Amendments to principal Act”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re now in the committee stage of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2), and I’d just like to start by recapping some of the comments made by Minister Bishop during the second reading. I’ll just acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, led by the very able Andy Foster, and all those who submitted, including individuals and industry. The vehicle industry made it clear, in its submissions to the select committee, that the current standard under market conditions is proving too stringent and will result in significant costs to consumers. We don’t want New Zealanders to be facing those burdens and those costs at a time like this, so we feel that some sensible changes need to be made.
The bill that we’re considering today is the first step in fixing that, and I think we all look forward to a constructive debate over the next 90 to 95 minutes. The bill itself has two parts. The first part amends the Land Transport Act 1998, and the second part makes consequential amendments to the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022. I thought I’d outline just the four key changes that the bill makes.
First, it gives the Minister of Transport the ability to recommend regulations that set uniform carbon dioxide targets for vehicles. This is going to be important for weight-adjusted vehicles which give heavier vehicles easier targets, at the point where they no longer feel justified. Secondly, it extends the life of the existing emissions credits from three years to four. This is a pretty sensible change, which gives importers more time to use those credits that they earn. This rewards good performance and helps further keep those costs down on everyday working New Zealanders. The third thing the bill does is it keeps the options open for importers to borrow credits from future years. That’s just a practical change that means, if they fall short one year, they can make up for the next. That avoids charges that otherwise would be passed on to consumers—again, most likely those consumers who are in the part of the market where they are seeking more affordable vehicles and can’t afford a brand new shiny $80,000 hybrid or whatever it is that those at the top end of town may be able to afford. Finally, the bill allows credit trading between new and used vehicle importers. That helps importers who don’t have enough credits from their own vehicles to offset charges, making it cheaper for them to meet the standard.
Now, that’s what the key changes to the bill are. The Government has also indicated it will introduce an Amendment Paper, and I believe that it’s sitting on the Table right now. I’ll go through the Amendment Paper now just for the sake of clarity and time. The paper does two things, and it’s been well signalled in advance, I think, to the public and to the House. First, it temporarily reduces charges for 2026 and 2027. I will just outline those for the House: for new vehicles, the top rate will drop from $67.50 to $15 per gram of carbon dioxide; for used vehicles, the top rate drops from $33.75 to $7.50 per gram of carbon dioxide. This maintains the current proportional rate for used vehicles, which is about half of the new vehicle rate.
What the lower charges will do in practice is they will substantially reduce the risk of unintended increases in vehicle prices caused by that combination of market conditions, coupled with the standard’s current settings. Those charges will return to current levels on 1 January 2028. What it does is it provides a little bit of breathing space and time for importers, for industry, and for purchasers of both new and used imports to limit the costs being placed on them at this time.
The second thing the Amendment Paper does is it extends the expiry dates for those credits that were earned in 2023. No credits will expire before 31 December 2028. This gives credit holders with credits from 2023 an extra year to use or sell them at a market rate. Basically, it’s a one-year extension. This is important because those lower charges mean lower prices for credits, because the charges effectively cap the price for which credits will be traded. Without this fix, credit holders would lose out. Officials have done some work, and they estimate that the temporary changes will reduce projected fuel savings by about $115 million. That is offset by avoiding an estimated $264 million in net charges that could be passed on to consumers in higher vehicle prices.
Projected emissions reductions will fall by 38 kilotons, but this won’t affect our ability to meet the second emissions budget or the sufficiency of the second emissions reduction plan, because, of course, the emissions trading scheme (ETS) is a contained cap system. When there are fewer emissions taking place in one area, they are, obviously, offset by the ability to reduce in other areas. When emissions reductions do take place in, say, the vehicle industry, that means there are fewer carbon credits available in other industries, so the capped nature of the ETS means that, on a net basis, emissions reductions won’t change.
I think this amendment is about striking a fairer balance, supports New Zealanders upgrading to newer vehicles, which always cost less to run, supports our climate goals while ensuring the Clean Vehicle Standard remains practical, achievable, and equitable for both importers and consumers. It’s a practical step forward.
Now, I will take the opportunity in the four minutes for this call, before we move on to questions around Part 1, just to address some of the initial amendments lodged by Arena Williams. Quite a few of them are to do with Part 1. I thought I’d indicate that, at this stage, having had a good look through over the past hour or so, the Government doesn’t intend to support those amendments. I can take the committee through most of them to indicate why, just so that we don’t spend too much time litigating amendments that won’t be supported. For example, the very first amendment to Clause 7 is an amendment which proposes to replace “Clean Vehicle Standard” with “foregone revenue from the vehicle industry”. I’m not sure if that’s a serious attempt at an amendment, but we won’t be supporting it.
The second amendment on this one is an amendment to clause 7. It proposes to replace “standard” with “indefinite postponement”. We don’t think that’s a serious attempt to provide a valuable amendment to the bill. We won’t be supporting it. There are some other amendments which extend out some time frames. For example, there’s a further amendment to delete the entire clause 4(1). We don’t agree with that. We think those clauses are vital to the operations of the bill. There is a further amendment in and around, again, clause 4(1) to insert, before the full stop, and replace “with any measure relevant to Government policy to reduce emissions in relation to vehicle weights”. We don’t support that amendment, nor do we support the other amendments from Arena Williams around clauses 4(1) as well.
There are some amendments to do with the title and commencement clauses, which we’ll get to at that part of the debate, that don’t appear to be serious attempts and are mere criticisms of the bill. There is a further one, towards the end of the Table, that has quite technical adjustments that I think the member is, in good faith, trying to somewhat improve the bill, but we think the bill’s in a good space, and we won’t be supporting those amendments at this stage. With that, I will take my seat and take questions.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): While that was an admirable attempt by the Minister to get his retaliation in first on these amendments, that won’t curtail a full discussion of those amendments.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana and good morning, Mr Chair. Thank you for that clarification. I know my colleague Arena Williams, on behalf of the Labour Party, has lodged a number of amendments, and I’m sure that she would appreciate the opportunity, along with colleagues, to sort of work through those.
I want to just make some brief sort of top-level comments. We do not support this bill, but we do see this as the opportunity, given that we’ve just come straight from the second reading into the committee of the whole House stage, to scrutinise the clauses in Part 1 and beyond and to put to the Minister questions related to why some changes should perhaps be considered or not. While it’s disappointing that the Minister has indicated that the Government’s position at this stage is that they don’t support those amendments, that should not, in our view, curtail the opportunity for the Opposition to still explain why it is that we think that those amendments should be considered. It wouldn’t be the first time, of course, that Governments have changed their mind over the course of a committee of the whole House stage. The other thing of note is that the Minister’s Amendment Paper 444, in its form as presented to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, was not made available—I mean, Amendment Papers are not made available to the select committee, but the specifics of it were not something that was reflected in the select committee’s report, so we do want to take an opportunity to look at that.
Last night, I did indicate to the Minister that I had a question that I was going to raise in the committee of the whole House stage, and it is about the regulatory impact statement (RIS) that has been uplifted by members from the Table. It is clear to us that this RIS seems to be what was relied on when bill (No 1) made its way through the House. My first question to the Minister is: what is the reason as to why the regulatory impact statement that is currently on the Table—and I’ve just gone and had a look, and it still is the same one that we picked up last night—seems to relate to a bill that was being progressed previously through the Parliament? Surely members can rely on getting information that is more up to date, and, when looking at the bill that’s currently before us, what is the impact of this bill.
The reason as to why members would be familiar with the RIS previously is because we did have an opportunity to speak with the former Minister of Transport around what he relied on in terms of bringing bill (No 1) to the House. The RIS that’s currently on the Table identifies that, actually, only industry participants were consulted with. Now, we know that we had a select committee opportunity where we heard from more than just those individuals, but it does signal that, actually, this is a bill that perhaps hasn’t changed in terms of the Government’s focus around it being fairly blinkered. The question to the Minister is: can he just step us through the rationale for the RIS that’s currently on the Table and how that relates to the bill that’s currently before us right now? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that what is available actually takes note of the fact that there has been a passage of time. The reason why this bill is (No 2) is because the Parliament turned its mind to this issue last year, and the information that’s currently before us in terms of what is the impact of this step that’s being taken—and these are not insignificant steps that are being taken. They will have an impact.
My first question is a fairly basic one, really, and it’s around the regulatory impact statement, because, as members know, when it comes to an opportunity to examine things, often we rely on that. It’s not uncommon for regulatory impact statements to be made available throughout the whole range of a bill, but I do think it is a little bit unusual and perhaps rare that a regulatory impact statement for a bill that the Parliament has already considered and has already passed is seen as a justification as to looking at what the impacts in regulation are for this.
Arena Williams: Exactly. The rates are all different.
TANGI UTIKERE: The member is right—the proposed rates that are being proposed by the Government are different. They are lower rates; they have different impacts. I would suggest to the Minister that the Minister cannot simply say, “Well, no, it’s a similar sort of situation.” When people pay less, there are impacts; when people pay more, there are impacts. Even when people pay the same amount, given the passage of time, there might be impacts. That is the first question to the Minister.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m not sure which clause that question relates to, but I’m advised that the updated regulatory impact statement is on the ministry’s website and—
Tangi Utikere: Why is not here?
Hon JAMES MEAGER: If the member wants to give me more than 3½ seconds to answer his question, I’ll give it a really good crack for him. I’m advised that the correct versions are currently being printed on paper with ink and are on their way down for the member to read with interest.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Chair. My colleague Tangi Utikere and I have a number of questions about the policy intentions of the Government, because that has not been made clear. I think the Minister is referring to a two-page document called the short-form supplementary departmental disclosure document, which the simple contributions from officials here are, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no”—end. I’m not sure whether that seeks to address the points my colleague has raised, but we hope that the Minister will engage with this in good faith or else it will be a very long day from here.
My first question about the Government’s policy intentions around this is: how much revenue is foregone by the Government because of this decision? Is it the full $264 million that would have otherwise been raised? Does he consider the $264 million to be a tax cut for car importers; and, if so, how did he consider the different revenue-raising options around this? There would have been some other options that he could have taken. Perhaps he considered the other options available to him, like better funding for rural roads. Rural communities around New Zealand would benefit from $264 million applied to the fixing of rural roads. That was something that the Government campaigned upon, particularly around the fixing of potholes. How many potholes could the Minister fix with $264 million raised from this policy, and why was it better to return that to car importers instead of fixing rural roads?
Did the Minister considering spending the $264 million foregone by this policy decision on public transport? How many young people would have benefited from a $264 million contribution to, say, subsidised public transport, which was the policy of the previous Government, when $264 million would be applied to, say, bus routes to children who have missed out on their school bus routes around the country, particularly in rural areas? How many children would have benefited from $264 million applied to those bus routes which they have now missed out on under this Government? What were the policy choices that the Government considered, other than giving a $264 million tax break to car importers?
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll remind the member Arena Williams what I literally just said in my answer before, which is that the updated version of the regulatory impact statement is on its way and is available online as well. I’ll get—
Tangi Utikere: On its way?
Hon JAMES MEAGER: Again, more than 3½ seconds, Mr Utikere, and I’ll try my best to answer your questions, but if you interject after every time I try and answer, it’s not going to get us very far.
In terms of the questions that are around revenue, I’ll get the officials to provide some clear advice on that.
Is it a tax cut for the industry? No, it’s not—that’s an easy one.
Do we need better funding for rural roads? Well, compared to, say, the funding in the period from 2017 to 2023, I think absolutely.
How much money could be spent on fixing potholes? Quite a lot. This Government has invested, I think, from the top of my mind, half a billion dollars in pothole maintenance and pothole prevention, and have fixed a heck of a lot more potholes in and around the rural roads of mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury then were done, say, over a period from 2017 to 2023.
How many young people could benefit from public transport? Well, in mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury, in parts of the world where rural people live, not many, because we live in far-flung destinations where we rely on, predominantly, a lot of second-hand vehicles. So if you’re a farm kid and you’re looking to try and get to school or go to your after-school job, you rely quite heavily on second-hand vehicles, and you rely on the fact that those second-hand vehicles are affordable, because you already face very large barriers as being from an isolated rural community.
I think it’s important that everyone in Parliament should support whatever we can to reduce the costs on all rural young people so that they can have the best opportunity for success, and the best opportunity to access the resources and services that are available quite readily to people who live in high-density urban areas. But, unfortunately, because rural folk are out there doing the mahi, growing the grain, feeding the cattle, building our exports, and doing the hard slog at 4 a.m. in the morning in the dairy sheds, they have to do that out in the countryside. So the best thing we can do to support young people out in the regions is to support this policy, reduce the cost of their vehicles, and give them the best chance at success.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Chair. This my first call in this part of the committee of the whole House stage debate. I just wanted to highlight that this bill did not go through the full select committee process that it could have, and that was because of a decision by Government members to respond to a Minister’s request to wrap up the bill early and bring it back to the House. Now, we’re considering an Amendment Paper that is a substantive policy change that was only tabled late last night, and now it’s going through in urgency—so I think this debate is one where the Opposition does have to be able to ask a reasonable amount of questions about the policy intent of the bill.
I’m going to start with asking the Minister which industry players did they consult with in the making of this bill; and, particularly, the Minister’s Amendment Paper 444, which inserts a new clause 5A. My specific question, because the Minister in the second reading speech referred to the Motor Industry Association (MIA) and the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association (VIA), who are broad representatives of the industry, but I’m wondering if the Ministry officials and the Government consulted some of the car companies, independently, that are bringing in zero-emissions vehicles, like BYD, Tesla, and I also was wondering if there was any specific consultation with Toyota.
The reason I ask this question is because MIA has to represent a broad range of players in the vehicle industry, and there will be some players that are particularly advantaged by this policy change and others that, we could say, are disadvantaged. The ones that are disadvantaged are the ones that are bringing in zero-emissions vehicles or who have done a lot of work, like Toyota, to actually be able to meet the targets. I’m just interested to know if the consultation was limited to broad representatives of the industry or whether they took into account the impacts on those companies that are actually doing the important work of bringing in the zero-emissions vehicles and the low-emissions vehicles, and what impact that would have on them.
One other question, because there’s been a recent development this year of BYD bringing in fully electric vehicles under $30,000 in New Zealand. I wonder if—you’re hearing from the Minister and the Government, and certainly the Transport and Infrastructure Committee is hearing from certain players in the industry claiming that cars are going to be less affordable, but of course they’re not considering the fact that that’s only the polluting cars and we are getting more and more affordable options on the low emissions. So is this change really necessary?
Finally, the Minister and Government MPs, during the debate, have referred to alignment with other countries, particularly Australia, and I’m wondering if the Minister can tell us what the equivalent penalties are or would be in Australia, and how that compares to the fees that are laid out on Amendment Paper 444 in new clause 5A, subsections 2(b)(i) and (ii). So it’s from 1 January 2026 to 1 January 2028—the fees that are proposed in that section, and the ones in new clause 8A, also on the Amendment Paper; same issue, it’s subsections 2(b)(i) and (ii): how will this align us with Australia? What will the difference be between the penalties faced by importers who are bringing in higher emissions vehicles above the target in Australia, and how will that compare to New Zealand’s should this Amendment Paper 444 be passed today?
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): A couple of questions in that one. So: who in the industry was consulted with? I think as Minister Bishop outlined in his second reading speech, yes, the Motor Industry Association (MIA) and the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association were both consulted. Of course, MIA represent BYD and Toyota. Every industry player also had the opportunity to submit during the select committee process and have their views heard and incorporated into the departmental report. I’m advised that no individual car companies were consulted, as that could be seen to confer specific market advantage during consultation so it wouldn’t have been appropriate.
As to the question around why the proposal has been brought back now, it is because the changes are required to be in place by 1 January 2026, and due to the mechanisms or the process of legislation in the House, we have to have this done by Christmas, effectively, so that’s why it’s back in the time that it’s back.
I’ll get some advice on the penalties from the officials. The previous speaker, Julie Anne Genter, asked some questions around—I think she read out a bit of paper and then she said the word “No” about 12 times—I think she’s having flashbacks. I think the issue is that she was reading the departmental disclosure statement and not the regulatory impact statement.
In terms of the question around how much revenue is foregone by the Crown, well, the way the system works is that the charges are placed—well, they’re not placed into the National Land Transport Fund; they’re held in accounts to offset the credits. So that’s the answer to that question there. Oh, and I’ve actually had a last-minute run of advice provided to me. I’m advised, in terms of the question around penalties, the equivalent Australian penalty is AUD$50. Ours will be NZD$15. Apparently, it’s $50 imposed by the regulatory and $100 imposed by the courts for Australia. So that’s the answer to that one there.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I thank the Associate Minister of Transport for his answers, but there is not a lot of clarity that’s been given around the information that’s currently available before the committee. Members, particularly when we’re in urgency, rely on what is on the Table to inform the contributions that are to be made in terms of the passage of the legislation. My colleague Arena Williams has referenced papers that are on the Table, because that’s all that’s there. The Minister talks about this regulatory impact statement (RIS), but where is it? The only—oh, he holds it up. Well, is that the RIS that’s dated finalised 25 June 2024? That’s the first question for the Minister, because if it is, then that is the RIS that is being used for bill No. 2. The Minister is handing it to—is it the one that’s 25 June 2024? I mean, that would be the interesting thing because that’s the one that we’ve got there. If not, which one is he referring to? His has got a watermark stamped all over it—not something that we’ve got this morning. So those are real issues around what’s available to the committee as we’ve started this process.
Dr Tracey McLellan: Shoddy.
TANGI UTIKERE: It is shoddy indeed.
The question around the policy intent and objectives—and the Minister has talked about potholes, he’s talked about rural buses, he’s talked about public transport, he hasn’t talked about road cones, but probably that’s something the Government don’t want to talk about at the moment. But this policy intent is really, really important, because he’s talked about rural bus routes. The $264 million could be utilised in other areas. Why is it that the Government are choosing not to do that?
I see that the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, is here in the Chamber right now. Perhaps she would like to take a call around whether she thinks that the $264 million not being spent on the rural bus routes, that she cancelled in places like Ashurst and also Rongotea and other places, could be better utilised. I hazard a guess to suggest that she won’t because she’s remained silent in that space. But this is about prioritisation: the revenue that’s been generated, the $264 million, could be spent in other areas. So, Minister Stanford, are you prepared to take a call and indicate whether you think that, actually, this is good money spent or saved, and that maybe it could be used to save school bus routes that you cancelled?
Now, these are real considerations, and I think, in terms of bringing this back to the policy objectives and intent of this bill, members of this—it is not unreasonable to expect that when this committee stage commences and the Associate Minister of Transport refers to a regulatory impact statement, that we have it.
Arena Williams: Oh, he thinks he’s got a new one; he doesn’t.
TANGI UTIKERE: I think the Minister has a new one. Now, prior to commencing—[Member is handed a document by Chamber staff]. Oh look, we’ve suddenly got one—thank you, sir—for this. Now, this in itself creates a little bit of an issue because we now have a regulatory impact statement that has a date of 4 November 2025. Why was this not put on the Table?
Steve Abel: What’s the date today?
TANGI UTIKERE: Well, the date today according to the clock is 18 November—well, actually, most people in New Zealand think it’s the 20th—because we’re in urgency, one of the quirks of this place.
But my question to the Minister is: when this particular bill came into committee, why was the RIS that we think the Minister is relying on, dated 4 November 2025—why was that not included for members to be able to collect? Now, we accept that in urgency there are some things that have to be rushed through. We also expect that when a Minister stands up to talk about his overall objectives and what he wants to achieve in progressing this on behalf of the Government, the information available to members to scrutinise, to question, to hold the Government to account, and to come up with some other possible changes—that the information to be relied upon is also there. So that is the first question for the Minister.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Well, I think the member needs to go back and do his history, because when the Labour Party introduced this policy—whenever it was, back in the last Government—they were quite clear that it was not intended to raise revenue, and it’s not designed to raise revenue. I don’t know where Mr Utikere’s magicking up his $264 million from, but it’s not from this policy, because that’s not how the policy works. If he wants to go and campaign on borrowing another $264 million, he’s welcome to do that.
Of course, they didn’t do too much in the way of supporting rural New Zealand and rural schools under the previous Government. If he wants to talk about school bus routes, I suggest he has a sit down with Chris Hipkins, who can take him through the process that Mr Hipkins undertook as Minister of Education with school bus route reviews. He might find quite an uncomfortable conversation with Mr Hipkins. In the previous Government, when a few reviews were under way, then, all of a sudden, an election came around and, oh, what happens? We might just softly, softly put that on hold until it kicks off under way. Maybe Mr Utikere can get his questions from a previous Minister of Education rather than the one that’s in the House, who’s not responsible for anything under this bill—because, under this bill, we’re talking about the clean vehicle standard, which is quite a long way away from issues like rural bus routes and road cones. If the member wants to get into a conversation around road cones, he should go for a trip up to Auckland and have a chat to Mayor Wayne Brown, who is a strong advocate for eliminating most of those.
In terms of the regulatory impact statement (RIS), I’m glad Mr Utikere didn’t even need to stretch his legs and had the RIS hand-delivered to him. He is very welcome to peruse that. Of course, the RIS has been available online for quite a while now. I’m sure he’s a very busy man, and he’s very diligent, and maybe accessing it online wasn’t a high priority—but he’s got it now. It’s on the Table. He can have a great look through it. Of course, the RIS isn’t part of the bill. When you’re scrutinising legislation in the committee of the whole House stage, we are supposed to talk about what’s actually in the bill, so I’m looking forward to that.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just before I take the next call—again, both parties are certainly broadening the scope of this discussion, and it won’t continue to widen. We just need to now bring it back to something resembling what’s in front of us here.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister Meager, for what can only be described as a somewhat lacklustre response to some questions around policy intent. I understand the position that the Minister’s in and can feel somewhat sympathetic that, you know, when one inherits the role of trying to sell something without all the relevant information provided to the Opposition, there’s not a lot to go on. But I don’t think that we’ve received sufficient clarity about the policy intent and those policy objectives that sort of underpin this bill, hence the fact that the responses to date have been somewhat flat, for lack of a better word.
But the Minister in his previous response, in an attempt to perhaps draw on some local knowledge and paint this bill in so far as how it might affect rural communities, raised a couple of points that I just do think are worth going back to, because I do sympathise with the concept of affordability. Certainly on this side of the House, that is our number one concern at the moment, the pressures that people are facing and that households are facing in terms of household bills, and fuel costs are certainly one of those that are driving the cost of living crisis, the real cost of living pinch points that many families are feeling at the moment.
So whilst the Minister talked about having affordable cars in rural areas—and, again, forgive me Minister; I haven’t had a chance to have a look through this regulatory impact statement properly. One can only have a quick skim read whilst listening to other people talking; it’s a little bit distracting, but the policy intent that the Minister has laid out in his response to the first three or four questions this morning hasn’t really elucidated on what the thinking was behind or what the analysis was behind futureproofing some of those affordability considerations. It’s one thing to be able to afford a second-hand car in today’s market, but we also have a responsibility to ensure that that second-hand market updates and becomes cleaner but also more cost-efficient and cheaper to purchase those cars. We really run the risk of being the dumping ground for an old, expensive fleet of cars if these types of measures continue.
I’m sure—absolutely positive—that the Minister would have considered those considerations or made those considerations whilst working out what the policy objective here is. On the surface, without that information, if the Minister’s not going to provide a little bit of oomph with regard to that policy intent, we can only assume, and we’re left to assume, that it’s just a quick and cheap, cheap and cheerful, cheap and dirty method by which to keep importers happy in the short term and leave this looming question for someone else to resolve. So I would appreciate if the Minister could just provide a little bit more background as a starting point for us to have a much clearer understanding of what the policy intent is.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thanks, Madam Chair. I’ll just round-off the regulatory impact statement (RIS) questions. Of course, if members had looked at the Amendment Paper that has been on the Table for quite a while, on the back of the Amendment Paper is a little URL, and with the URL is a link to the RIS. I’m sure that may have skipped members’ attentions because there’s a lot of paper to read, but if members pick up the papers and read them thoroughly, they will find everything that they need. Of course, there is no requirement under the Standing Orders to table a RIS, and I look forward to that suggestion being made to the Standing Orders Committee by the Labour Party in a supplementary submission—
Hon Rachel Brooking: This is an all-stages change. It hasn’t been to a select committee. No need to be so rude.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: Because it probably is quite good practice. The member interjects that this is an all-stages change—
Hon Rachel Brooking: I apologise. It’s a significant change at this stage.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: It’s actually not. We’ve just come from a select committee and had the second reading. The member also interjects and says, “It’s a significant amendment.” Well, that’s correct—but the whole point of the committee of the whole House stage is to be able to provide a chance for the committee of the whole House to make amendments to the bill. I’m not sure how long this practice has been in place, but we’re about hundreds of years under the Westminster system. Again, if the member is not happy with that programme and that system, she can make a submission to the very receptive and, I thought, polite Standing Orders Committee, who are actively considering how the House runs at the moment.
Anyway, on to Tracey McLellan’s very, very good, I thought, question around the policy intent—although she was quite disparaging of my attempts to answer in the first instance. I thought that was quite unfair. Her question around the policy intent—what is the intent of the policy? Well, without wanting to expand the scope of the debate too far, and paraphrasing in my own limited mental capacity at this time of the morning, the intent of the policy is to reduce the costs of vehicles imposed by the previous Government on everyday working Kiwis. That’s the intent of the policy, and I think, once we pass it in the next 45 minutes, it will be implemented well and truly.
STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I presume, Madam Chair, that you may have been watching from outside the Chamber, but I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that the regulatory impact statement (RIS) has just been introduced to the Chamber.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yes, it’s just been introduced to the Chamber, but I understand it's been in a link and it's been available for a period of time.
STEVE ABEL: We’re in urgency, obviously, dealing with a huge volume of legislation and there is rightly an expectation that something like this RIS would be available to us in physical form in the Chamber.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): My understanding is that it has been available. It hasn’t been on the Table but we also have had a response to this issue so I feel like it has been covered off. It may not be ideal from some of the members’ perspectives, but we can't carry on debating that issue all morning because it's been covered off by the Minister.
STEVE ABEL: Can I just—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): You can talk to the RIS—
STEVE ABEL: OK, thank you.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): —but how it got here and why it’s here has been explained.
STEVE ABEL: Actually, you’ve just clarified what I really was wanting to ask. Given that our ability to talk to the RIS would be useful—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yes, you can talk to the RIS.
STEVE ABEL: —and the Minister made a point of the RIS being the significant part of the case for the Government’s policy position. I’m just wanting to clarify specifically in terms of the policy objectives: given the essential purpose of the legislation and that its original intent was to assist in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, how did the Government evaluate the impact that this policy would have on targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which is covered in section 175, which is being repealed? I note that in the RIS on page 7 one of the more striking graphs shows the average carbon dioxide performance of all new vehicle types in a blue line and the target in a red line, and at the point where the Clean Car Discount was cancelled, those lines crossover and the emissions profile of the vehicles falls below the targets. How did the Government take into account, with this new amendment, the impact on our overall targets around carbon dioxide emissions?
My second question is: in terms of our balance of payments and the cost to New Zealanders, if the Minister and the Government are concerned about the cost of vehicular transport to New Zealanders, to what extent did the Minister evaluate the impact of our dependency as a nation on the whole on petroleum imports? To clarify this, looking at the latest economic fact sheet for the week ending 14 November, currently our three largest goods imports in the year to September 2025 are mechanical machinery at $11.6 billion, followed closely by petroleum end products at $9.6 billion, followed by vehicles at $8.7 billion. So of our three biggest goods imports, two of them are petroleum and vehicles.
Did the Minister or the Government take into account the extent to which we are subject to the vicissitudes of the overseas price of oil and petroleum products? We have never produced domestic oil that has been consumed by vehicles in this country. Did he consider the extent to which he is locking New Zealanders into an ongoing dependence on that expensive imported petroleum, instead of moving our fleet to electric vehicles that are fuelled by domestically produced electricity, which is 85 percent—or even 95 percent on a good day—from renewable sources, not from fossil fuel sources?
To what extent has he evaluated the opportunity that is lost in decarbonising our transport system and the real cost-savings that that means for New Zealanders at a personal level, a household level, but also for us as a whole country, because if more of our transport fleet is electrified, then more of the fuel by which our nation is powered is domestically generated renewable energy.
The other question I have is: how much of this new fleet and second-hand fleet are actually the practical vehicles that Grant McCallum refers to—the utes that people drive up through the Brynderwyns to Northland—and are actually impacted versus what I colloquially call the sort of urban wanker-mobile fleet, which is a big problem we have in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland. We have these monstrous Raptor/Rhino vehicles that are more dangerous, because if they hit somebody it’s fatal, and they are also obnoxious in terms of the space they take up on the road visibly. They impact on people driving normal vehicles. What sort of vehicles does this benefit in terms of those classes of cars that are actually a necessity to have in rural area? But I can assure you, having gone to the High Country in the South Island last year, that farmers are not driving those Raptors and Rhinos; they’re driving the practical Toyota Hilux and the like. How much of the impacted fleet is those overpriced, oversized urban wanker-mobiles versus the actual tradie, farmer, practical vehicles that no one contests that people need and use? Thank you.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): I’m not sure if the Greens are opening up an Eastern Front against urban bankers or whatever it was that Mr Abel said—I didn't quite hear them properly from back there—coupled with their other front against the rural part of the economy. I'm sure there's probably someone left for them to not have a war with, in the coming future.
But I'll backtrack in terms of the reverse order of questions. If Mr Abel doesn't like the Rhinos or whatever it is he called them rolling around Auckland, some good news is on the way. One is that he doesn't have to buy them. Two is that, with the new time-of-use congestion charging legislation coming into place, individuals will be able to make better decisions about whether or not they do take those vehicles in and around parts of Auckland that Mr Abel doesn't want to see them in. Thirdly, on that, with the shift from road-user charges to all vehicles—and I'm assuming that some of these obnoxious gas-guzzling monstrosities that Mr Abel doesn't like will be both diesel- and petrol-fuelled—they will be paying more for the impact on the roads that they do have. All of those initiatives by the current Government are actually favourable to Mr Abel's point and, hopefully, will be supported by him.
If we then go to the issue around what was looked at in terms of the impact on the balance of payments: I’m advised that it was looked at generally in terms of the impact of lost fuel savings, and as I outlined at the start, this is approximately $115 million, but that is more than offset by the $264 million in charges that will not be passed on to hard-working everyday New Zealanders who get up every morning, get into their vehicle, clean our offices, stack our supermarket shelves, work in our pack-houses, and generally just want to get on with life in their second-hand, low-cost vehicle—because if you come from a part of the world where, like some of us, we didn't have a car until we were seven or eight, you're very grateful just to have any vehicle. To avoid lumping on an additional $5,000 or $6,000 cost on those vehicles, I think it's a good thing to support working New Zealanders. This is something that everyone in the House should be supporting.
Now, Mr Abel talked about reliance on fuel and gas. Well, then I look forward to him supporting our efforts to maintain our domestic fuel and energy security in terms of repealing the oil and gas ban: investing in liquified natural gas; making sure that we have greater fuel security and storage requirements at our airports and in our fuel facilities; making sure that we have good import controls for our fuel import terminals, including the one down in PrimePort Timaru, which is a great source of opportunity and employment for the people of South Canterbury. Of course, I look forward to the support of the fast-track legislation and Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, which will fundamentally revolutionise how we can create, produce, invest in renewable energy all across the country, whether that is data centres fuelled by solar power down in Southland, or whether that is the many, many offerings of solar farms in and around the Mackenzie Country, which take a discreet, packaged-away parcel of land and produce solar energy that could generate power for tens of thousands of homes if it weren't for the prohibitive framework of the current RMA.
So I very much look forward to the Greens supporting all efforts to increase the amount of renewable energy up and down New Zealand, whether that is solar, whether it is hydro, whether it is tidal or whether that is offshore wind, whether that is bioenergy, geothermal—whatever it takes, I look forward to that support over the coming years.
Now, there are a couple of other questions that were outstanding that I've just had put in front of me. A question from a while back: was the analysis behind this futureproof? Of course it was, because these measures aren’t temporary. The current charges return on 1 January 2028 and, in the meantime, the Ministry of Transport is undertaking a full review of the scheme, with a report to Cabinet due in 2026.
What is the impact on the targets? Well, we all know, and we've had this traversed many, many times in this House: vehicle emissions are contained within the emissions trading scheme (ETS). The ETS is a closed-cap system; it has a sinking lid on emissions over time. Where emissions drop in one sector, they are offset by emissions in the other sector. Because there are caps, if industries decide to exceed their emissions, they either have to pay for them through New Zealand Units or they have to pay a very significant fine. It is unlawful to breach the emissions caps, so in terms of emissions reductions, whether you reduce them in the vehicle industry sector—whether you reduce them in waste energy, whether you reduce them in heat energy processes—it is a cap system, so when you push down here, it pushes up here. But overall, on a net basis, it won't make a difference.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to call Arena Williams. I’m looking for specific clauses and specific questions now please, rather than speeches. That’s not a reflection on this member. It’s just that we’re getting—it’s less than two pages this particular part of the bill and I’d just like to see people referring to the clauses and having questions around the clauses.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome to the Chair. You can tell that people are exercised about this. We’re also into, I think, the twentieth hour of urgency, so there is a little bit of tetchiness in the Chamber—but let’s change that. Let’s get enthusiastic about this bill.
I want to speak to the Minister’s Amendment Paper 444 now. This is the guts of the policy here. This is the clause that enables the $264 million tax cut to car dealers. I want to ask him about his choices around how big that cut would be. The options that I understand he’s considered are the status quo, which would leave it at $67; halving that to $33 as the top charge; halving that again to $15, which is the option he’s gone for here; or zeroing it. The options that I’m really asking about are $30, $15, and zero, because, as I understand it, the Government’s policy intention could have landed on any of those and, really, what I’m asking here is about the trade-offs between those options.
If the top charge were double what it is now, I want to understand how the industry would have been impacted by that and the kind of vehicle mix that we would have seen being imported. Given that there is a lower consumer demand at the moment for electric vehicles (EVs), did that play into the choice between $15 and $30 being the top charge and the expectation of economic conditions either improving or stabilising? That’s not information that was made available to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, because the committee didn’t consider the difference between say $30 as the top charge and $15 as the top charge.
The reason I raise this is because we saw a very open-minded and collegial discussion of the different road-user charges that applied to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in that committee when the Government was considering a bill very similar to this a year and a half ago. The committee actually arrived at a different rate that would be set there—at, essentially, halving what was the original rate but doubling what the Government’s suggestion would have been. A committee of like-minded and reasonable MPs in that room came to a different view of the appropriate rate there, so I wonder whether the committee would consider a movement up to that rate of $30 that, in my view, trying to think through this reasonably, would also reach the Government’s policy intention.
A particular part of the Government’s policy intention that I want to draw the committee’s attention to is in the regulatory impact statement, on page 3. It says that the best way to address that demand issue created by economic conditions at the moment, and by the demand for EVs being low, is to make the settings more flexible—that’s the one-year extension. We will return to the one-year extension, but that’s not in Amendment Paper 444. It also says, “to adjust the targets to levels that are achievable and do not result in high levels of net charge.” That $30 top rate would do that. It would also mean that there was a greater level of stability within the system.
Stability is a stated goal of the Government in this policy. It would have been in line with the expectations of the industry, and that stability goal is really important here—particularly for the relative market share of some small importers as opposed to some larger importers. The Minister will note that I have made a number of amendments that are particularly designed to protect the interests of those smaller importers. What I think we would all agree around the House is that we don’t want to have the unintended impact, by setting the rate where it is currently, of disadvantaging smaller importers over the larger ones.
You would have heard, Madam Chair, in an answer the Minister gave to my colleague Steve Abel, that the Minister didn’t consult with particular importers. Any given importer had the chance, he said, to be able to present to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but they didn’t make that information available to the select committee, because it is sensitive to them. As I understand it, the Minister will well know that smaller importers are at the sharp end of this change; there will be some market impacts for them that make it harder for them to be profitable relative to their larger counterparts. I want to test with him whether that $30 top rate charge is an appropriate charge, and whether he also considered a zero rate and what that would have meant for the relative market share of larger and smaller importers.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just checking whether my colleague Tom Rutherford had an insightful contribution to make, and I thought I’d give him a crack. Just in terms of a couple of prior questions I just wanted to tick off, there was a question previously around carbon dioxide emissions, and I just wanted to—for completeness, because I did sit down before and didn’t quite get to finish that off. An emissions trading scheme (ETS) is always a difficult system, but it’s a closed system. There are a certain number of carbon credits available, so, for example, I’m advised that this policy may well result in 83 kilotons of emissions additional into this particular industry. Now, of course that is the equivalent—if my maths is right—to 83,000 New Zealand Units (NZUs). Those are, therefore, NZUs available for other emitters to purchase.
It’s a closed system. You’ve got a capped number of emissions that you can emit over a five-year period, the carbon budgets. If Governments want to go harder and faster on that, they can. They can change those caps. If they want to reduce emissions more quickly by reducing the number of emissions in the system, they can do that. They can buy credits; they can shred them. That all has trade-offs and balances because that drives up the cost of carbon credits. They are the trade-offs that we’re all talking about here.
This goes to the member’s point around what the options were and what the top charge could be. Well, if you double the top charge, you’re just doubling what the importers have to pay and pass on to their customers. It’s all a trade-off in terms of how you make the system continue to work as best it can in a difficult and, we think, relatively unworkable system. You’ve still got to make the system work by having some sort of credit and penalty, but, at the same time, if you leave it up to where it was, you’re going to be hitting consumers with an incredibly high cost—people who, generally, are not in a position to pay that cost. In terms of a system that’s supposed to be supporting working New Zealanders and the people who are out there actually generating the income that we need to pay for our nurses and our doctors and our schools and our hospitals—we should be supporting them, and we shouldn’t be putting these costs on them, particularly in a situation where the ETS does most of the heavy lifting.
That’s essentially the answer as to why the rate is set as it is. Look, there are arguments both ways—whether it should be higher or whether it should be lower—depending on what your value set is and what your priorities are, but the Government has set them at the rate suggested in the Amendment Paper. We think $15 provides meaningful relief for importers and consumers while still incentivising compliance with the standard. I’m also advised that the Motor Industry Association were the ones that proposed $15 as a balance to balance the interest of their members who held excess credits against those who face net charges. It’s a relatively good middle point that we think hits the right spot. If members are interested, there is more analysis in the regulatory impact statement on pages 13 to 14.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We’re getting very close. I’m going to take a call from Tangi Utikere; I see he’s been writing furiously during the course of this last little section. But I will indicate that we are getting very close.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister some questions in relation to clause 4. This is the clause that, basically, removes the ability for regulations to be targeted, around the vehicle weights being adjusted. The proposal from the Government is to basically cancel it so there would not be any criteria in that particular space.
My first question for the Minister is: given that heavier vehicles emit more carbon dioxide, why is it that there hasn’t been, really, any thought around a gradual approach to weight adjustment—i.e., not just a blanket ruling-out but maybe some sort of a transitional phase dependent on weights? Now, that might be, perhaps, more difficult if it’s in the lighter fleet, as opposed to not, but given that the focus of this is around taking our climate change responsibility seriously, what consideration, if any, was given to having some sort of gradual approach to that? The other part of that, of course, is what modelling supports the change and whether any specific advice around that was sought.
There is a tabled amendment in my colleague Arena Williams’ name that has not been referred to in the committee this morning. I actually think one of the interesting things, if the Government is open to actually looking at it, is what the impact of these changes is going to be. Whilst the Minister and the Government have said that there will be a review opportunity—that that might be at some stage in the future—there is really no scope defined around what that looks like. What Ms Williams’ tabled amendment very clearly does is seek to insert a new clause 4A, which she suggests is titled “Annual impact assessment of clean vehicle standard”. Now, this would be a new clause that would, effectively, require the Minister—and there is no time frame, but there kind of is; I mean, it’s about practicality, right? It’s around “as soon as practicable” after the end of a financial year, which does make sense in terms of aligning that with Budgets. It would require the Minister to turn their mind to preparing and publishing a report that would be required to contain a number of different aspects.
Now, we haven’t actually touched on this yet today, and they are things like, “Well, what is the actual capture of volume of used vehicles that are actually being imported into New Zealand?” This is a bill that does provide some differential between new imports and used imports. It might be all well and good to say, “Well, all that information is contained elsewhere”, but what we’re talking about here is having a centralised opportunity for the Minister, as the Government’s appointee, to present to the Parliament a form of accountability on an annual basis to cover off a few things—not just actually the volume of used vehicles.
That’s really important, because, if we’re looking at trying to shift the dial on having households move into lower-emitting vehicles, one of the key incentives for that is ensuring that the used vehicle fleet is accessible and that there are a larger number of low-emitting vehicles that form part of that fleet. Having an opportunity to annually account to the Parliament—and that paints a picture—we think is actually a good move. Alongside that, consideration around the changes in not just how old these vehicles are but the average age, worked out across the entire fleet, and specific to the light fleet.
The other two points that Ms Williams’, in her Amendment Paper, touches on is this issue of retail affordability. This is a real concern, and this is what has been driving a lot of the submissions that the select committee heard as well from importers. It’s their view that the uptake is actually, post the Government’s decision to get rid of the clean car discount, actually not serving as an incentive for people to be able to access the market. If that is the case, what metrics are there to ensure that retail affordability is something—it’s not something that we’ve actually talked about. The Minister might not think that’s a good idea. OK, that’s fine, but it would be helpful to hear from him none the less.
Of course, the final bit there is around the impact or effect that that would have specifically on Māori and Pacific communities. Why? We know that they are generally parts of our communities—and members across the House will know this themselves—that find it very difficult to be able to make sure they are a positive stat when it comes to low-emitting vehicles, because of the accessibility and the equity issues. The question to the Minister is: how does he see that ability to capture all that information in one place and to provide that through a vehicle to be accountable to the Parliament?
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): I couldn’t quite discern many questions from that, but I’ll address the one at the top around clause 4. I think the member misunderstands how the clause works. It actually allows the Minister to set a weight-adjusted rate or a uniform rate. Currently, if you just set a strict uniform weight, that would be harder for heavy vehicles to meet, and I think that was the intention of the previous Government’s policy. Clause 4 actually gives the Minister the flexibility to do one or the other, and so I think that’s what he actually wants and that’s what the clause achieves.
In terms of an amendment to require a Minister to review or report—well, as I’ve mentioned before, there is already a report due in 2026 and, as I thumb my way through many of Arena Williams’ amendments, I note that with regard to the amendment lodged at 10:50:07, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) currently already publish monthly reporting on the volume of charges and credits, and the Ministry of Transport publishes information on the volume of new registrations. If we go to 10:50:11, the Ministry of Transport publishes vehicle registrations, including both fuel types. If we go to—I’m just skipping along because the rest of them aren’t actually consistent with Government policy, so they would be rejected outright. If we go to the one at 10:50:21, all of the information sought in that quarterly publication is published monthly by the NZTA. If we go—and we’re still going; they’re not consistent with Government policy for the rest of these ones—to 10:50:25, again, that information is already published by the NZTA. Then, for the one at 10:50:28—no, that’s on the title. I thought that there was one more.
Essentially, the essence of what I’m getting to is that much of what the member has suggested or wants in her amendments is already published by various agencies, and, of course, Ministers of any stripe, any kind, any colour, or of any age or vintage can issue a report or do a review on any piece of legislation they want at any time. If they want to spend their time running through working groups and reports and reviews and things like that, then they can do that, but what we’ll do is we’ll change the legislation to make it easier for working New Zealanders to buy a car, get to work, do the job, live their life, and have a happy future.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m just going to take a question from the Hon Julie Anne Genter, the transport spokesperson for the Greens—and it will be related to a clause and a question?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Yes—thank you very much, Madam Chair. We put forward a range of tabled amendments this morning, so I just want to clarify that most of those are proposed amendments to Amendment Paper 444, which is the Minister of Transport's Amendment Paper, which, as I understand it—and maybe I'll just clarify with the Minister in the chair, James Meager—was tabled yesterday in the evening. That's my understanding. The chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee was saying that it had been around longer than that, so I'm just wondering: did the chair of the select committee get earlier access to the Amendment Paper, because we only got it last night.
But anyway, so it's specifically new clauses 5A and 8A, and we've proposed a range of changes to the fees, and so that's particularly from 1 January 2026. My question—my main question, aside from when was the Amendment Paper tabled and when did the chair get access to it—is: the Minister has repeatedly in this debate referred to this policy improving affordability of cars for low-income New Zealanders. I just wondered if the Minister had done any distributional analysis of who these changes were most likely to affect, because by my calculations, the changes in the new clause 5A in Amendment Paper 444, new subsection 2(b)(i) and (ii), what they show is that with the change in the fees, the benefit to the new vehicle industry who are bringing in polluting vehicles above the target is twice that of the used vehicle sector imports. So that means that, actually, there's a disproportionate benefit to new vehicle importers. Low-income or even medium-income New Zealanders are not buying brand new vehicles, so if the policy intent of the bill is to help those on low or medium income, I want to know: why is the change proposed in the Amendment Paper giving double the benefit, or tax break, really—penalty break—to brand new vehicle imports as opposed to second-hand vehicle imports?
Throughout the debate and throughout the regulatory impact statement, the problem that's been laid out has been focused on access to the second-hand vehicle market. We have a lot of brand new vehicles now available at affordable price points that are low-emissions or zero-emissions, therefore below the target, but there's a disproportionate benefit given to new vehicles. I just want to make this point in this debate—maybe the Minister could listen and understand the point and respond to the question—if we want to increase the supply of second-hand, low-emissions vehicles or zero-emissions vehicles—electric vehicles (EVs)—then we're not going to do it by importing second-hand vehicles directly from Japan; we're going to do it by importing more brand new EVs here and those being sold on second-hand in the market. That's how we address that issue. The way we get more second-hand, affordable EVs is by importing more brand new EVs, and this policy, this Amendment Paper, is working against that aim by encouraging and rewarding the polluting brand new vehicles industry and encouraging them to keep importing higher-emissions, brand new vehicles which will be on the road longer and mean that we're not getting those second-hand EVs in the market.
So that's my question, and would the Minister consider some of our tabled amendments to Amendment Paper 444, which we put on the Table. There's a whole range of them, in my name and in my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s name, that would go some way to ensuring that the brand new vehicle importers who are bringing in high-emissions vehicles pay the price of that.
Oh, sorry, there's one more question—I did mean to ask this earlier in the debate and I didn't get to it, which was: has the Minister got any evidence, do they have any guarantee based on these changes, that savings will be passed on to consumers? How do we know they won't just be banked by the industry so that they can make more money as opposed to bringing in lower-emissions vehicles that New Zealand desperately needs?
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have checked with the officials and I’m advised that the Amendment Paper was released at approximately 3.48 p.m. yesterday, and that includes the reference to the regulatory impact statement. Then I’m also—well, I'm not even advised of this, I can remember this. The substance or the content of the Amendment Paper was indicated by the Minister after Cabinet made their decisions on Monday, and that was, I think, reported on relatively widely at that point.
In terms of the member’s point about the best way to get more EVs—yep, you could take money from freezing workers and farmers and tradies and give it to lawyers and doctors to run around the town and their brand new Teslas. Or what you could do is you could drastically reform things like the Resource Management Act, improve our education system, improve our exports, grow our economy, lift incomes, and make sure that people have the wealth and prosperity that they need to be able to make choices in their lives so that they can afford to choose the vehicle that best suits them. So long as we are pouring costs on working New Zealanders, they are going to be the ones that are priced out of any electric vehicle market, whether that be used or new. And it will be a luxury which is the domain only of the rich and wealthy and probably of the 123 people that sit in this House. So in terms of making it easier to buy electric vehicles, the best thing you can do is make sure that you have a country which has the opportunity and growth and prosperity for all New Zealanders to have the incomes that they deserve so that they can make the choices for themselves.
Finally, in terms of the amendments that the member’s put forward, I've had a quick thumb through. Many of them don't seem to be consistent with the aims of the Government policy, so we won’t be supporting them at this stage.
Then finally, can the Minister provide any guarantee that those savings are passed on? Well, they're not savings, they are the avoidance of cost that would be passed on. So while I can't guarantee what any individual vehicle importer or operator will or won't do with the price of vehicles in their market, what I can guarantee is that the ongoing situation where there are basically no second-hand vehicles available, even under existing standards in the likes of the Japanese second-hand market means that the cost of second-hand trucks and vehicles and work vehicles has gone through the roof—to the point of $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 for some people who are just trying to buy a flatbed truck so that they can chuck your heat pump or your washing machine on and deliver it to your house so you can live a comfortable, luxurious, perfectly nice, comfortable life while they drag their butts around town every day, every week, making our lives easier. And I think that we should be proud of the work that they do.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to the Minister’s amendment inserting new clause 5A, new section 177(2), set out on Amendment Paper 444, to amend the 2026 charges to $37.50 and $75 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to the Minister’s amendment inserting new clause 5A, new section 177(2), set out on Amendment Paper 444, to amend the 2026 charges to $30 and $60 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to the Minister’s amendment to clause 6 set out on Amendment Paper 444 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to the Minister’s amendment inserting new clause 8A, new section 182(2), set out on Amendment Paper 444, to amend the 2026 charges to $30 and $60 be agreed to be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to the Minister’s amendment inserting new clause 8A, new section 182(2), set out on Amendment Paper 444, to amend the 2026 charges to $24 and $48 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 444 be agreed to 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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendment agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment deleting clause 4(1) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 4(1) replacing “(ii)” with “(iv)” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Arena Williams’ three remaining tabled amendments amending clause 4(1) are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 4(2) deleting clause 4(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 4(2) relating to targets adjusted for vehicle make and model be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(2) inserting the words “including vehicle weight and class adjusted targets” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert clause 4(3) relating to data integrity and quality be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4A to require an annual impact assessment of the standard be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4B to require monitoring and reporting on compliance and market impacts be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4C to implement an equity review of the standard is out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4D to require an annual review of clean vehicle system outcomes be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4E to require monitoring and reporting on importer participation in the system be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert a new clause 4F to require an access review relating to clean vehicle availability be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to determining weight-adjusted targets by Order in Council is out of order as being not in the correct form of legislation.
I’m just going to read out the next vote, and then I’m going to swap chairs while the Clerk is taking the vote—just so you know what’s going on.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to a quarterly summary of clean vehicle activity be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to reporting on light vehicle fleet changes be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to reporting on affordability and availability of light vehicles be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to transparency reporting on the clean vehicle credit system be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to reporting on fleet transition and vehicle market trends be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5 relating to equity and affordability reporting is out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to establishing a class of small-volume importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 6, replacing “4 years” with “3.5 years” is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
The Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to clause 6, replacing “4 years” with “2 years” is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to regulations to support small-volume importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to regulations to support low-volume importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to regulations to support occasional importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to regulations to support smaller importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 7A relating to transitional arrangements for low-volume importers be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 8(1) to delete “or a light vehicle importer who imports used vehicles” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to insert new subclause (1A) in clause 8 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to insert new subclause (2A) in clause 8 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 8(3), new section 180(3), to insert “the transferor must satisfy themselves that the transfer will not disincentivise the transferee to import clean and efficient cars and” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 8(3), new section 180(3), to insert “the transferor must be satisfied that the transfer is enabling the importation of efficient, clean light vehicles and does not have an impact on the emissions of the transferee’s vehicle fleet, and” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 8(3), new section 180(3), to replace the words after “must be” with “made on conditions set by Order in Council after 1 January 2027” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendment to clause 8(3), replacing “2 credits” with “1.5 credits” in each instance be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to insert new subclause (1A) in clause 9 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to insert new subclause (2A) in clause 9 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 9(3), new section 184(3), to insert “the transferor must satisfy themselves that the transfer will not disincentivise the transferee to import clean and efficient cars and” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 9(3), new section 184(3), to replace the words after “must be” with “made on conditions set by Order in Council after 1 January 2027” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9(3), replacing “2 credits” with “1.5 credits” in each instance be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 10 relating to the annual publication of credit system ratings be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 10 relating to an annual statement on the clean vehicle system be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 10 relating to the publication of future settings for the clean vehicle system be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 10 relating to an annual outline of clean vehicle system changes be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 11 relating to the quarterly publication of total charges be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 11 relating to the quarterly publication of clean vehicle activity totals be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 12 relating to a minimum notice period for changes to credit system settings be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to insert new clause 12 relating to a required notice period for operational changes be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 1 as amended agreed to.
Part 2 Consequential amendments to Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 10 to 12, “Consequential amendments to Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, welcome to Part 2, and I’m glad to see that Mr Menéndez March never skips leg day with the amount of up and down there! Congratulations on those votes.
We come to Part 2. Part 2 is the “Consequential amendments to Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022”. It makes amendments to the regulations to align with all the amendments made and agreed to in Part 1. It’s such a small part that it’s almost worth reading it out word for word. Clause 10 outlines that the principal regulations “Sections 11 and 12 amend the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022.” Clause 11 lets us know that regulation 3 is amended—that’s the interpretation section. It says: “In regulation 3, definition of expiry date, replace ‘3 years’ with ‘4 years’.” That’s quite helpful because that aligns with the change that we’ve just made in clause 6. Then, of course, we’ve got clause 12, which amends regulation 17, which is the “Procedure and requirements for transferring carbon dioxide credits between accounts”, and it says: “In regulation 17(3)(b), replace ‘3 years’ with ‘4 years’.” These are three very straightforward clauses that give effect to the change made in the previous part.
There are some amendments on the Table that I think are worth very quickly traversing. As I mentioned before, those tabled amendments that are inconsistent with Government policy won’t be supported by the Government—I think for obvious reasons. There is one from Arena Williams at 3.15.20 p.m. on 19 November that seeks to replace the term “4 years” with “3 years and”—what looks like “1 mouth”, but I assume that’s “1 month”. The issue with that is it then means the statute, which will say “4 years”, will be inconsistent with the regulations, which would then say “3 years and 1 month”. For consistency’s sake, you would keep the statute consistent with the regulations, otherwise the chair of the Regulations Review Committee would be all over us like a hot rash, and we wouldn’t want that.
There are a number of other amendments to Part 2 that Arena Williams has moved. I actually think it’s just worth putting on the record to the public about what some of those amendments contain, just so they know the extent to which the Opposition are taking this very, very seriously, I’m sure. One of those amendments is to replace “4 years” with “1,095 days”; another amendment is to replace “4 years” with “26,280 hours”; another is to replace “4 years” with “156 weeks”; and I think one of the ones that is most impressive in terms of the mathematical ability of Ms Williams is the one, at 3.15.25 p.m., to replace the term “4 years” with “94,608,600 seconds”. Now, we won’t be supporting those amendments, because we think not only are they quite frivolous, they are—well, they’re just quite frivolous.
I’m sure there are some worthy amendments somewhere that are running around, but, in terms of those ones, we won’t be supporting them at all.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Chair. I am taking my first call, and I want to go straight to clause 12. I'd also like to preface my contribution to say the reason I haven't been in the House is I have been upstairs working furiously through the regulatory impact statement (RIS), which is an incredibly important document to enable us to scrutinise what is a highly technical bill, and a bill that includes an amendment this morning that has quite a few changes in it.
Without the RIS, we have not been able to do that effectively. Clause 12 gives us that opportunity to do it, because clause 12 has a fundamental impact on the system in that it basically moves the system from annual compliance to multi-year smoothing. It encourages importers to bank and skim compliance obligations, and that does raise questions—which we have not been able to interrogate properly, because we've not had the regulatory impact statement to support that; and there are a number of other things. We will move through it, but other colleagues, including my colleague Helen White, has been doing the same thing—I understand Tracey McLellan has—so we want this opportunity to be able to ask—there are 14 specified risks that have not been able to come out.
Now, just to give you some context to this, I worked on this bill late last night. I looked for the latest update of the RIS. I couldn't find it anywhere online. I was watching the proceedings in the House this morning—I was about to come down to contribute very early—and heard the Minister quite glibly say, “Oh, there's one on its way.” When we look at the 18-page document and we look at page 3, there's even annotations in red in the side of the document that make it almost look like a draft. It has been produced in a hurry. I went and checked with the Clerk of the House to make sure it wasn't anything to do with me not being able to find the document, and they confirmed that, even though this is dated a few days ago, there can be issues with the links and they could not confirm that the RIS would be available. Now, I can say hand on heart that I had not seen it until this morning.
So I just want to point out, first of all, although the Minister says that clause 12 is technical, given some of the issues, the impact of it is not technical and is worthy of scrutiny, because what it does is it amends regulation 17 of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022, which is around credit expiry and use. Regulation 17 governs how credits expire, how they can be applied across years, the hierarchy of credit usage, and transferability rules. What can happen is there can be penalty interactions; there can be a retroactive application to existing credits, which is really unusual in regulatory design. It's quite easy for the Minister to sort of say, “Oh, this is just about regulations,” when we know that regulations are worthy of scrutiny, particularly in a rushed process like this, and particularly where they could have a retrospective impact—which is what has been raised in the RIS, because, suddenly, credits previously set to expire in 2025/26 now suddenly remain valid until 2028 or beyond. So the fact that it does have retrospectivity is a problem. It's also potentially inconsistent, because it's not amended precisely to reflect the amended section 178(3) in the Land Transport Act 1998, and so there could be actually statute or regulation clash grounds for challenge. That makes it administratively weak under law. I'm going to ask some questions specifically on that.
And then, if I may, Mr Chair, I may take another call just to point out the 14 specific risks that have come up in the RIS, now that in the last couple of hours we have been able to actually see it—and some of them have quite a lot of public interest. My first direct question on clause 12 is: has New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi run systems simulations to ensure that amending regulation 17 will not cause credit accounting errors? This goes to the amendments that my colleague Arena Williams had suggested, which was to get much more precise modelling so that there could actually be some evidence base, because, at the moment, we are having to rely on the Minister's assurance that all his numbers stack up.
The second question: how will regulation 17 deal with multi-year bridging credits, especially those generated before 2026? Does the retroactive application of the extended expiry breach any principle of regulatory predictability, and is he concerned about that?
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Ingrid Leary.
INGRID LEARY: Thank you. Has the Crown Law Office confirmed that extending the life of existing credits is legally safe, and is it consistent with the zero carbon Act budgeting framework? My fifth question is: does the ministry accept that regulation 17's amendment effectively weakens the constraint that the Clean Vehicle Standard was designed to impose year by year? So that is looking at one of the first risks that has come up in the RIS, and my colleagues will be asking more detailed questions. But that is around the gaming of the system, essentially.
There are 14 risks. There's the gaming of the system; there's the surge of high-emitting vehicles, which has been mentioned. This one—I think is maybe why the Minister was trying to get us out of the House so quickly—is a specific risk that mentions potentially higher fuel costs for New Zealanders of $115 million. There is the potential for increased national emissions. There are perverse incentives—now, Julie Anne Genter managed to ask a question about that, but without having the analysis of the RIS and being able to interrogate further, it is absolutely a valid point. I should think she should be given, and my colleagues should be given, the chance to actually look at what is the real risk of those perverse incentives and what will the outcomes be: are they medium risks with high impacts—in which case, should we be taking this gamble? We have other risks around reduced fuel savings and our emissions reduction pledges.
We haven't even touched on equity and fairness, and that seems to be a continual theme in this House—you know, for communities that are going to be impacted by this. The Minister himself has tried to suggest that this is helping ordinary New Zealanders and it's only those who are in a privileged position who are going to going to have to worry about it. In fact, the RIS would suggest the opposite, and this side of the House is very interested in equity and fairness, particularly when it's hidden in regulations. We see a risk around the declining value of credits. Now, why on earth would we have a regulatory system that purports to support a bill that actually makes the value of credits decline—which, ultimately, could also lead to higher vehicle prices? It flies in the face of what this Government has said that it is trying to do.
I can provide a couple of quotes from some of the Ministers who have talked about our Emissions Trading Scheme and how we're wanting to meet our climate targets. I mean, Christopher Luxon said post-Cabinet in April 2024: “We remain absolutely committed to meeting climate targets.” Simon Watts said on Radio New Zealand: “New Zealand will not step back from its climate commitments.” And yet we see, hidden in the regulations and the impact of the regulations through the lack of modelling and through this Amendment Paper that was dropped at the eleventh hour—which is very, very technical, and we did not have the facility of the RIS to be able to understand what its impact was, including with the regulations—we are seeing a bill that is flying in the face of our climate commitments and in what the Government says it intends to uphold.
We also see risks about the slower uptake of lower emissions; about the potential restriction of the supply of vehicles that have cleaner emissions; and, also, there is a risk created by the undermining of the system, by the provision of interim relief. There have been no questions on that, because we were not able to look at the RIS and understand that actually was a risk. How big is the risk of that interim relief? This comes down to the incomplete modelling, and we do have technical questions on the RIS, but also just to pinpoint on clauses 10 and 11, as well, which may sound quite technical but have only come to our attention and are the result of the architecture of the regulatory system that this Part 2 of the bill brings into place.
So although the Minister might like to look bored and act like this is all very technical, I think that New Zealanders, when they understand that this has been so rushed, that we've had the most important document, really, for our ability to scrutinise properly as the Opposition dropped onto the table during the debate—that we now have the opportunity to get some real answers to the Minister about the modelling and about the unintended consequences of some of the maths that we are seeing come up through the RIS.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Thank you. Before the Minister takes a call, as well, I do take the point about the late publishing of the RIS statement, and that is noted, but I want to encourage the House to actually focus on this particular section in Part 2, as well. We do have a Minister here who can answer your questions, so if you have been going through the RIS and you do have questions, I would ask you to focus on those questions and, hopefully, they will encourage engagement from the Minister.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just in response to the member’s 10-minute contribution, she raised a number of questions. I'll get some advice on some of the specific ones, but a couple that were mentioned in there were around: is this inconsistent with the Act? I'll point the member to—and I should have done this at the top, actually—Amendment Paper 444, which actually does make some amendments to Part 2 as well. That Amendment Paper does directly cross-reference to the Act to ensure that consistency, so that should resolve that.
In terms of retrospectivity, there is no retrospectivity in the bill. The changes will apply to current, valid credits as at the date of commencement. It doesn't reach back in time to credits which may have been used or not used or cashed in before that point.
In terms of the risks mentioned in the regulatory impact statement, they are related to the Amendment Paper, not the change in clause 12, which actually refers to clause 6 of the bill. The Government's position on this is that the benefit for New Zealand consumers outweighs the risks, and it is, therefore, a change worth making.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I just want to first of all take up the point about retrospectivity. Am I right, Minister Meager: as I understand it, the price for the credits currently, if people hold a lot of those credits, they will plummet in their value in the time period—they'll plummet dramatically from over $60 to $15—and that if I look at page 16 of the regulatory impact statement (RIS) at paragraph 51, I get the following statement: “However, 2,895,929 of these credits available for offsetting were issued in 2023 and under [the] current settings, will expire during the period where their value is reduced.” So that is a whole lot of credits where the market assumed certainty and now that won't be the case; they will be holding credits of much lesser value during that time. I'd like to have an answer to that question.
I wanted to note that when I was going through the RIS, I thought it was deeply ironic that the key vehicle importer stakeholders got this policy detail and they were able to provide comment on it, and it's seen as shaping the view. We haven't been given that same respect, and neither has the New Zealand public. That is a lobby group—that is a group with power. I'd like the Minister's comment on that part. That is at paragraph 45 of the RIS. Why would the Minister consult with a lobby group which is an importer of vehicles, get comment, and shape policy in that way? Is that a safe thing to do? What kinds of checks and balances are in the system with regard to that?
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Can I ask the House to bring your questions to the very specific—
HELEN WHITE: Thank you. To go to the impact on clauses 10, 11 and 12, and to look at that, I think that very relevant in the RIS are the paragraphs at 48, which are about credit deficits and credit surpluses and that that will result in additional fuel costs and emissions in 2050. That's an incredibly important point, and it relates to this part of the Act in that way. That's the part that I was quoting in terms of the change in value of those credits. So that's important.
We don't know a lot about those additional fuel costs, and this is the bit that probably most alarmed me in what I read. So we go through, at 52, “The key rationale for the Standard is the fuel savings and emissions reduction it provides. Modelling estimates that by suspending the charge rate of the Standard as per Option 4, [New Zealand] would spend an extra $115 million on fuel between 2026 and 2050 with this proposal, $69 million of which would be spent in the first 10 years; The transport sector would produce an additional 83 kilo-tonnes of CO2 … emissions between 2026 and 2050, of which 28 and 23 kilo-tonnes of CO2 would be produced in [the] emissions budget periods 2 and 3 respectively.”
So I'd like to know what work has been done on that, but this was the bit that got me: “Due to time constraints, this analysis was unable to model the impact on fuel savings and emissions reduction for reducing the charge rates in Options 2 and 3. However, it is likely … the extra fuel costs and additional emissions would be similar [or higher], or … lower than [that] estimated for Option 4 above.” Due to time constraints, we don't actually know; we haven't modelled the fuel savings—is that correct? I was also interested in this little footnote about how—[Time expired]
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, just with regard to the question around retrospectivity, the bill doesn’t apply retrospectively. For something to apply retrospectively, it would say that it would reach back into the credits or charges incurred by an individual prior to the commencement date and say, “We’re going to retrospectively hit you with a penalty or provide you with a refund for those credits.” It applies from the day going forward. So if you cash in your credits today, it will be at the price before the bill passes, and if you cash the credits in on the day after its commencement, it will be at the new price. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, and that’s not what that means in that situation.
Just on the question around why a Minister would consult with people involved in the industry to see whether this is a good idea, well, that is the way that Governments and Ministers make decisions. They consult with experts and people in the industry to determine whether or not the policy change is worth pursuing, what impact it might have, and what the costs and benefits are, and I would encourage the member to talk to her colleagues about the tens and hundreds, if not thousands, of industry advocates, association groups, NGOs, lobbyists, organisations, and unions that Ministers, for decades and decades, have consulted with in order to make sure that their policy lands in the right space.
Finally, again, the member brings up for, I think, the third time in this debate the fuel savings, or the opposite of fuel savings. As she pointed out, the officials estimate that the temporary charges will reduce projected fuel savings by $115 million, and, as mentioned twice before, that is offset by avoiding about $264 million in net charges being passed on to consumers in higher vehicle prices. By my very quick firth form maths, that makes a net benefit of $149 million to consumers in the system.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Before I take the next call, I’d just remind people that this is Part 2 and consequential amendments to the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Regulations 2022, and I do understand that you people have the regulatory impact statement (RIS) now. But if people can relate their questions about the RIS to this very specific part, the committee would appreciate that.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. My comments relate to Part 2, clauses 11 and 12. This part extends the ability of the people who have credits for those credits to remain credits. In the regulatory impact statement it says in paragraph 57 that there’s a risk here in stockpiling of credits.
Earlier in this debate, the Government went ahead and amended the bill so that the charge rates are lower for 2026 and 2027; massively reduced the charges for bringing in more polluting vehicles; and at the same time now, in this part in clause 11 and 12, they’re extending the period of time that people can hold credits for two years beyond that, up until 2028 or four years after they get the credits. I don’t understand how these two working together don’t completely undermine the goal of encouraging and supporting the industry to import more low emissions and zero emissions vehicles.
I guess my question is, will the Minister consider my amendment paper and—hold on, I don’t have the exact—we have some tabled amendments that would change it to two years rather than four years. This is clause 11 and 12. It would be helpful to understand, from the Government’s point of view, how we’re going to achieve the goal of reducing emissions from the vehicle fleet when the combination of these two changes is to make it easier for the industry, and particularly the new vehicle industry, to bring in more highly polluting, brand new vehicles, which will be on the road for 20 years. Therefore, still putting out emissions in, you know, 15 years’ time, higher than what they would have if we had effective policies to incentivise more low and zero emissions vehicles.
We’re falling behind the rest of the world. Our targets in 2026 are lower than that of China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, and the EU, and Australia. So you know, we’re falling behind Australia on this and we have a much lower charge rate because of the amendments that were just passed in the previous part of this bill. So what is the rationale in extending the credits to four years as opposed to two? Doesn’t that mean that there can be stockpiling of credits over the next two years, which then, again, slows the uptake of lower emissions vehicles and means more highly polluting vehicles coming into the country in 2027, 2028 than otherwise would be the case. It doesn’t appear that any real modelling or climate impact has been done to see what that impact is.
Finally, the Minister just now in his contribution said it’s completely normal, this is how his Government does it, they consult with industry. Did they consult at all with the Climate Commission or any independent climate policy experts to get a balanced point of view and not, simply, the point of view of the industry in whose interest it is to continue profiting off higher margin, higher polluting vehicles, which is completely at odds with New Zealand’s interests in reducing fossil fuel consumption—which it saves money for New Zealanders and helps us meet out climate targets, which is a non-negotiable. It's something we have to do. Yeah, those are my questions.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, the questions the member is putting relate to the substance of the policy that was dealt with in Part 1, particularly around clause 6. Just for clarity of the committee, Part 2 provides consequential amendments to the regulations, so, therefore, I’m happy to take questions on whether or not amending regulations is the right thing to do or why we’re amending the regulations, but the purpose of the regulation amendment is to align with the changes already accepted by the committee in Part 1. That that is where the substance of the policy was discussed and debated at length. I’m not sure what more can be said on a part that we’ve already progressed through.
Now, in terms of how you reduce emissions in the vehicle fleet, well, you ensure that it’s part of the comprehensive and capped emissions trading scheme (ETS) system whereby emissions budgets are set for five-year periods where there is a sinking lid for emissions over time. Therefore, if the market or consumers or drivers choose to drive more vehicles or longer kilometres and that increases the number of vehicle emissions, that will decrease the emissions available for other sectors to emit through New Zealand Units (NZUs). Over time, the balance of NZUs drops in the ETS.
Steve Abel: It’s a fantasy.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: It’s not fantasy. It is quite literally how the law works that was put in place and supported by subsequent Governments. If previous Governments wanted to change that law, they should have changed it. They should have bought millions of carbon credits and shredded them, but they didn’t, because they believe in the ETS like we believe in the ETS, and we think it’s the powerful and comprehensive tool to meet our emissions reductions and make sure that we meet our obligations across the world so that we can have a balance between the needs of working New Zealanders, who get out there everyday, drive their vehicles, go to work, clean their offices, grow fruit and veggies, pour the lattes, put together the bicycles, clean the roads, sweep the streets, and all the things that they do, grinding every day, day in, day out, so that we can come here to Parliament and debate very sensible amendments to the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2).
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I move, That debate on this question now close.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’ve been listening to the debate, and this is quite a narrow part in Part 2, but there are Amendment Papers that I understand may not have been addressed, so I’ll look forward to hearing some of those.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, thank you, Madam Chair. It’s my pleasure, as Labour’s transport spokesperson, to take my first call on Part 2. Madam Chair, I agree with you that there are some Amendment Papers here—one actually is in the name of the Minister of Transport— that I do have some questions about. Essentially, Part 2 looks to incorporate the vehicle, I guess, by which the changes from Part 1 can be given effect. I have had a chance to look at the regulations, the 2022 regulations, and the impact if the committee was to, effectively, take on board the amendments in the Minister’s Amendment Paper 444.
What I find interesting is that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, in its report, didn’t really make changes to any of the aspects in relation to Part 2. A lot of the changes from the select committee were in Part 1—all of them were. In Part 2, it’s as it was reported back. So the select committee, after hearing from the community, determined that no changes were required for Part 2. What we now have in front of us, though, is an Amendment Paper in the name of the Minister that, effectively, makes some changes, so that is what I would like to focus my questions to the Associate Minister of Transport about.
In particular, I want to look at clause 11. Clause 11 is basically looking at this issue of the expiry date and the definitions, and we’ve heard many times in this House that definitions are important. While the committee saw no need to change, effectively, what is defined as the “expiry date”, what was already in clause 11 amending regulation 3 is that would be replaced from three years to four years. That was put before the select committee, the select committee by majority agreed to that. But what we now have is a potential change from the Government to, effectively, modify that.
Now, the first question I have for the Minister is:given his reference to the regulatory impact statement (RIS)—and I’m not going to go into the RIS but there has been a reflection that has been made about the fact that in that document, there is clearly an annotation in the column that indicates that this is some feedback from industry participants. Now, it’s really interesting, I think, for the committee to get an understanding of: to what extent industry participants have actually informed the Minister of Transport’s desire to make this change. We haven’t heard about the—well, we have heard around some of the rationale behind changes to clauses 11 and 12 in Amendment Paper 444. But what we haven’t actually heard from the Government is to what effect there was any consultation that was taken by the Minister. Did industry participants have any impact on the Minister’s desire to bring this proposed change to committee? I think that is entirely reasonable to expect a response on.
The other one is in relation to the definition around the date. So clause 11 talks about the replacement of “3 years” with “4 years”. Now, we just assume that is in relation to a financial year or a calendar year. It would be helpful if the Minister—perhaps that is already identified in a definition in the principal Act, but we have previously talked about the applicability of when things would kick in and when they wouldn’t.
My final question is on the proposed change in Amendment Paper 444 to clause 12. So this is in relation to regulation 17, where there would be a change around how things could be transferred between accounts. So this bill, yes, will give effect—or an ability, really—for changes to be made between different credit holders, and that’s why it’s in the bill now—around the difference between the used vehicles and the new vehicles. But, Minister, is that simply just an indication that the transfer is purely transactional, or are there other considerations that we should read into that? Because the committee didn’t see a need to initiate a change in this space, and given the Government has a majority on the committee, it could have if it wished to. Now we have this landed yesterday; it would be helpful to understand what actually is the rationale behind the transfer component. Is that purely a transactional thing that gives effect to the earlier provisions in Part 1, or is there a little bit more to be read into that?
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, the reason that there are new clauses 11 and 12 in the Amendment Paper is because the Amendment Paper also amended clause 6, and the committee of the whole House has just agreed on that amendment to change section 178(3) of the principal Act to no longer refer to “3 years” or “4 years” but instead refer to—and the member can read it. It’s under clause 6. The purposes of clauses 11 and 12 is to update the wording in the original bill to refer to the expiry date in section 178(3), in both clauses 11 and 12, to reflect the amendments that have already been made. The purpose of these two clauses is to update the regulations to reflect the substantive policy decisions that have already been made and discussed in Part 1.
Further to the member’s point—I don’t know what the point really is that he’s trying to make—simply because a select committee agrees or doesn’t agree or recommends or doesn’t recommend something doesn’t mean that the committee or the Minister can’t put amendments forward. If the member thinks otherwise, then I assume he’ll be asking his colleague to withdraw her amendments, because I don’t think the select committee considered, for example, whether they should replace the term “4 years” with the term “94,608,600 seconds”. I think, if the member wants his colleague to withdraw all her amendments based on the idea that the select committee didn’t refer to them, then I’m happy for him to do so.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Chair. I really appreciate the opportunity to take my first call on this part. It is about the expiry date. This is an important reflection of the policy positions that the Government has taken here around extending for those importers who hold large accounts either in deficit or in positive about how they can use those and how they can transfer them. This extension further kicks down the road the ability to continue to, essentially, rest on the market conditions which were at play a couple of years ago where there was strong uptake, consumers were able to claim the rebate, and there were also better economic conditions, so a number of importers have sort of bank credits from that time.
The impact of this period being extended is that the current requirement for importers to more stridently balance up their accounts, by looking for more products to import that are cleaner, materially changes. It’s not available to who that impacts the most: us. In the information that’s been prepared by the Government, with this extension from three years to four years, it’s not clear which importers are impacted by this or whether they are large importers or small importers. My guess would be that the larger importers are benefited by this. I would like to know, from the Minister, whether this has a material impact that is financially positive for those importers who receive a detrimental impact by the reduction in price.
It’s well understood, now, following on from Part 1, that those accounts that many of the large importers have—perhaps, say, you might imagine Toyota in your mind when you’re considering this—will be in positive now, but, effectively, if there was $6 million in their covered account, that was in the positive; now, it is worth $1.5 million. That is a substantial reduction. But to be able to use it out for an extra year might have a material impact on their financial position.
I’m asking the Minister to help us to understand: are those things meant to balance out, or is this simply something for the benefit of those large importers which doesn’t actually impact on their financial position overall, and do they continue to suffer a detriment because of this policy? It is not retrospective; it is retroactive. It has a retroactive effect on assets which have been accrued by those importers, and they have an account, which they can see on a screen somewhere on a spreadsheet, which goes from a value that is a high value now and will drop down to essentially a quarter of what it was when this comes into effect. But they will be able to use it for longer, so what impact does that have on their financial position?
The other question I have about this extension from three years to four years—and the Minister has noted one of my amendments which makes it clearer about what exactly the extension applies to and the time period it applies to. Because that year-by-year accounting, at the moment, has material impact on any given vehicle that was imported and how you’re offsetting it and transaction you can offset it against. That has an impact on changing economic conditions because, if we expect more people to be buying in the next year cars that can offset against what exists in the account of any given importer now or traded between any given importer now, then the time needs to be clear, and that four years doesn’t seem to me to be very clear when you have a number of these transactions happening on any given day and there’s a need to account for each one.
I’ll bring the Minister’s attention to page 3 of the regulatory impact statement that was presented last night around the policy aims that the Government says it has around stability of the system and predictability of the system. It goes to the broader point that the law should be known and knowable. If the setting is four years it’s quite difficult for people to predict exactly when the account should occur. This would have been a legitimate point to raise in the last amendment to this as well, because in that formulation of years, there is still some vagueness around that, and it would be useful because it does make a material difference to when people buy products, when consumers buy products, and when these transactions occur.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Madam Chair, I’ll take the points in reverse order. The idea that amending the term “four years” to “94,608,600 seconds” would provide individuals with clarity and certainty is an interesting one. It’s not one we support. Assuming that the Amendment Paper 444 is accepted by the committee, it would also be inconsistent with the decision of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. So it’s up to the clerks, of course, but it may well be out of order because as being inconsistent with that previous decision.
Look, though, the points the member raises are all very interesting in terms of the substance of the policy and the regulatory impact statement, etc., but unfortunately the committee has already determined the question of what the substantive policy is or should be when it considered Part 1. Clauses, 10, 11, and 12 amend regulations to give effect to decisions that we have made in Part 1. The analysis of the clause is amendments—if you’re looking at the bill—"3 years” to “4 years” or if you're looking at the Amendment Paper, definition of the “expiry date” to align it with the new meaning under section 178(3). That is what this part of the bill, Part 2, does. It amends regulations to give effect to the substantive policy, which we have already discussed.
For completeness in the time I've got left and to make sure that I haven't inadvertently missed out anything that members may have raised in the past three or four contributions. Again, consultation was undertaken with the Motor Industry Association and the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association. It was technical to understand the impact of any temporary changes. They are best placed to answer questions on technical matters and impacts on industry. My instinct is they probably did not express a view on the framing of the wording in clauses 11 and 12 to make it consistent with the amendments in clause 6. I’ve addressed the part about year.
Finally, the select committee’s recommendations by majority recommended that further review of changes to the standard will be made, which is what the Government's doing. There's a report back by June 2026.
To, I think it was Ingrid Leary's—no, it might have been Helen White’s—points around price of credits. I’m advised that the maximum trading price of credits will reduce in 2026/2027 in line with the charges, but the Government policy is to extend the life of credits to 31 December 2028 so that no credits expired during the reduced charge period.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the Minister’s amendment to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 444 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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendment agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Arena Williams’ tabled amendments to clauses 11 and 12 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee. The Hon Julie Anne Genter’s tabled amendments to clauses 11 and 12 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee. Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to clauses 11 and 12 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 2 as amended agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the Minister’s amendment inserting the new Schedule set out on Amendment Paper 444 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 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendment agreed to.
Clauses 1 to 3
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we now come to our final debate, which is clauses 1 to 3—“Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair. Clauses 1, 2, and 3 are “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”; I couldn’t have said it better myself, Madam Chair. This part of the bill does three things. It sets out the title of the bill, or the title of the Act, to be fair, and the Act title will be the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Act (No 2) 2025. Clause 2 sets out the commencement date of the Act. That commencement date will be 1 January 2026. That is required so that we can the system in force in time, and we won’t be accepting any amendments to change the commencement date for that very purpose. Clause 3 outlines the principal Act. It lets the public know what the Act is that this bill amends, and the name of that Act is the Land Transport Act 1998.
Now, I know that there are a number of amendments on the Table, some of which make an attempt to possibly improve the bill, and some of which are frivolous and quite rude, really. There’s one there from 3:15:04 which says, “In clause 3, after ‘1998’, insert ‘, widely agreed to be an arcane tangle of Byzantine regulations which is difficult to amend’”. I mean, the public can take what they want from those kinds of amendments.
If I look at other kinds of amendments—for example, the one done at 10:50:28 for the removal of clean car standards; that’s not what it does. The one done at 10:50:29, which says, “No clean car standards.”; that’s not what it does, although it’s quite clever in replacing clause 2 with “No clean car standards.”, and so I’ll give you points for trying.
There’s one there from 10:50:31, which is trying to insert an additional line at the end of clause 1, saying that “This Act forms part of a series of amendments to the clean vehicle system.” I’m not sure that I’ve seen that at the end of a title before. It’s certainly novel, but it’s not something that we would support.
Another amendment by Arena Williams wants to replace the commencement date with “10:50:32”. We don’t support that, as I’ve mentioned before. One from Arena Williams, from 10:50:33, is trying to change the commencement date to be a date set as determined by Order in Council. We don’t think that’s necessary. We prefer the certainty of 1 January 2026. Similarly, with 10:50:34, we’d prefer “2026”, rather than “2030”.
There’s a further one from 10:50:35. Arena Williams would like to say that the Act “may be brought into force in stages by Order in Council”. I think that only increasingly complicates the system, and we want to have legislation which is clear so that people have certainty about these kinds of things. Then there are a couple of other amendments by Dr Xu-Nan which mimic, I think, Arena Williams’ amendments, as well.
But, just in general, we don’t support those amendments. We think that we’ve got it pretty bang on with those three very short, concise amendments, and I look forward to their passage after some rigorous debate.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Madam Chair, I’d like to take my call after our spokesperson just to signal, since the Minister himself brought up what’s unusual and what’s usual in the titles of bills, that my comments and questions will be around how the purpose of the original bill relates to the title. It is a technical question, and, therefore, I think it’s more appropriate to lead with our spokesperson with his questions and then come back to that, if I may.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): So you’re standing up to speak to tell me you don’t want to stand up to speak.
INGRID LEARY: OK, I’m happy to continue, Madam Chair. OK. I will do this. I apologise to my colleague. However, the Minister himself—
Tim Costley: Point of order! Madam Chair, the clock seems to have reset to five minutes.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Thank you, and I need to point out to the member that she did resume her seat, so the call has ended.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Chair. It might be that the member Ingrid Leary gets her way after all, but we’ll see. I don’t intend to make this a lengthy call, but who knows? We have no issue with the principal Act—obviously, that’s pretty straightforward in our mind—but the two that I do want to ask questions of the Minister around are the title and commencement.
First, we have the title. The Minister has said that he’s not prepared to entertain any of the proposed changes there. We all know that what’s really important, when bills progress through this Parliament, is that they are named so that those that can follow them, if they choose to, might be able to actually ascertain what the bill is about. This is going to be the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). I would have thought that’s quite embarrassing for the Government, because it indicates that there was a (No 1) and that they’ve failed to deliver on what it was they wanted to achieve the first time out.
I know that the former Minister of Transport Simeon Brown is in the Chamber today, and this may be feeling as though it’s a déjà-vu moment for himself, because we spent some time previously when we were looking at the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 1)—
Hon Simeon Brown: Every time we come back, it just gets better.
TANGI UTIKERE: Oh, he says it gets better. Well, maybe his replacement is doing the jobs that he himself failed to do, and now he’s moved on to another area, to stuff up that part of our country, but anyhow—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): That’s not very parliamentary.
TANGI UTIKERE: I withdraw that comment, Madam Chair—
Tim Costley: And apologise.
TANGI UTIKERE: And apologise. It would be good to actually have the name of a bill that really did indicate what it was, and so while the Minister might not like some of the suggestions that have been put forward, there are some opportunities there, I think, to really signify what it is that this bill is about.
I’ll move on to commencement. There are many opportunities when it comes to commencement about either it coming into effect on a particular calendar date or the day after Royal assent. Given that a lot of what is contained in this bill is already timebound—i.e., the figures that are set in terms of what people would have to pay are tied to particular calendar years are tied to particular aspects in time—why not just have this as an Act that comes into effect the day after Royal assent? It’s a very straightforward question for the Minister. Maybe it’s just that it’s trying to keep it clean so that it kicks in from the new calendar year, but, from my recollection, there’s nothing in this bill that really provides, if it was to come into effect the day after Royal assent, what is going to be the implication if that is the case.
These are, effectively, changes to a regime that comes in at a particular point in the calendar year. It might be that there’s some sort of indication of trying to give more time to the industry. Just those two clearly discreet questions.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I do have a technical question for the Minister. Let me preface this by saying that we’re in the same situation we were in yesterday where we have an amendment that is purporting to amend a principal Act; that when we look at the purpose of the principal Act it is quite different. So my question is different from my colleagues, because this is not really about whether there is confusion over the title.
Given the impact of what this does, whether in statutory interpretation in judicial cases, in judicial review court cases, and so on, whether the title is sufficiently clear to be able to give affect to that principal purpose. Madam Chair, that is a legal question under section 5 of the Interpretation Act.
The courts would normally look to the title, as has been said, to get an understanding about what it’s about. In this case it’s very clearly a bill that is quite substantively different from the original bill. So my questions to the Minister are whether he thinks the title adequately reflects the bills affect on New Zealand’s trajectory with our emissions, whether the Parliamentary Counsel Office gave advice on whether a more descriptive was appropriate, and whether there were any concerns raised about a possible mismatch between the title and purpose that could affect the interpretation under section 5 of the Interpretation Act.
I'll add to that question whether the Minister actually sought that advice, because if the Minister didn’t seek that advice, I do think that opens up a serious question about whether he should then look to the amendments from Arena Williams to see if there is a suggestion in there that would better suit the purpose and would better suit the statutory interpretation in section 5 of the Interpretation Act that courts would look to. Otherwise, what we are really doing is kind of creating sloppy law. We’re not providing certainty to the courts.
This is the Ministers opportunity, I guess, to put on the Hansard how aligned he thinks the amendment bill is to the original one so that when it comes to interpreting the purpose, given that the title—if he’s not prepared to change it—so that at least the courts or counsel can refer to the Hansard to help them interpret what the relationship is between this amendment bill and the original Act.
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport): The Interpretation Act was repealed in 2021, and maybe the member can ask a colleague who was in Parliament at that time. The title does what it says: it calls this Act the “Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Act”; that’s what it does. In terms of its relation to the principal Act, it amends the Land Transport Act. You need to amend the Land Transport Act in order to amend the Clean Vehicle Standard, because the Clean Vehicle Standard is contained inside the Land Transport Act. If we were to try and amend another Act, we wouldn't be able to amend the Clean Vehicle Standard, because the Clean Vehicle Standard wouldn't exist in another Act.
So we won't be entertaining any changes to the principal Act, nor will we be entertaining any changes to the title, because the title perfectly describes what the Act does: it amends the Land Transport Act in relation to the Clean Vehicle Standard. It is the second time it does this in this term of Parliament because we are a busy and effective Parliament that responds to the needs of industry, and where we can make things easier for New Zealanders, we will.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 1 inserting “and Transition” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 1 to insert the words “This Act forms part of a series of amendments to the clean vehicle system” is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
Arena Williams’ remaining tabled amendments to clause 1 are out of order as not being objective descriptions of the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “2026” with “2027” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “1 January 2026” with “1 July 2026” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “2026” with “2030” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Arena Williams’ remaining three tabled amendments to clause 2 are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 replacing “1 January 2026” with “on a date set by Order in Council” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 2 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Arena Williams’ four tabled amendments to clause 3 are out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.
Today, we are taking a very big step towards making sure the clean vehicle standard actually works to the benefit of New Zealanders, particularly those hard-working New Zealanders that get out of bed every day, get in their car, and go to work to make sure that we have a great little country. The changes in this bill are about bringing the standard back to what it was meant to be: a practical, affordable way for New Zealanders to spend less on fuel and to reduce their emissions. The standard was supposed to give New Zealanders better access to more efficient vehicles by causing manufacturers to prioritise our market for the supply of their best vehicles with the latest technology. But right now, under current conditions, the key thing the standard is doing is driving up costs for importers and therefore costs for New Zealanders. Almost 86 percent of importers are in a net charge position, and the average net charge per vehicle for those importers is $1,226. These charges risk being passed on to consumers—ultimately, those who are consuming vehicles most likely in the lower end of the market.
This is happening because under market conditions, importers simply aren't earning enough credits to offset charges. The system isn't working as intended, and we risk consumers paying the price. This bill is the first step in fixing that problem. The legislative process we've just been through today, and throughout the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and since early August, has improved the steps we are taking in this area. When introduced back in August, the bill made four practical changes to the standard to improve flexibility and reduce compliance costs, and those changes still stand. They are, first, to allow the Minister to recommend uniform carbon dioxide targets—and this came up in the committee debate stage. It allows the Minister to recommend uniform carbon dioxide targets but it also continues to allow them to do variable weight targets. Second, it extends the life of emissions credits from three years to four. Third, it retains the option for importers to borrow credits from future years. Four, it enables credit trading between new- and used-vehicle importers.
Now, during the select committee stage, industry submissions made it very clear to both the select committee and to Government that these changes alone are not enough. With the current market conditions in place, the standard is too tough, and where those charges cannot be fully offset by credits, we risk them being passed on to consumers, making things more expensive. In response, the Government has, by Amendment Paper, added two further changes during the committee of the whole House stage, which I'm very happy to say the House has accepted. First, to make temporary charge reductions for 2026 and 2027. With the reduced rates, we can expect that most importers will now no longer have to pass charges on to consumers. The second change made in committee was for an extended expiry date for credits earned in 2023. This, on the other side of the balance, protects credit-holders from financial loss due to those temporary charge-rate changes. Both of these changes provide immediate relief while we work towards a more durable solution in the long term.
Ultimately, with this system, any system we have in place needs to support New Zealanders to upgrade to newer, cleaner vehicles that cost less to run and support our environmental goals, but they cannot add unnecessary cost to working New Zealanders. I want to take this final opportunity, before we move on to the next speakers, to acknowledge the very many people that have progressed this bill to this stage: to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and members, to those who submitted on the bill and took the time to make their voices and contributions heard, to the representatives of the vehicle industry for their willingness to continue to work alongside Government and officials for the best outcome for their consumers—and thank you, as well, to officials and parliamentary staff who worked on the bill and to the officials who supported myself during the committee of the whole stage.
With saying that, I commend this very pragmatic bill to the House and look forward to seeing it enacted forthwith.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Look, it’s a really sad day when the Parliament has to progress through urgency a bill that has gone through a select committee and then had a very truncated process in the Parliament. The Labour Party will continue to oppose this piece of legislation, as we have done up to this point and through the committee stage, because it is yet another example of the Government stepping away from leadership in this space and doing the right thing.
In essence, what this bill will do is it will water down those policies that really do make a difference in our communities. The changing of this piece of legislation is purely because the Government were not able to put in place any change to the regime that had been put in place to make any real difference. Throughout this whole process, many have been saying that this does feel like déjà vu, because it was just last year that the former transport Minister was progressing the same law change here in the Parliament to say that things were going to work out and it was going to work, and it didn't. So that's the prime rationale behind the Government's inability to be able to deliver in this space.
The Parliament has just gone through a committee stage that is an absolute shambles on behalf of the Government. Now, a lot has been referenced around the regulatory impact statement (RIS). We accept that in urgency, you would expect to have some information coming perhaps late to the piece. What we do not accept, however, is that the documentation that the Government relies on as one key piece—one key ingredient—in determining how they will approach things is not actually made available to members of that committee until the committee stage was well under way. Yet we had the Minister say, “Oh, well, it's coming. It's coming. It's coming.”
I don't blame the staff here on the precinct; I do not want that to be an indication at all. As soon as they got that information, they made it available to members in this House, and it really is an indictment on the Government that they are not wishing to make that information available to outline and to consider and scrutinise the real risks that this bill might bring. It is absolutely shoddy.
Not only that, but the very RIS that was made available to members looks like some sort of internal document with comments in the column about the fact that the motor industry had said that this term means that and all of those sorts of things. That is absolutely shabby—absolutely shabby lawmaking on the part of this Government, and they expect to put the Parliament into urgency to ram through legislation, yet they're not prepared to do the hard yards and the work to make sure that the people of this House are able to scrutinise legislation so that we can end up with better legislation. We are doing this on behalf of the public because of the truncated period.
The other thing is it's very disappointing—and I accept that Mr Foster referred to this in his contribution late last night—that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee seems to have made its decision to report this bill back much sooner because of the Minister's reckons and the Minister wants this to happen. Well, that should not be what drives a truncated select committee process and further adds to what is a sham process from a shabby Government around stuff that is not going to head in the right direction.
To be very clear, the other part of that, of course, is this Amendment Paper that the Minister apparently has been talking about all week. Well, it was only made public yesterday. This is an Amendment Paper that was only made public yesterday that outlined the near 80 percent reduction in fees that would be payable, alongside some other things. How the Government expects members of this House to be able to adequately scrutinise what it is that they're putting up in a time of urgency is extremely questionable indeed.
We will continue to oppose this bill, because there are a number of changes in it that really don't serve a positive purpose. The suggestion of extending the lifespan of carbon credits from three years to four years is a prime example of how the Government is prepared to simply water down the standard and how it can be applied to those within the industry. The removal of restrictions in terms of being able to transfer credits between those who import new vehicles and those who may have used vehicles is a further watering down of the standard that was in place. The opportunity to not just tinker with the weight adjustment sort of threshold for vehicles but to basically completely wipe out that entire provision is unfathomable. We all know that heavier vehicles lead to heavier emissions, yet this is a Government that is not prepared to even entertain the thought of maybe having some sort of not a transitional phase, but looking at how the actual threshold could perhaps apply differently to those different members of the vehicle fleet based on weight. So this is a Government that is really turning its head in a backward sense and is not prepared to confront the real issues that they face. Of course, they need to take responsibility for this.
Every year, we are starting to see a continual delay of meaningful action on the part of the Government, and as costs continue to increase, as emissions continue to rise, particularly in the transport sector, where we all know there is a significant component of emissions that can be attributable to the transport sector, the Government needs to be doing something in this space, and what this bill does is the complete opposite. It actually sends a very clear message that this is a tax cut for car dealers rather than the Government prioritising where it can support households to actually enter the market to ensure that they are on a journey to assist with the emissions profile of this country to make a real difference. It's on that basis that the Labour Party will continue to oppose this bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, it is time to suspend for the lunch break. The House will resume at 2 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 12.59 p.m. to 2 p.m.
SPEAKER: The House is resumed. For those who watch these broadcasts and might not understand why there is no prayer today, it’s because there was a prayer on Tuesday. Technically, we are still in Tuesday because the House is sitting in urgency.
Papers
Papers
SPEAKER: I present the Estimate of environmental expenditure 2025/26: Method and results, reported by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Conservation
1. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Conservation: How will his decision to allow commercial ring-netting inside the Hauraki Gulf’s high protection areas while banning recreational fishing affect those who simply want to go out on the boat and catch a feed for the whānau?
Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister of Conservation): The decision that this House—with the support of the member’s party—has made to approve the Hauraki Gulf marine protection legislation, for the most part, will not affect those who want to go out and get a kai in Tangaroa and Hinemoana, out there in the beautiful Tīkapa Moana—te pātaka kai. They can still fish [gestures to map] over here in the gulf, over here in the gulf, over here in the gulf—actually, in over 80 percent of the gulf, you can go and get a kai out there.
Teanau Tuiono: Does he stand by his statement, “We have allowed the continuance of a small amount of commercial fishing that provides people in the South Auckland community with a source of affordable fish.”; and, if so, is he embarrassed that his successor at Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki te kaiurangi said: “To claim that this decision has been made in response to the impact of cost-of-living increases for Māori and Pacific whānau, and then specifically for South Auckland, as a justification for allowing commercial enterprise in this area, it’s weak.”?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I am happy to stand by all the statements that I have made in relation to the protection of Te Moananui o Toi te Huatahi, and also acknowledge some of the concerns expressed by the tumu kaimahi, or chief executive officer, of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, who recently hosted me, along with a range of other iwi leaders, a range of stakeholders, a range of recreational fishers, down on Beach Road in Ōrākei, just off Hobson Bay, to celebrate the tripling of marine protection in the gulf—albeit it may not be perfect for every member in this House.
Teanau Tuiono: Is it fair to provide exemptions for commercial operators to fish in the gulf's new protection areas, or should companies fishing for profit be subject to the same rules as everyday anglers?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: Can I repeat that I'm very proud that the parties that were represented in the House the night that the legislation was passed—including the member’s party—all agreed that that legislation move forward, notwithstanding there were some reservations by some members in the House that evening. But the legislation has been supported; we have reached a compromise over many, many years, and I'm very proud of tripling the protection in the Hauraki Gulf.
Teanau Tuiono: What does he think hundreds of recreational fishers are coming together for to protest on Saturday in Tāmaki to say no to commercial fishing in the gulf’s high protection areas (HPAs)?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: I acknowledge that there continue to be concerns around a range of mechanics that have been implemented through the Hauraki Gulf legislation, but what I say to those fishers is: please, take your lifejackets, play it safe, and enjoy your day out on Tangaroa and Hinemoana and, if possible, get rid of some of those kina barrens while you’re out there.
Teanau Tuiono: Whose advice did the Minister take in his decision to provide carve-outs for commercial operators in the gulf: the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, who had these amendments proposed to him by the seafood industry, or his department, who warned that the changes would be—and I quote—“incompatible with the purpose of an HPA and would undermine biodiversity outcomes”?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: It certainly wasn’t taking the advice of the Green Party in progressing the solution that all of the members of this House approved.
SPEAKER: Sorry, leave reference to the Opposition party out and answer the question straight, or say you can’t.
Hon TAMA POTAKA: E te Māngai o te Whare, can I ask the member to repeat his question?
Teanau Tuiono: Certainly. What advice did the Minister take in making his decision to provide carve-outs for commercial operators in the gulf: the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, who had these amendments proposed to him by the seafood industry, or his department, who warned that the changes would be—and I quote—“incompatible with the purpose of an HPA and would undermine biodiversity outcomes”?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: In my role as the Minister of Conservation, I take advice from a range of different sources, but ultimately, I am very, very comforted that Cabinet and this Parliament have made a decision to progress a tripling of the marine protection in Tīkapa Moana.
Teanau Tuiono: What does he say to the recreational fishers who agree that the carve-outs defeat the purposes of a high protection area and are frustrated that there are no opportunities for public consultation on the changes?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: Parliament has spoken. There will be a review period in three years, and, in the meantime, let’s go out and enjoy the bounty of Tangaroa and Hinemoana.
Hon Shane Jones: Can the Minister confirm that the various segments of the moana that have been reserved have the highest level of protection and that the small concessions to help working-class struggling families in South Auckland during winter is an overdue concession?
Hon TAMA POTAKA: As we are aware, there are a number of compromises that have been reached over decades to build the relevant legislation. The very narrow exception for ring-net fishers is narrowed to a certain type of species at a certain type of year for a certain size of boat, and we are very comfortable—we are very comfortable—with where this has landed.
Question No. 2—Auckland
2. Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister for Auckland: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?
Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Auckland): Yes.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Why is he leading a plan to push rough sleepers out of the CBD and on to the doorsteps and dairies of suburbs like Pakuranga without giving those communities additional resources or support?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, there’s a range of things in that question which are completely untrue. The reality is that we are funding additional Housing First places in Auckland. The Minister of Housing and the Minister of social housing have been putting funding into that so that we can find places for people who are homeless to be able to be housed. That is the priority that we have in Auckland, and our expectation is very clear that those Housing First providers who have been funded work hard to make sure they get those people housed.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: How can he expect those suburbs, where households are already facing job losses and a shrinking economy, to manage the influx of rough sleepers that will result from his policy?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, again, the premise of that question—I mean, the reality is she’s reading out the second question on her sheet which she pre-prepared earlier, rather than actually responding to what I actually—
SPEAKER: No, no.
Hon SIMEON BROWN: —said in my prior answer.
SPEAKER: Just stick to the answer, not commentary on how you’re seeing it being presented.
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Yes, well, the answer is—as I said in the prior answer—that we are focused on increasing the number of Housing First places in Auckland so that we can find housing for these people, and I’d just remind the member of the previous Government’s record when it came to housing, where they promised 100,000 houses and didn’t even get anywhere close.
SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s enough.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Does he stand by his statement that “this government is very focused on Auckland and it’s on a positive turning point”, when 63,800 Aucklanders are now out of work—up 42,000 in just two years?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: The member forgets that when she was in Government, they drove up expenditure, which drove up interest rates, and when interest rates go up, the economy goes backwards. That is what we are fixing, and that’s why our Minister of Finance is so focused on getting spending under control and getting interest rates down so that we can get our economy moving again for all New Zealanders, including Aucklanders, which is exactly what we’re focused on achieving.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Is Auckland still on a “positive turning point”, as he’s claimed, when the number of people on jobseeker work-ready in Auckland is up by almost 10,000 in just two years?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Look, things are very positive in Auckland, and they’re getting better because, actually, we’re focused on our biggest city and focused on the needs of our biggest city. We’ve got the City Rail Link opening next year—a project started by National, and it will be completed by National. The New Zealand International Convention Centre is creating a buzz in our CBD. We’ve funded the removal of the level crossings. We’re promoting more concerts at Eden Park. We’ve got fast-track legislation in place, which has meant that we’ve consented the Ports of Auckland extension in record time. We are focused on growing our economy in Auckland and on growing jobs and opportunities in Auckland, and that’s the focus that we’ve got across all our portfolios.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Does he stand by his statement, “We have a deliverable plan to unlock Auckland’s potential and get our city back on track”, and, if so, why is Auckland’s unemployment rate up 2.1 percent since he became Minister?
Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Auckland): Well, as I said earlier, when interest rates go up because Government expenditure is out of control, the result of that is that unemployment also increases. That is what this Government has inherited—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Sorry, stop. A barrage, as I’ve said over and over, is not acceptable, and constantly, effectively, using a raised voice to interrupt the answer to a question is not an interjection; it is a barrage.
Hon SIMEON BROWN: As I was saying, when interest rates increase because Government expenditure is out of control, the unfortunate reality is that unemployment increases. That is what this Government is fixing. That is what we’re addressing. That’s why we’ve got Government expenditure under control. We’re seeing interest rates drop, which is improving confidence, and that is going to lead to lower unemployment across New Zealand and also in Auckland.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: When he said that the “Coalition Government’s plan will deliver for Aucklanders”, did he mean he would deliver 10.5 percent empty storefronts across Auckland?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: What I was referring to was the work this Government is doing to unlock our biggest city to make sure we’re growing our economy. That’s why we’re so focused on things such as fast-track legislation, which is actually meaning that projects are able to be consented in very fast time, which means that people can then be employed. If you go down to the Ports of Auckland—that Opposition party opposed fast-track legislation—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: No, that’s enough.
Hon SIMEON BROWN: We supported it and there are people being employed.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: When he said that the “Coalition Government’s plan will deliver for Aucklanders”, did he mean he would deliver more unemployment, more people on the jobseeker benefit, more empty shopfronts, more people homeless, and a shrinking economy?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, if the Opposition was interested in growing the economy, they would have supported fast-track legislation, because fast-track legislation has meant the Ports of Auckland extension has now started construction, which is growing jobs in our biggest city. They oppose those jobs, they oppose the extension of the Ports of Auckland, and they oppose growing our economy, but on this side of the House, we’re saying yes to growth in Auckland, yes to jobs in Auckland, and yes to opportunities for our biggest city and for New Zealand.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister remember when Treasury, in the last months of the last Government’s term, predicted all those figures and worse this time in 2025; did the questioner demur and complain and come clean in being transparent or what?
Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, I do remember Treasury’s reports that they provided, and, ultimately, that’s why this Government’s been so focused on getting Government expenditure under control so that interest rates can go down and so that we can grow our economy and grow jobs and opportunities. We are fixing up the mess left behind by the previous Government.
Question No. 3—Finance
3. NANCY LU (National) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has she made about banking?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Last week, I announced the Government’s response to the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s (FEC) inquiry into banking competition. FEC, working with the Primary Production Committee, did a very thorough job considering 148 submissions and hearing from banks, non-bank deposit takers, fintech’s, financial regulators, and members of the public over a six-month period. I asked the committees to undertake this inquiry, and I thank them for their work. The Government accepts all 19 of the key recommendations, two of them in part.
Nancy Lu: Why was this inquiry undertaken?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Banking plays an extremely important role in the economy and is highly concentrated. The biggest four banks make up around 90 percent of the market and are very profitable. Competition is a key priority to deliver better outcomes for customers. This inquiry had its genesis in the coalition agreement with New Zealand First. It followed a Commerce Commission market study on competition in personal banking services but had a wider scope, including looking at business and rural banking. Helpfully, FEC’s findings echo many of the Commerce Commission’s findings; for example, to strengthen Kiwibank’s role as a competitor in the banking sector.
Nancy Lu: How is the Government addressing the committee’s recommendations?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In many cases, the committee’s recommendations confirm that what the Government is doing, including the Reserve Bank, is on the right track. For example, in July the Government approved Kiwibank Group Capital to undertake a capital raise of up to $500 million to fund the growth of Kiwibank. The Reserve Bank is reviewing capital settings for banks and other deposit takers, it is reducing the minimum capital requirement for deposit takers from $30 million to $5 million, and it is consulting on the ability for entities to call themselves a bank. A lot of work is already under way in the area of banking.
Nancy Lu: How has the Government communicated its expectations to the Reserve Bank?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Reserve Bank is operationally independent, but the Minister of Finance has influence at a strategic level. Following the Commerce Commission’s study, I wrote to the Reserve Bank outlining my expectations for how it should take competition into account when making prudential decisions. At the same time, I issued a new financial policy remit. This says that the Reserve Bank should ensure that prudential regulation and supervision facilitates the goal of improving competition while remaining consistent with financial stability. By law, the Reserve Bank must have regard to this remit, and it is.
Cameron Brewer: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: Question four—oh.
Cameron Brewer: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: Oh. Cameron Brewer.
Cameron Brewer: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In addition to the Government agreeing to all of the banking inquiry—
SPEAKER: No. Start a question with a question word.
Cameron Brewer: Can the Government confirm that agreed—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Sorry, just a minute, Mr Brewer. There’s no need for the conversation to go on across the other side of the Houe, or any side of the House.
Cameron Brewer: Can the Government confirm to agreeing to all the banking inquiry recommendations—two of them in part—and can the Minister confirm that 14 out of the 19 key recommendations were unanimously agreed to by the joint cross-party select committee?
SPEAKER: A very short answer to that very long question, I’m sure.
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, I understand that’s correct. The bipartisan agreement to 14 of the 19 key recommendations is a positive thing, I observe; clearly, a sign of good chairing. It also indicated that committee’s recommendations have widespread acceptance. I was perplexed to hear, however, that some members opposed the idea of beefing up Kiwibank using New Zealand’s savings. These are, presumably, the same members who want New Zealanders to invest more in New Zealand. Well, that’s precisely what the Kiwibank proposal is.
SPEAKER: I’ll tell you what. I’m not ignoring all of the commentary coming from my left. So bear that in mind.
Question No. 4—Food Safety
4. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT) to the Minister for Food Safety: What recent announcements has he made about the use of technology in food labelling?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Food Safety): Today, the Minister for Economic Growth and I announced plans for a trial project that would bring flexibility to New Zealand’s food-labelling rules while protecting food safety. The trial will allow different labels on products but ensure that any additional information required by New Zealand is available through a digital mechanism like a quick response (QR) code or barcode. This exciting innovation will allow us to keep up with technology change happening across the world and respond to feedback heard as a part of the Government’s grocery competition work.
Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How will this trial help keep down food prices?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: In our system, all packaged food must comply with the labelling rules in the Food Standards Code, which are only valid for Australia and New Zealand. We’ve heard from food retailers and importers that having to print specific labels for New Zealand reduces the efficiency and is an additional cost, and that, ultimately, has to be passed on to consumers. We’ve also head that it’s a barrier to new retailers entering the market and creating more competition, which we know will help keep food prices down. This trial will pave the way for pre-packaged, low-risk food to be imported with a label that complies with other trusted countries’ labelling requirements, like the UK or US. That makes sure New Zealand consumers have access to all the information they would normally require digitally.
Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How does a move to digital labelling support New Zealand food producers and exporters?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: I have met with dozens of food businesses this year, and it’s clear to me that the strict rules we have for physical labels is a barrier for our exporters as well; for example, I smoke with a—don’t smoke, never have! Sorry.
Hon Members: Ha, ha!
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Ha! I spoke with a small winemaker in New Zealand that exported—I didn’t have a wine tasting, though—around the world and had to print eight different labels. This is a future where that company could only have to have one label. They’d only have to have one label on the product, and they’d be able to deal with all of those different countries’ requirement digitally—much cheaper and easier. The world is moving to a greater use of this technology for labelling, and I want us to be ready to take advantage of that when it comes.
Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What are the details of the trial?
Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: Consultation on the design of this trial starts today and will be open for four weeks. The proposal is for a limited trial, with retailers selected from those that register interest. It would apply to products labelled in English, from a mature regulatory system. The intention is that it will run for a year. It will be closely monitored by New Zealand Food Safety, and the results with inform an ongoing work programme to look at a more permanent arrangement for digital labelling in Australia and New Zealand.
Question No. 5—Police
5. Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by all his statements and actions related to the police front line?
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police): Yes. Our police front line do an outstanding job every single day. They have been leading the Government’s work to crack down on gangs and organised crime, have exceeded the Government’s violent crime and youth offending reduction targets, removed gang patches from our streets, and got out on the beat 73 percent more in the first nine months of this year than in the same period in 2023. The Government inherited a very weak Police executive, which we now know to have had significant integrity issues. On becoming Minister of Police, I made my concerns about their performance clear publicly and in three separate meetings with the Public Service Commission. Weak leadership from the top of any organisation has a flow-on effect, and we have seen that there have been isolated examples of bad behaviour, which Police are actively addressing. I’m confident that the vast majority of our front line are at the high standard that the public expects and are outstanding New Zealanders who serve their communities with distinction every day.
Hon Ginny Andersen: Will the Government deliver its coalition promise of 500 additional front line police officers in two years on 27 November 2025, as originally promised?
Hon MARK MITCHELL: As the incoming Government, had we not immediately recognised that there had to be a new focus on integrity and standards—with an increase of the police training course at the Royal New Zealand Police College from 16 weeks to 20 weeks; with the reintroduction of a swimming standard; with removing the overuse of discretion—then it would have probably been very much simpler for this Government to attain that number. The reality is that we are prioritising standards, and I think that the public expect us to do that, and I think the public will also allow us to take the time to deliver those 500 as long as we remain focused on those standards.
Hon Ginny Andersen: What date will the Government now meet its coalition promise of 500 additional front line police officers given that he will not deliver on the earlier promise?
Hon MARK MITCHELL: We have delivered 250 new police officers. We have 317 currently in training. We have trained and deployed 1,300 police officers over the last two years. We have a strong pipeline of people wanting to join the Police. We have police officers that have left wanting to rejoin the Police, and we have police officers wanting to come back from Australia to rejoin the New Zealand Police. We’re in a good shape.
Hon Ginny Andersen: Why should New Zealanders trust him to deliver 500 more police when he has shifted the delivery date from 27 November 2025 to June 2026, then to August 2026, and now to September 2026?
Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, I hope that New Zealanders can trust me, because on becoming Government, I said that I would resign if we didn't start to see tangible changes in terms of public safety in this country in the first 12 months. I'm extremely proud of our police. We are meeting our targets. There are over 20,000 less victimisations in this country. We are driving violent youth offending down. We're now actually policing the gangs. You don't see gangs taking over provincial towns like they did under the previous Government, so I hope the public do have confidence in this Government, that we are doing great work, that we are making them safer, unlike the previous Government.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: What happened to the perverted catch and release fishing policy posing as a crime policy, that we inherited?
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order. Firstly, there are not supposed to be assertions in questions. Secondly, questions are not supposed to be designed for the sole purpose of attacking the Opposition. Thirdly, you're not supposed to yell out when points of order are on. So there's a plethora of things you can choose from.
SPEAKER: That's right, so we'll move on.
Hon Ginny Andersen: How can New Zealanders trust anything he says when he can't even commit to a date for delivering 500 more police?
Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, it does matter to me what New Zealanders think and say. We're here to serve them and I hope that they can trust my word. I hope that they do understand that we've delivered on everything that we've promised to deliver. Yes, the 500—we had challenges set in front of us that we were not aware of. We've got a fresh focus on standards. I think that's what the general public of New Zealand want us to be focused on: standards and integrity. We have committed to 500 new police officers; we will deliver 500 new police officers.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has the Minister got confidence that the coalition partner that helped deliver 1,000 extra front-line police between 2005 and 2008, and 2,338 between 2017 and 2021 is likely to deliver that? Maybe it's a bit slower than the extra 500 we're talking about now.
Hon MARK MITCHELL: That's a very good question, because the previous Government missed their targets, I think, three or four times, on the numbers that they were meant to deliver. The difference this time round is that we've missed a target because we are focused on standards. On coming in as police Minister, I could clearly see that there had been a loss of focus on standards and we have introduced that, with integrity as well—a focus on standards and integrity. I actually think the public want to see that, because I inherited a very weak police executive. I'd be very interested to know if that member ever brought forward the fact that they had appointed a very weak police executive that has created a whole lot of issues that this Government is now cleaning up.
Hon Ginny Andersen: Will he keep his promise to resign, or will he break that as well, along with his promise to deliver 500—
SPEAKER: No, you can’t ask that. Sorry. That’s it. I take it that’s the end of that.
Question No. 6—Education
6. Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister of Education: What recent reports has she seen on cellphones in classrooms?
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): It’s been 18 months since we banned cellphone use in schools, and today the Education Review Office (ERO) published its report evaluating the effects of this change, and it shows that it’s working. The report found that nearly all schools have implemented the phone ban in classrooms, and the policy is already making a difference. Teachers report that students are showing greater focus, academic performance is increasing, and bullying is decreasing. We are relentlessly focused on lifting achievement, and removing distractions from the classroom is an important part of that.
Dr Vanessa Weenink: What does the report say about the effects on students?
Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, by removing the distraction of cellphones from the classroom, ERO reports that the increased ability to focus in class appears to have contributed to learning—61 percent of secondary teachers report student achievement has improved and 69 percent report bullying in their schools has reduced. One student said about the changes, “I think so far [the rules are] positive. There's no more of me looking at my phone in my pocket … neglecting my learning in the middle of classes”. Students can be confident that their success at school is a top priority for this Government.
Dr Vanessa Weenink: What does the report say about the effects on teachers?
Hon ERICA STANFORD: Seventy-nine percent of teachers report that removing phones from the classrooms has improved students’ abilities to focus on their work; 77 percent say removing cellphones has improved student behaviour; and one teacher is quoted as saying, “This has been one of the best policies the school could have implemented. The cyber bullying was at an all-time high before the policy was put in place—”
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: They didn’t actually need you to tell them to do it.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: This is actually really serious. Cyber bullying is extraordinarily serious, and now she's saying, “… students talk to each other, and our students play”.
Dr Vanessa Weenink: What else does the report say?
Hon ERICA STANFORD: Well, the number one recommendation of ERO in their report is to keep the “Phones Away for the Day” policy because it's making a positive difference to student wellbeing and student learning. In fact, not only does the report recommend we retain the policy, but in fact we maintain the momentum by strengthening it. ERO recommends that we increase consistency of the policy by supporting schools and parents to enforce the ban. I’m now seeking advice on how we can implement these recommendations because, as everybody knows, we are relentlessly focused on raising student achievement.
SPEAKER: Question No. 7, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: Just wait for the House—just wait for the House to hear the question in silence.
Question No. 7—Social Development and Employment
7. MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: How does she intend to reduce Māori unemployment following the release of the September quarter Household Labour Force Survey 2025, which identifies Māori unemployment is at 10.5 percent compared to the national average of 5.3 percent?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: I thank the member for her question. On behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment, our Government is relentlessly focused on growing the economy and getting people back into work. When businesses have the confidence to invest and grow, it's good for jobs, it's good for growth, and it's good for the incomes of all New Zealanders. The Ministry of Social Development’s community coaching programme and expanded case management service has helped improve employment outcomes for the young, including Māori, and we are confident our approach is working because despite the challenging times, we have seen an increase in the number of Māori exiting the jobseeker benefit into work compared to the same time last year.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Will the Minister commit to introducing targeted initiatives in Te Tai Tokerau to address its 6.3 percent unemployment rate, the highest of any region?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, of course, there are different challenges across the regions, but certainly the overarching direction must be to ensure that we keep inflation down, we keep interest rates down, and we give businesses across the country the confidence to be able to recruit and take on new job seekers. But it's also important that we are doing the work to prepare those young people for employment.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Will the Minister commit to setting and publicly reporting clear targets for reducing the 14.6 percent Māori underutilisation in Te Tai Tokerau, which is higher than the national average, to ensure w’ānau can make ends meet?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: So, again, across the various regions there are varying amounts of unemployment, but the same basic principle applies that we must keep Government spending down, we must keep inflation down, we must keep interest rates down so that businesses have the confidence to be able to take on additional staff. I am very excited about the fact that we have increased by 12.1 percent the number of Māori job seekers going off benefit and into employment. So it's working.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Can the Minister confirm that she will provide support to expand iwi-led initiatives such as Te Hiku iwi development trust’s Tupu Plumbing programme, creating employment pathways for rangatahi and job seekers in the Far North, given the rate of unemployment in the region; if not, why not?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: We have a range of job programmes and they are geared to do a range of things. We have, for example, Mana in Mahi; we have the mayoral taskforce, we have He Poutama Rangatahi participants, of which most are Māori, but aligned with that we also have ensured that we have additional funding going into ensuring there is access for our young unemployed to get into tertiary training so that they have a pathway to employment. I would say that the Far North have been the greatest benefactors of that.
Question No. 8—Internal Affairs
8. LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Is she confident that Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s proposal to cut up to $70 million of spending a year will not impact on the safety of New Zealanders or firefighters; if so, why?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) is not proposing to cut $70 million of spending per year.
Lemauga Lydia Sosene: How will cutting more than 140 jobs keep New Zealanders safe, when these jobs include fire-prevention staff, specialist wildfire roles, and key support staff for firefighters?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: The Fire and Emergency proposal to undertake a restructure, I believe, is a valuable exercise. If you look at some of the quotes that have come from the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU), there have been concerns about mismanagement, and I take a direct quote here, and it says, “The failure to focus on the purpose of the organisation—to preserve life and property through prevention and emergency response and instead the focus [on] funds on a bloated management structure focused on corporate culture.” I tend to agree. Where we can find efficiencies, we must find efficiencies for the benefit of all of the people in New Zealand who pay levies that directly fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand. But it is also the case that we have to have more respect than has been in the past for finding these efficiencies.
Lemauga Lydia Sosene: How will cutting the Fire and Emergency New Zealand budget keep firefighters safe, at a time when firefighters are telling her they already don’t have the equipment and support they need?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I am absolutely assured by Fire and Emergency that the safety of personnel is their utmost priority. Our Fire and Emergency service does not work without safe firefighters, professional and volunteer. But I’d also make the point that there are no proposed cuts to front-line firefighters—those are essential to New Zealanders’ safety around the community. But where we can find any bloating in the back-office functions, it is important to respect the money that is directly paid by Kiwis through levies.
Lemauga Lydia Sosene: Is the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union correct that these roles are critical to ensuring firefighters have access to the training and support they need to respond to emergencies properly to keep New Zealanders safe?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I believe the NZPFU is correct when, once again I quote, they said, “instead the focus [on] funds on a bloated management structure focused on corporate culture.” has been too high. And I am surprised that firefighters would not want to have a more efficient service, I think we would all back that across this country, whether we are in the firefighting service, whether we’re here in Parliament, or whether we are community members wanting to make sure that the trucks come out to keep us safe in our time of need. It’s important that we have a good, efficient service, that is what Fire and Emergency are undertaking. But I’d also just note the restructure is currently a proposal.
Lemauga Lydia Sosene: Does she agree with David Seymour that the Government listens to and treats firefighters with respect; if so, why have the firefighters had to seek an urgent Employment Relations Authority hearing to make sure their voices are heard?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Yes; and nobody has to seek anything, they’re currently going through bargaining, and have been bargaining for the last year.
Lemauga Lydia Sosene: Does she take any responsibility for the cuts Fire and Emergency New Zealand has been forced to make, given she restricted funding for FENZ and directed budget cuts?
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I absolutely take responsibility for the fact that Fire and Emergency need to be more efficient. It should be something that everybody across this House wants to achieve. Where there is any bloating within Fire and Emergency, we should seek to find efficiency. I’m surprised that that member would wish to have bloat.
Question No. 9—Justice
9. RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) to the Minister of Justice: What action has the Government taken to protect New Zealanders from stalking and harassment?
SPEAKER: The Hon Paul Goldsmith—sorry, I didn’t recognise you!
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Last night, the Government’s legislation to make stalking an illegal and jailable offence for up to five years passed with the full support of the House. This is an important piece of legislation that has been talked about for many years, and this Government has delivered to ensure that the harm victims experience by such unwanted behaviours is recognised and prosecuted effectively.
Rima Nakhle: Why is it important that stalking and harassment is an illegal and jailable offence?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: As I’m sure people understand, stalking and harassment pose a serious threat of serious harm to victims, and the behaviours can be a precursor to even more serious and violent crime. For too long, stalkers have been able to harm their victims through unwanted, persistent, or repetitive intrusions into their lives, causing serious emotional and economic harm with few legal consequences. I want to thank those who campaigned for this change and the more than 600 submitters to the Justice Committee, who bravely shared their own stories, experience, and the impact that stalking and harassment has had on their lives.
Rima Nakhle: What feedback has he received on the Government’s action to protect New Zealanders from stalking and harassment?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and I quote one piece from Layba Zubair from the Aotearoa Free From Stalking group, who said, “I think this is a very big win. I think it’s important that especially in today’s political and social climate we do acknowledge the wins that we get in advocacy. It’s a good step forward.” I say to Layba: I wonder whether some of those who advocated for the change ever thought that this Government would deliver it, and I am pleased to say we have, with the broad support of the House.
Rima Nakhle: What other actions has the Government taken to protect New Zealanders from harm?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, the criminalisation of stalking and harassment is part of a wider effort by Government to restore real consequences for crime. For too long, victims have not been the priority in our justice system. Another thing we’ve done is to ensure that victims of sexual violence have the ability to decide whether an adult sex offender has their name permanently suppressed That, I think, is another important change. The Government has also been reforming the sentencing regime, capping sentencing discounts at 40 percent and amending the principles of sentencing to include the requirement to take into account victims’ interests, as committed to in our coalition agreements with New Zealand First and the ACT Party.
Question No. 10—Transport
10. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) to the Minister of Transport: Can he confirm that in 2024 New Zealand had a year-on-year decline in electric vehicle sales of 70 percent compared to 2023, and, if so, does he concede that his Government’s policies significantly reduced demand for electric vehicles?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport): Yes, the member’s data aligns with data held by the New Zealand Transport Agency. There are a number of factors affecting the demand for electric vehicles (EVs). Weaker economic conditions have affected consumer demand for vehicles more generally. For example, total vehicle sales are actually down around 14 percent in 2024 compared to 2023. The global supply of used EVs at the age and price point New Zealand consumers are looking for is constrained, and many consumers who were early adopters and fast followers, I’m advised, brought forward their purchase of EVs in 2023 before the Clean Car Discount ended.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Does he think Simon Lucas, a Mitsubishi dealer, is wrong when he says the removal of the Clean Car Discount caused sales to “collapse by 80 to 90 percent”?
SPEAKER: There was too much commentary during that question.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Should I repeat it, Mr Speaker?
SPEAKER: Yes.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Is he saying that Simon Lucas, a Mitsubishi dealer, is wrong when he says the removal of the Clean Car Discount caused sales to “collapse by 80 to 90 percent”?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, I’m not saying that. He’s probably right on the margins. If you take away free money for middle- and high-income New Zealanders who go out and buy Teslas and KONAs paid for by people who can’t afford to make the transition to EVs, like our hard-working farmers and tradies who were stung with a ute tax, in order to transfer the money to largely middle- and upper-income consumers who wanted to go out and buy a Tesla—no, he’s probably right on the margins, but that regressive, inequitable, stupid scheme this Government did away with.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Does his Government have an active policy to transition its own fleet by prioritising the purchase of electric vehicles, and, if not, why not?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The Government’s focus is not on transitioning its own fleet to electric vehicles; this Government’s focus, as that member should know, is on cost-effective solutions and value for money. We have asked Government agencies to prioritise their focus on that because that is the single best thing we can do for the New Zealand economy, which remains our overriding focus.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: So has his Government completely given up on electrifying our vehicle fleet because it’s inconvenient for the importers of highly polluting motor vehicles, and what does that mean for our carbon reduction targets in transport?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, electrification of the New Zealand economy is going to occur over time, and it will occur for our vehicle fleet. New Zealanders will make the transition and switch to electric cars and electric vehicles, but we are not going to put into law a scheme, like the previous Government did, that does not work. The simple reality is that the Clean—[Interruption] Well, here’s the reality—
SPEAKER: That’s enough.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —unless there are urgent changes made to the Clean Vehicle Standard that is going through Parliament right now, the price of many ordinary cars that New Zealanders use and buy, both used and new, will rise—in some cases, in punitive ways—on 1 January next year, and the Government is taking action to prevent that.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Why did he and his officials only consult the motor vehicle importing industry and not any independent climate experts or anyone else in the development of this legislation; is it because he thinks it’s his job as a Government to respond to the needs of the motor vehicle importing industry and not reduce emissions?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The Government went and talked to the people who import used and new cars because they are the people affected by the previous Government’s stupid policy.
Hon Julie Anne Genter: Can he confirm that it is his Government’s priority to improve margins for the importers of high-emissions vehicles rather than policies that increase the number and availability and affordability of electric vehicles for New Zealanders?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, that’s a mischaracterisation of the policy intent. The Government’s intention, through the changes we’re making to the Clean Car Standard through Parliament right now, is to avoid a situation where people buying ordinary run-of-the-mill petrol-powered cars on the 1 January next year pay a punitive amount more to buy either used or new versions of those cars, because of the incorrect and faulty settings of the Clean Car Standard. We are fixing that, and if the members of the Opposition want to go out and raise the price of ordinary cars at a time when many Kiwis are doing it tough, good luck. I suggest they actually don’t.
Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. You’ve forbidden members from wearing the badges of registered New Zealand political parties. Is it permissible for a member to wear the flag of a State that the New Zealand Government doesn’t even recognise, such as Julie Anne Genter wearing a Palestinian flag badge?
SPEAKER: No, it’s not. As of Tuesday a week ago, as notified to all party whips, that type of display is not acceptable. I’d ask her to remove it or leave the House—one of the two.
Question No. 11—Vocational Education
11. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) to the Minister for Vocational Education: Does she agree with Skills Group head of consulting, Josh Williams, that vocational pathways are “capped and it's trapped”; if not, why not?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Vocational Education): I agree with the full quotation from the inimitable Josh Williams, which the member has paraphrased, and I'll read the full quotation: “At the moment there is a lot of fantastic innovation and a lot of very good vocational pathways delivery happening, but it's capped and it's trapped in schemes like Gateway and Trades Academies, and there's little pockets of money here and there”. This is precisely why the excellent Minister of Education and I are working closely to ensure that in the proposed replacement to NCEA, there are strengthened vocational pathways, based on industry-led skills standards, that will provide clear pathways into work or further vocational training.
Shanan Halbert: Can she assure the House that no young people have been turned away from foundation training under her watch due to a lack of course places?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Tertiary funding has always been capped. It's not an open cheque book, although the previous Government has, at times, treated public funding like that.
SPEAKER: Try and start again without the barb that makes it look like you're building the whole question around a political attack. It's not the role of a Minister being held to account.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tertiary funding is capped.
Shanan Halbert: Will reduced polytechnic courses lead to more or fewer people accessing training?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, the vocational education sector, and particularly the polytech sector, is going to be far more sustainable now going forward, with the very significant exercise we have done in taking out costings and ensuring that they are viable. They are therefore able to offer courses that their communities need, that their industries need, and that will provide pathways into employment for our young people.
Shanan Halbert: Where will people go for work-based training, given her Government has overseen record levels of liquidation in sectors like construction?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, we've been labouring this point quite a lot: work-based learning occurs when employers have the confidence to employ people, and that is for apprentices and trainees as well. So our job of keeping Government spending down, of keeping inflation down, ensuring that there is confidence out in the sector to employ people—that is when there will be more work-based training. That is when there will be more apprentices and more trainees out there gaining skills.
Shanan Halbert: Have non-completion rates for apprenticeships increased since cutting the Apprenticeship Boost to one year?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, when the Apprenticeship Boost was bought in as a COVID response, there was a huge increase in numbers going into apprenticeships, but unfortunately they weren't doing the training, and therefore the completion rates were less than 50 percent. That is not a good outcome for those apprentices, it is not a good outcome for the employers, and it is not a good outcome for the Government. We want to have apprentices going into apprenticeships who are progressing through their apprenticeship. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just wait for your colleagues to settle down.
Shanan Halbert: Will fewer courses, fewer employers, and cutting the Apprenticeship Boost lead to fewer or more apprentices completing their training?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Having businesses who are confident that the Government has got their spending under control, that the economy is coming back, taking on more apprentices, having more sustainable vocational education providers who are operating in an efficient manner, and ensuring that industry skills boards create qualifications and set skills standards that industry wants will make a much better vocational education system.
Question No. 12—Women
12. DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) to the Minister for Women: What recent announcements has she made about the gender pay gap toolkit?
Hon NICOLA GRIGG (Minister for Women): It’s fantastic to recently see that New Zealand’s gender pay gap has fallen to 5.2 percent—the lowest since records began. While that is a significant milestone, wider gaps do persist for Asian, Māori, Pasifika, and disabled women. That is why, today, I have launched the second iteration of New Zealand’s first ever Government-backed pay gap calculator, which calculates ethnicity-gender and gender-disability gaps, as well as new resources for small and medium sized businesses and guidance, importantly, for young women to confidently discuss pay at work.
Dana Kirkpatrick: How does the expanded gender pay gap toolkit help drive economic empowerment for women?
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: Indeed, that is my number one priority as Minister. By helping organisations measure and address their pay gaps, we are supporting women's economic empowerment, enabling fairer workplaces, and contributing to the Government's goal of economic growth. By supporting fair pay and transparency, it empowers women to achieve their financial security and career advancement.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: What? This is a joke.
SPEAKER: Hold on. Sorry, before you start—that’s absolutely enough. Just constant barrage is not interjection; it's just boorish behaviour. Dana Kirkpatrick.
Dana Kirkpatrick: Thank you, Mr Speaker. What role do small and medium sized businesses play in closing the gender pay gap?
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: Well, this Government recognizes that small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are vital to New Zealand's economy, so the expanded toolkit includes tailored resources for those SMEs, recognising their unique constraints and providing practical steps to measure and address their gaps. By enabling more businesses to take action, we are ensuring the progress is widespread, supporting women's economic empowerment and contributing to a more productive and resilient economy.
Hon David Seymour: Can the member reconcile the calls of apparent Armageddon when this Government reformed the pay equity laws with the fact we've just reached a record low on the gender pay gap?
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: I thank the member for that question, and indeed—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just a moment, the Hon Nicola Grigg. The House will maintain its decorum through the answer.
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: I thank the member for that question, and indeed it would appear that those doomsday predictions did not eventuate.
Dana Kirkpatrick: How does addressing pay gaps for women from all backgrounds contribute to the Government's broader economic goals?
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: By closing pay gaps for women from all backgrounds, we do unlock the full potential of our workforce—
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: This stuff is going to be great on social media—can’t wait.
Hon NICOLA GRIGG: —we drive productivity, and we support sustainable economic growth, Ms Sepuloni. Fair pay and transparency empower women to achieve financial success and career advancement. This Government delivers results, not just empty PR.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Worst Minister ever for women—the worst Minister for Women ever.
SPEAKER: OK. I’ve warned that member a number of times. The Hon Carmel Sepuloni will leave the House.
Hon Carmel Sepuloni withdrew from the Chamber.
Hon Willie Jackson: Question time’s over, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: The member Willie Jackson’s willing to go with her—way you go. Your choice, in this case. Actually, that ends oral questions for the day. We’ll take one minute while those who have to leave the House for other business to do so.
Point of Order
Speaker's Ruling—Wearing of Lapel Pins
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Musterer—Green): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I just have two quick matters to raise. The first one is that I did note as the leader of the ACT Party was walking out that he was wearing an ACT Party pin. I just wanted to note that we genuinely take issue with the fact that wasn’t picked up. The second thing is—and this is a genuine attempt to clarify the ruling—
SPEAKER: Sorry, just a minute. Sorry, there are people engaging in conversations while a point of order is being taken.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: The second matter that I wanted to raise is just a genuine attempt to clarify the ruling you made in relation to clothing designed to convey a political message being unacceptable. I genuinely am seeking clarification as to the scope of that. It’s a matter of whether you are telling us—in which case, I’m quite happy to follow with my colleagues in relation to that—that you deem any flag to convey a political message. For example, do flags in relation to another State convey a political message or, in this case, does it only apply to the Palestinian flag? Otherwise, it’s hard for me to be able to provide adequate guidance, as the Green Party’s musterer, as to whether it only applies to the Palestinian flag or whether, for example, other flags including the American flag or Israeli flag also would apply when it came to rulings on pins of flags conveying political messages. Thank you.
SPEAKER: Thank you. I’m going to come back to you with a better outline than clearly was provided in the first case. We come now to the interrupted debate on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). The debate is resumed.
Bills
Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2)
Third Reading
Debate resumed.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): New Zealand has an incredible opportunity in electrifying its economy and particularly electrifying its vehicles. Most of our electricity generation is already renewable and we have huge scope for increasing the capacity. But we don’t actually need a huge increase in capacity to handle electric vehicles because electric vehicles can be charged off peak, so it helps pick up the excess supply that is already there.
Since coming into office, this Government have taken just about every possible step they could to discourage the transition to electric vehicles, despite saying they’re in favour of electric vehicles and having electric vehicles being pretty much the only policy they were relying on to help reduce emissions from transport in the medium to long term. The first thing they did was axe the feebate, known as the Clean Car Discount. That policy is objectively incredibly successful at supporting the uptake of zero emissions vehicles.
Indeed, during the submissions to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on this bill, we had Isuzu New Zealand come in and hold this graph up as an example of why we didn’t need standards or a feebate, saying, “Look at how we had mainly internal combustion engine vehicles being imported and suddenly there was a big increase in electric vehicles, in hybrid electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.” Well, ironically, what the graph shows is the success of the Clean Car Discount and then the Clean Car Standard which came in after it because it’s precisely at the time that policy was announced that you see the large increase in low - and zero-emissions vehicles coming into the fleet and the point at which it was repealed by this Government, which led to an increase in internal combustion engines being imported as a percentage of the fleet.
There is no good excuse. The Government will point fingers to excuses, but here, in their own regulatory impact statement—which was belatedly provided to the House this morning in what looks like draft form—there is a graph called “Figure 5, International Comparison of Electric Vehicle Sales”. As you can see in this graph—which people at home might not be able to see, but I’ll explain what it says—it shows that New Zealand’s percentage of electric vehicle (EV) sales, as a percentage of car sales, rapidly declined from 2023 to 2024 by 70 percent. During that time, globally, EV sales increased by 15 percent. They are now higher in Australia—last year they were 25 percent—and they’re higher in Canada. They’re higher in the United Kingdom—the United Kingdom and Australia obviously being left-hand drive countries like us—and they’re much, much higher in China.
We’re in a context where the world is rapidly adopting electric vehicles and we stand to benefit from that, and we have a Government that is taking every step to make it harder to get electric vehicles. They increased road user charges for electric vehicles to a point where they’re being charged roughly double what an internal combustion engine might pay for the amount they drive on the roads. Of course, this was all thanks to the previous transport Minister, Simeon Brown, who seems firmly committed to increasing carbon emissions and is in total denial of climate change or economics.
You don’t even have to care about climate change to think that electrifying our vehicle fleet is a good idea. It makes economic sense, but we do need policies to show leadership. Otherwise, New Zealand gets taken advantage of by the motor vehicle industry, which is, you know, people building cars in other countries. There is no question that fuel-efficient technology is a little bit more expensive and they can’t mark up the vehicles as much. The reason the vehicle industry spends so much money and such effort on driving demand for utes in their advertising—not for work purposes but, you know, as a sort of lifestyle option—is they are high margin for the vehicle industry. What is good for the vehicle industry is not good for New Zealanders. We waste more money on imported fossil fuels just to get around and it’s the vehicle industry that benefits, not to mention we pay the health costs of that and we will pay the climate cost of that.
So yet again—and we’ve seen it with the tobacco industry and this Government, and we’ve seen it with oil and gas exploration and this Government—at every turn they seek to subsidise and make it easier for vested interests and polluters to make more money at the expense of public good, at the expense of our health, and at the expense of our future and our climate. That’s what this Government is all about. They try to pretend it’s sensible, but the reality is they are only listening to vested interests and they are ignoring the objective benefits that New Zealand can get from good public policy.
All around the world we have seen what is effective at driving fuel efficiency. It’s not, as the member Simon Court claimed in the second reading, just the vehicle industry naturally improving efficiency; it’s been Government policies in other countries, like in Germany, Japan, the EU—even the United States at some points has put in place fuel economy standards. In the case of Japan, they’ve actually regulated and mandated that every car manufacturer use the most efficient technology, and when that happens, we get more efficient vehicles. So it’s really the vested interests who are looking to maximise their profits, not to increase the public good.
Everyone in the world benefits from fuel efficiency, and electric vehicles are roughly twice as efficient as fossil fuel vehicles. Even if an electric vehicle is getting its electricity from a coal-fired power plant, it is lower emissions than just burning diesel or just burning fossil fuels in an internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engines are only about 12 percent efficient. They do not convert that energy well into forward motion.
We get enormous benefits from electrifying, but what this Government fails to understand is we need leadership. The Government is there to be the responsible party, providing the incentives, and those are price incentives at the point of purchase of a vehicle, which is what the feebate did. It was incredibly effective. It’s also taking other steps like Government procurement. By focusing on procuring electric vehicles, the Government would help hold up the demand for electric vehicles, and then that flows through to the secondhand market. We’ve had it laid out in the regulatory impact statement that officials say we’re not going to get enough secondhand EVs from Japan. Well, that’s why we should be facilitating the importation of more brand-new electric vehicles now, because most New Zealanders are not buying brand-new cars. Most New Zealanders do not buy brand new cars; it is businesses that primarily do that, including Government.
Why are we watering down the standard and providing an incentive for the new-vehicle importers to import more polluting vehicles? That just means we’re going to more second-hand polluting vehicles in the market in five to 10 years from now.
This isn’t about protecting consumers. It is about protecting vested corporate interests and it is to the detriment of our economy, of our people, of our health, and of our climate, and is a classic playbook. Whether or not the Government is openly corrupt and supporting these interests or whether they’re just totally incompetent, it doesn’t matter, the outcome is the same: New Zealand loses out. New Zealand loses out from political parties that focus on culture war rather than sound public policy that is going to deliver for New Zealand. If we go out there and talk to the average person on the street, most of them understand the concept of the feebate and they agree with it.
Of course, we heard repeatedly from the Minister in the chair, James Meager, that supposedly the emissions trading scheme (ETS) is going to solve this problem. Well, we have decades now of evidence that the ETS does not result in efficiency gains. It’s right here in this graph. We had an ETS; it did not result in improving fuel efficiency. It did not incentivise EVs. It has to be at the point of purchase of the vehicle. And that worked. Even vehicle importers themselves have said this. You know, we had Simon Lucas of Simon Lucas Mitsubishi who said that the removal of the Clean Car Discount caused sales to—and I quote—“collapse by 80 to 90 percent”. If we go out there and talk to renewable electricity providers, to charging providers, they all say they can’t make the numbers work on increasing chargers or increasing supply because demand has been cut off. And it is Government that supports demand through policies like an effective Clean Car Standard, which works really well with an effective price incentive.
So New Zealanders watching at home, it’s very clear: if they want a Government that is going to show leadership and support them to get the benefits of cleaner vehicles, of lower fuel bills, of cleaner air, of quieter vehicles, then we need a Government that is going to show leadership and not simply pave to the interests of a polluting industry. It is a sunset industry. We will become a dumping ground for polluting vehicles. We already are until we get a change of Government, and the Greens have demonstrated practical policy.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s been an interesting—well, I suppose it’s one day, but—couple of days listening to the contributions coming from the other side. The amount of times I’ve heard the “clean vehicle discount” used as a phrase, and I know that’s the official phrase, but in working New Zealand we called it a ute tax for a reason. It was a clean vehicle discount for the wealthy, and it was a ute tax on the workers, the farmers, and the producers.
Well, we have scrapped the ute tax and today we will be scrapping the other side of the supply and demand equation. We will be getting rid of this abhorrent way of influencing the market that has not provided the goods that were promised. All we’ve seen is cars stacked up in importation hubs, unable to be sold because New Zealanders don't actually want what the demand influencing - other side thinks they do.
ACT is the only party who has consistently stood against this, and we will see it gone if we ever can. It adds costs without the benefits. We have an emissions trading scheme; we don't need this sort of market manipulation. Thank you very much.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thanks, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s been interesting listening to the Opposition, because the Opposition has asked us for evidence. I think that was you, Mr Shanan Halbert, wasn’t it? The Opposition said that the Government has bowed to industry pressure. Well, that’s nonsense. Actually, what the Government has done is it has listened to evidence. It’s been quite clear both in select committee and also to the Minister very clearly that the system as it is set up with the assumptions that are set up behind it was not working and so it needed a change and that is precisely what we are doing at the moment. We’re not doing away with it. We are changing it.
We’ve also been told that the last Government did not even consult with the industry on the scheme—
Hon Julie Anne Genter: That’s not true.
ANDY FOSTER: —and the assumptions so they got the settings wrong. You’ve had your turn—you’ve had your turn—Julie Anne Genter. The Opposition’s position is bizarre. When they are faced with a scheme that quite clearly is not working their approach is to say “Let’s double down. Let’s keep on doing it. Let’s do even more of it.” It’s that situation saying, we’re going to keep the beatings going until morale improves. It doesn’t work.
You look at what the regulatory impact statement (RIS) says, the objective of the clean vehicle standard is to increase fuel efficiency, to reduce emissions, and to do so “without placing a net cost on to consumers”. So it is failing that element. That is the problem with the current scheme. Without changing, vehicles will be more expensive. That's what the RIS says. These guys on the opposite side keep on quoting the RIS; that's what the RIS says. The RIS says that without change, vehicles will be more expensive, some models will not be available, there'll be more limited opportunities, and some manufacturers might even abandon the New Zealand market.
What it also says is that—and we've had the concept of dirty cars being talked about by the Opposition—New Zealanders will tend to hang on to their vehicles longer, so they will become older and dirtier as a result. So that, from the Opposition benches, would be an own goal.
The Opposition has also said that Government is incentivising higher emitting vehicles. That's completely untrue. What we're trying to do is take away those distortions to the market. It's not putting an extra tax on them—sorry, it is simply not putting an extra tax on them. The Opposition, meanwhile, has also been busy trying to spend that extra tax revenue, ignoring the fact that the whole scheme was not supposed to raise any tax at all. It was supposed to be net revenue neutral.
The Opposition's also criticised the speed of the report back and the legislation and the RIS is very clear about the reason for that as well, because this scheme, the new charges, will come into effect on 1 January next year, so we have to act with some speed. That is exactly what we are doing.
The Opposition said that we risk becoming a dumping ground for dirty cars. The RIS, again, says that the risk really is that New Zealanders will hang on to their older cars longer, so they will be more polluting as a result. The simple reality is that Kiwis are voting with their wallets, with their feet, and they are buying the vehicles that they want to, not the vehicles that the Opposition wants them to buy. I heard Helen White saying that we, the Opposition, can lead the way to what Kiwis want to buy. We can drive this industry the right way.
That's really scary. The words, “I'm from the Government and I'm here to help” are some of the most scary words—scary words—in the English language we're often told. But they're taking it one level further. “I'm from the Government and I'm here to tell you what to do”, because that's what they want to do. They want to take choice away from New Zealanders.
But the one thing the Opposition have not contested is that the scheme as it is set up does not work. They've railed about it, but they have not contested that. It doesn't work because Kiwis are not buying as many electric vehicles (EV) as predicted when they designed the scheme without consulting the industry.
Now, the Opposition then says it's the coalition Government's fault for cutting the EV clean car discount. What they haven't acknowledged there is that by agreement—and they were part of this as well—the EV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) entered the road-user charges system. So, obviously, they were less attractive than they were once they got to 2 percent of the market.
They've also ignored, as we've already heard from my friend Cam Luxton, is that the clean car discount was being paid for by our hard-working farmers; our hard-working tradies, through the infamous Ute tax; and also, by hard-working taxpayers everywhere. By the end of 2023 when we got rid of that system, $579 million had been paid out to, you know, subsidise Teslas and the like; $290 million of that have come from the hard-working farmers and tradies; and $302 million had come from the hard-working taxpayer. That is not a sustainable scheme.
So tradies and farmers would under their model—if they have what they want it at—pay three times, not just once but three times; at the border, through the clean vehicle discount, on the purchase of the Ute, and through the emissions trading scheme charges on fuel.
This bill was about softening the scheme a bit. It was about trying to make it work. The majority on the select committee could see that when the bill was introduced was only moving deck chairs on the Titanic. This is about clearing, giving the industry and New Zealand car buyers some breathing space. The Minister's amendments do not cancel the scheme. The industry's actually said it doesn't want the scheme cancelled, but it does want time to be able to work it through, make it workable so they don't end up with a very, very large bill. This makes the clean car vehicle standard realistic.
Finally, over time it is a good thing to have the lower emission vehicle fleet technology is improving. The Hon Julie Anne Genter talked about Government supporting high fuel use vehicles, but the reality is the biggest funding challenge for the transport system, the land transport system, is the improving efficiency of vehicles across the fleet.
What that means is there is less money available to put into roads, public transport, etc. That is continuing, regardless of what Julie Anne Genter says there. That is good for the environment, because that's technology improving. It's good to reduce those fuel import costs. But what we have to do is to manage the transition, to be realistic about what vehicles are available— we can't magic vehicles in, we don't make those vehicles—for Kiwis and Kiwi businesses with all our diverse vehicular needs and the vehicles we need to buy now. So I want to finish off just by saying thank you to all the people involved. I commend this very sensible bill to the House.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): We’re in urgency so the Government can get more dirty gas-guzzlers into the country through the most inaccurately named “Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill”. Nothing says “climate denial” more than this—urgency for more climate pollution. We’ve had, from this Government, cuts to the methane targets; we’ve had, from this Government, opening up oil and gas; we’ve had, from this Government, the desire to open up coal mines. Yesterday, at the Boston Consulting meeting, the Associate Minister for Energy talked about the need for oil and for gas and for coal, and half-threatened the gentailers with making them buy more coal to fuel our nation, assuming we were going to have cheaper power.
I had an opportunity to visit West Wind this morning, where there are 62 wind turbines and 143 megawatt installed capacity; Mill Creek, nearby, has another 26 turbines. There was a lot of discussion about the chaos in the political space around sending signals about the electrification of our nation. When we cut demand, such as cutting the Clean Car Standard, we are sending a signal, “Don’t worry about building that generation. There’s not going to be the demand for it.” When we send a signal that we’re not going to invest in new renewable electricity generation and we’re going to invest in more gas, we send a signal to that sector that we don’t really care about electrification—don’t necessarily invest. The sector is really concerned by the inconsistency—by the chaos of this Government’s direction in electrification. This bill is doing exactly that; it is saying, “More dirty gas-guzzlers.”
We’ve seen demand for clean cars that has plunged off a cliff, as my colleague Julie Anne Genter pointed out, when the Clean Car Standard was taken away. That’s a really clear signal of Government action causing more climate pollution—a really clear signal. The Minister seems to have assumed that it’s hard to get a supply of low-emission vehicles. Well, it’s hard to get a supply when you say, “We don’t want them.” It’s really hard to get a supply when you say, “We don’t want them any more.” When Polestar brought all of the vehicles into the country for the Clean Car Standard, then had to sell them at a discount—a heavy discount—and made losses because of this Government’s just tanking the market, well of course there’s not going to be the supply, because people don’t trust us any more. We have lost trust. That’s the problem.
If a country like Ethiopia, with a fleet that’s only one-third of the size of New Zealand’s fleet, has as many electric vehicles (EVs) as we do, why the hell can’t we get the EVs here? It’s because we have a Government that is fossil fuel focused—that’s the only reason that we can’t get the EVs here. Sixty-three percent of new cars sold in China last year were EVs. We’ve heard from Cameron Luxton that only the wealthy buy EVs. Well, my son—my youngest son—his first car bought was a $5,000 Leaf. This is what happens when we bring EVs into the country; they move into the second-hand market, and people move into EVs—and they don’t go back.
The question also is about tradies. Now, my electrician has a number of EVs—he only drives EVs, and his team only drive EVs. Some of the farmers in the deep South have replaced their vehicles with EVs or with e-bikes, because so many people in rural Aotearoa understand the electrification journey—but this Government doesn’t. This Government is full of climate denial. They want a dumping ground—a dumping ground for the most toxic, dirtiest vehicles you could get from around the country. This bill gives us laxer standards than China, the UK, the USA, Canada, and South Korea. It is shameful. It moves us further from our climate ambitions, puts us further in line for $24 billion of cost—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time has expired.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): This amendment bill addresses industry concerns that the clean vehicle standard is misaligned with the vehicles that New Zealanders actually want to buy, and the industry cannot meet the target until more no-emissions vehicles are produced at scale. The changes in this bill improve workability, provide regulatory certainty, and keep the standard credible while supporting our shift to a lower-emissions fleet. Once again, common sense trumps ideology. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour's continuing to oppose this bill, obviously, for obvious reasons, because it takes New Zealand backwards and we shouldn't be surprised about that, because almost everything else this Government has done has in some way, shape, or form just taken us backwards. Ten points, at least, for being consistent and for having another congruent day in this House when we just edge ourselves a little bit back to the future.
It's a shame, though, because this is the very time when we should be speeding up and moving forwards. This was the time where we started to make some of the gains and started to actually reap some of the rewards from the earlier policy settings that would have just afforded us some real gains in that direction. When we think about the infrastructure that would have been due to come on board—because the more electric vehicles in the fleet, the more demand there is for charging infrastructure, the more demand there is for the technology advances, for the talent, for the good jobs, for all the other good positive things that go with that. But no, this Government has said, “Why don't we just chuck the other side of this demand and supply equation out? We already got rid of the clean car discount and now it's time to chuck the other side out.”
I commend Cameron Luxton from the ACT Party for at least being honest and being the only person on the Government side of the House to stand up and say that they just didn't like the whole thing. They just don't believe that the State has any role in directing future direction. I fundamentally disagree with that, but at least they’ve said the writing on their particular tin, because an active State does play a role. Almost nothing good in history has happened without the impact or without the direction at some point, rather, some point through a process of a good active state. Whether that's through investment, whether it's through incentives, whether it's through just really good savvy policy or funding appropriately. To say that the only good policy and the only good direction is for the State to take five steps backwards and have no input into the future direction of New Zealand is just nuts.
New Zealanders, I believe, do want cleaner, cheaper to run vehicles and they want a Government, fundamentally, that treats climate action as if it's something that's real, not something that's optional. For every Government backbench MP that walks around their electorate waxing lyrical about the merits of doing something in the space of climate action and has the audacity to then come into this House when they have an opportunity to not vote for something that does the opposite, that is the definition of hypocrisy. Those MPs need to be exposed for having complete two faces—on one side in their home electorates, talking to groups and organisations and sympathising with the need to do more in the climate space and then coming here and doing absolutely the opposite and doing nothing to help what should be a collective task.
The bill weakens the clean vehicle standard; it simply does. The bill makes it easier for importers to delay progress and harder for us to meet our emissions goals. Rather than pushing for cleaner cars, which was the direction that we were heading in—it's been said before and it's worth repeating—it simply responds to industry pressure for looser rules. It does so for no other reason than a temporary need to do so. There were other opportunities to provide the relief that was required without having to go down this path.
Extending the credit life slows down the transition. Credits were meant to drive year on year improvements—as perfectly acceptable in the design of these policies, of this suite of policies, of these dual policies. Extending them from three to four years simply lets those importers push obligations into the future and that just doesn't really make any sense. It doesn't make the obligation go away. It doesn't actually do what I think the Government thinks it's going to achieve and provide the relief that they think it's going to achieve. It just means that we're going to have to deal with this in some other way in the future. If you give people more time to comply, they're going to use that extra time and not necessarily turn their minds to adjusting the types of behaviours or the settings that they're involved in to make that work, and emissions stay higher for longer.
The credit trading rules encourage higher emitting used imports. We've heard several contributions about that throughout this bill's progress through this House—this bill's unusual progress through this House. Allowing credits to move freely between new and used importers, the so-called two-for-one rate, absolutely risks tilting the market towards older, less efficient vehicles. We know that that will happen. The regulatory impact statement (RIS), the various iterations of the RIS—the one that we eventually got late last night but wasn't available to us today till it was tabled at the committee of the whole stage, and the one that was prepared in regard to the first iteration of this bill—spells that out. You know, there are some things that are just basic, and we should have taken them into account.
On this side of the House, we certainly believe that good policy shouldn't create loopholes that reward the highest emitters. This is another example of a bill and a piece of policy that's doing just that. By removing the weight adjustments without strengthening the targets makes compliance easier, but certainly not cleaner. That is a fact. Taking away the weight adjustments without also targeting the overall targets just makes it easier for heavier and higher polluting vehicles to meet the rules—meet the rules. The Government has removed, essentially, the stabilisers and loosened the rules at the same time—so it's a bit of a double whammy.
Overall, this bill slows decarbonisation, as many of my colleagues have already said throughout earlier iterations of readings, and leaves families worse off. So even if you're not incredibly passionate about climate action, even if you could barely muster any enthusiasm at all for the concept of climate action, everybody in this House should be exercised to some extent about making life a little bit easier for household budgets and for looking out for the long-term affordability of a vehicle fleet. Particularly for people that have very few options. Particularly for people who rely on the fact that new electric vehicles may, and do, gravitate down to the used market and therefore become much more readily available for people in that price band.
The outcome of that is that over time, eventually, if you maintain this, you know, the course, if you stay the action, maintain the course, keep the faith in the policy settings that were designed well, then the outcome is benefit and common good for everybody. But no, this bill is all about lowering those expectations, lowering ambition, lowering pressure on importers, and lowering New Zealand's pace of change.
Actually, there are lots of things this Government could be doing if they wanted to face the concept of lowering. They could be lowering unemployment, they could be lowering the cost of living, they could be doing all sorts of things. They're not choosing to do any of that; they're just choosing to lower our expectations and lower ambitions in this particular sphere. We could have, and we can still have delivered cleaner vehicles, lower fuel costs and a transport system that actually meets our climate goals. All it would have taken was a little bit more ambition and a little less knee jerk reaction, as evidenced most graphically through the way that this bill was handled at the committee stage.
At the committee stage, due to report back in December, the chair of the committee clearly has a conversation with the Minister. All of a sudden, we have to report it back to the House that day. We come to the House; we come prepared for a committee of the whole House stage to find that the Government itself isn't prepared to be able to conduct those proceedings effectively or well. So therefore, there's no other graphic example of the fact that this is all completely knee jerk, not well thought out, and here we find ourselves.
This bill weakens the standards; it slows decarbonisation and leaves us further behind. For those reasons, Labour absolutely does not support this bill, and we are, in fact, proud to oppose it.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I’m a big fan of electric vehicles; I’ve got two in own household, and I welcome the pragmatic changes that we’ve made to this bill to ensure a fair, efficient, and balanced sustainable clean vehicle system. I do welcome the review of the scheme. I think there are some really fundamental flaws with the scheme, and I welcome the Minister’s six-month review of it. It’s going to keep costs lower, which Ryan Hamilton knows is really key for his electorate, and all of our electorates around the country, with the cost of living pressures. With that, I commend this bill to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you. I got myself in a bit of a hot water in an earlier session on this bill, and it was because I talked about the impact on children. I don’t want to repeat the mistake, so I think I’ll just stick to my children and my grandchildren. I said at that time—and I’m being now quoted in the Herald as talking about my “hopeful” grandchildren because I don’t have any, I just want them. I want them to be in an environment where they don’t get asthma. I have a niece who grew up in an area of Auckland where there’s a dip, down in Freemans Bay, and she has had quite bad childhood asthma, and I don’t want that to be repeated.
What we have here is a bill that—and I want to focus on this one issue, because I think it’s a good thing to contribute in that way. I think it’s important that we actually think about the realities for our communities.
I represent Mt Albert, and it has an area in it called Wesley now—that’s in the new boundary change. It’s right down in the dip by the motorway, and it’s had a lot of State housing, so the houses have sort of stopped for a while, so they’re not necessarily as well insulated as they would be, because the Government has decided not to rebuild that area—there was a big plan to rebuild it. They are in the area most impacted by that motorway.
I went in and had a look at a report from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago. It was released in July of 2022, and it was talking just about the pollution that is the impact—that is clearly accepted by everybody here—of greater emissions; it’s something that’s going to happen. So there are two types of pollutive material. There’s one called particulate matters, and then there’s the nitrogen dioxide, and that’s the big one from cars. There’s $15.6 billion of damage done by pollution in this country, and a fair part of that is from nitrogen dioxide, from the emission of petrol and diesel cars—3,300 deaths per annum in Auckland alone. Sorry, in Auckland alone it’s just over 900; it’s 3,300 deaths per annum across the country. It’s 13,100 hospital admissions. That’s a lot of people. It’s contributing to childhood illnesses, it’s contributing to premature deaths.
That was one of the reasons why I was incredibly proud of being on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee when we brought into place the law which had this that’s being reversed today, and it had a subsidy to electric vehicles. I, too, shared some of the scepticism about a subsidy on first, brand-new electric vehicles, and I worried—just as Minister Bishop is worrying—about the impact on families who couldn’t afford those vehicles. But I was quickly convinced that what happens is those vehicles run through the market. Wealthier people buy them and they run through the market and you end up with a lot more electric vehicles. And that’s what happened. That’s why Scott, my friend Scott Wilson, who talked about his—
Cameron Brewer: Willis.
HELEN WHITE: Sorry—Scott Willis, who talked about his child being able to buy a $5,000 Leaf. He could do that not because it was a first-hand vehicle but because it was a second.
As I said in my last speech, I do respect that it’s different if you’re a tradie. I do respect that it’s a very different thing, and I do respect the need for choice. But I think it’s a myth to suggest that that overrides everything else. When you weigh death of children in my area with great amounts of choice which is unnecessary—
Cameron Brewer: Not your area, it’s their area.
HELEN WHITE: —when you weigh that—and you do have to weigh it—guess which wins? For the Labour Party, it’s actually making sure that we clean up our environment and that pollutant side too. And, actually, it is my area. I am very proud to represent the area, but I also live in the area of Mt Albert and I have for a long time.
It’s incredibly important to me that this isn’t a political football that gets misrepresented as some sort of attack on working people, because it’s the working people in those houses. It’s the working people who need to have safe housing, they need good jobs, and they need clean air in New Zealand.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is practical and it's affordable. The importers are currently having to pay more, and that, ultimately, lands on the consumers, who are the tradies and the farmers. This bill takes the pressure off Kiwis still dealing with the fiscal spoon of medicine that the last Government dealt up to them. If the members of the Opposition want more Kiwis using electric vehicles or hybrids, then guess what? They need cheap, abundant power. They should have voted for the fast-track bill, because there's a shortage of renewable energy, and that’s in large part due to the rash decision to ban oil and gas and a complete failure to plan. I commend this bill.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s good to rise today to speak on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2). I’ve been listening to the contributions across the House, and particularly very keenly to Government members and the contributions that they’ve made, because, in fact, it is the Government that has called us in, in urgency, for what they believe is an urgent bill. This land transport amendment bill seems to be urgent to this Government and the legislation that they have to put through. How is this an immediate priority for the average New Zealander that is sitting at home, dealing with the economic mismanagement of this Government and, in fact, the cost of living crisis that they promised—they promised—to clean up? But they just haven’t been getting ahead. It’s a dismal, dismal failure.
In listening to the contributions from the other side of the House, I was intrigued to hear one of the National Party MPs say that he owned two electric vehicles, and when questioned by Opposition members as to whether he received the subsidy, there was no answer—no answer. Opposition members continued to ask, “Did you receive the subsidy?”—no answer. I’d take that as meaning that that particular National Party MP did indeed receive the subsidy for his electric vehicles—
Laura McClure: Does he need it?
SHANAN HALBERT: But he received it, and the importance of that is that the Government is advocating from a cost perspective that suddenly this impacted on the cost of working people.
I remember that in this legislation when it was initially put forward before our Transport and Infrastructure Committee under the last Government, one of the goals there was to really clean up the fleet of cars that New Zealand receives at the very bottom of the world. Everyone acknowledged that we had a problem because of our proximity to where cars and vehicles were made across the globe. It took a while for them to get their way via Australia and then back down to Aotearoa New Zealand, and so it’s not an easy task in that sense.
By influencing the market, the intention was to be able to create a cleaner fleet of vehicles that were available to New Zealanders—those that can afford them, like the National Party MP. He might be able to afford it up front—or two, in fact—with the subsidy, I’ll say. But, in turn, New Zealanders do tend to buy second-hand cars, and that is normal for the average New Zealander. So second-hand and third-hand cars became cleaner over the generations that they were passed down, and that’s an important part. By changing this back, we, in fact, continue to hold and grow the number of dirty cars.
When we think about the emissions contribution that our transport fleet makes in Aotearoa, it was 43 percent at the time that we discussed it—43 percent of emissions came directly from our transport fleet. That’s a significant amount, and so we needed to make tweaks in the ways that we could in order to reduce the emissions in different parts. For those of us who live in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, unless you’re a tradie, it’s unnecessary, really, for us to purchase utes as our primary vehicle. It’s very difficult to get around through congestion in a large vehicle in Auckland. We tend to be one passenger per car still, and that is largely problematic for us and it’s the reason why we experience such significant congestion.
But if the argument of the Government members today is that this is about reducing costs, then I’d put it back on them that, actually, things have become more expensive in transport under their watch. What we’ve seen is road-user charges (RUCs) go up. What we’ve seen is the introduction of congestion charging, and—don’t get me wrong—we support that. But it’s still an additional cost to the average worker that is driving from A to B. Warrants of fitness have gone up. Driver licensing is no longer free. As an alternative, the cost of public transport is double what it was two to three years ago, simply—well, I blame that one directly on Simeon Brown, because he cut $1.2 billion out of Auckland to save for road projects outside of Auckland. So poor old Auckland Council has had to actually prop up and ensure that people can use our public transport fleet, and that was something that I raised within the debate on the congestion charging legislation that was before us.
This is quite a backwards move, and I come back to the point that, within urgency, the role of this House is to consider legislation in a timely way. We’ve heard about the issues within the select committee process, but it was also disappointing today that we didn’t have a regulatory impact statement on the Table. We had a Minister answering our questions and waving a regulatory impact statement that none of us had access to, and all he could say was, “Well, it’s available on the website.”—no. We knew we were going into urgency at least 48 hours ago. Why has that information not been made public and available for us—the Opposition—to do our job?
Reuben Davidson: What’s he hiding?
SHANAN HALBERT: Certainly, what are they hiding, and we’ve seen that over consecutive weeks. That is of concern, not only to myself but particularly to our communities out there. They’re wondering what the heck is going on with this Government, because it just doesn’t seem focused on the things that matter. It hasn’t created a response to the cost of living. Instead, here we are, in urgency, sitting until Saturday, debating the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill (No 2).
Our view is very clear. We laid that out in the dissenting view. The bill prioritises short-term convenience—that is a symptom of this Government; the “short-termism”—and the convenience for importers over meaningful emissions reduction. Extending the carbon credit lifespans from three years to four years undermines annual accountability and it will slow decarbonisation. There are new trading rules between new and used importers, despite a two-for-one ratio risk, incentivising more used, higher-emitting imports. The bill creates loopholes that allow older, less-efficient vehicles to remain dominant in the market, instead of shifting the fleet. This is a missed opportunity to strengthen the clean vehicle standard, and this particular bill before us today, in urgency, is weakening just that.
I don’t know what the Government is focused on or where the Government is focused, because for the average person, this isn’t going to make a difference, but particularly to our future generations, with global warming and—yes—with climate change happening, actually, the little decisions that we make today will count for a better tomorrow. But, instead, for the National Government, the National MPs, the ACT Party MPs, and the New Zealand First MPs in the House today, this is their priority. This is how they’re responding to the needs of New Zealanders when they’re stuck in a cost of living crisis.
Because of this Government’s economic mismanagement, they haven’t been able to change a thing. They’re putting up an argument today that it’s going to save New Zealanders money—what a load of whatever—when, in fact, their Government has increased costs in transport every single way that we look at it, whether it be RUCs, whether it be the warrants of fitness, or whether it be public transport. This is a terrible bill, and I do not commend it to the House.
SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The rules imposed by the previous Government were ridiculous. They were too stringent, and they caused unnecessary costs. This bill's about reducing the cost of living, which the people on this side of the House are relentlessly focused on, and it's about backing our farmers and tradies and reducing the import fees on their loved workhorses, like $1,000 on a Hilux over $1,400 on a Mitsubishi Triton. I commend this 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 third time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing) on behalf of the Minister for Media and Communications: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): 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 Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.
I’m pleased to introduce this bill on behalf of the Minister for Media and Communications. This is one of two telecommunications bills that make targeted changes to support competition, foster innovation, and help stimulate economic growth. The Minister sought for these bills to be associated, but the request was not successful. This omnibus bill will ensure that overseas telecommunications providers are explicitly subject to telecommunications regulatory obligations, where relevant, to create an even playing field between our home-grown telcos and those offshore.
Like many of us, the telecommunications regulatory regime did not anticipate that we would be buying mobile and broadband services that aren’t in New Zealand, but the market is evolving quickly and it is expected that more and more telecommunications services will be delivered to New Zealand by offshore providers. The fact that our telecommunications legislation doesn’t explicitly capture these providers creates uncertainty for the telco industry, regulators, and, of course, consumers. While existing telco providers operating in New Zealand are committed to complying with our telco law where it applies to them, this gap could create problems for us in the future, particularly if a regulator ever wanted to enforce a breach against a provider that was not cooperative.
This bill makes it clear that telecommunications providers that offer services to Kiwis can be subject to our telco law. This has two main benefits. One, an even playing field supports competition in the New Zealand market. It means that a Kiwi company won’t have more regulatory costs than an offshore company that might be able to skirt beyond the rules. Two, it also provides an additional layer of consumer protection for Kiwi consumers, because it will be clear to anyone retailing to New Zealanders that they must comply with relevant consumer protection obligations in the telco Act.
The bill also creates a bespoke enforcement mechanism to address non-compliance by using radio spectrum licensing. While our preference is to use existing enforcement mechanisms for breaches of telco law, which means that action is taken through the courts, some offshore providers may not be willing to engage with these processes. This new power is intended to be a last resort, and the bill includes a number of considerations before the power can be used.
We welcome new innovative technology providers, particularly ones that provide high-quality connectivity services for New Zealanders. This bill is about making sure that our regulatory regime, which is about promoting competition and protecting consumers, keeps up to date with the rapid pace of change in the market. I encourage members and the public to have their say on this bill through the select committee process, and in the meantime, I commend the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill to this House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It's a privilege to stand and take a call on the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill, and it's a privilege because we know that connectivity is absolutely critical. We know this is an important part of our resilience across New Zealand. We are vulnerable to ever-increasing changes in weather patterns, and that resilience of connectivity becomes critical in those times of response, but it's also critical for us so that we can take our place on the world stage. There are opportunities across New Zealand, opportunities that often look like jobs and industries that can continue to grow. Now, these can and should be able to be based anywhere in New Zealand, and connectivity is often the barrier that allows that to happen or not.
We know that the world seeks us out. It seeks New Zealand out for our innovation, for the kinds of things we can create, for the kinds of products and services we can provide. So we should do everything we can to remove the barriers that isolate us and instead do what we can to enable New Zealand and New Zealanders to deliver to a world that is waiting. So Labour does support the efforts to modernise the regulation of the telecommunications sector.
New Zealanders, especially, as I've said, in those rural areas, are increasingly reliant on extraterritorial communications or telecommunications infrastructure, such as our low Earth orbit or LEO satellite services, and we're seeing those both from Starlink and also from Amazon Web Services with Project Kuiper coming online here in New Zealand, ahead of many other parts of the world. We need to make sure that these providers are subject to the same regulatory obligations as the companies with greater physical infrastructure here as well. And we need to make sure that those who live in rural or remote places are not left behind as a result through their use of the kinds of technologies, and in many cases the only kinds of technologies, that are available to them by virtue of their geography.
So this bill is part of a programme of regulatory reform to ensure that the environment the telecommunications sector operates in is fit for purpose and in line with changes that are occurring, and occurring rapidly, in the market. This bill amends the Telecommunications Act 2001 to ensure that overseas telecommunications providers who provide services to end users here in New Zealand are subject to the regulatory obligations regardless of whether they or the infrastructure they rely on is based in New Zealand or not. If we're talking about low Earth orbit or higher, then often a large part of that infrastructure is not based here in New Zealand.
These regulations include the telecommunications development levy, minimum requirements for emergency calls. We need to make sure that those dangerous black spots where you cannot seek the support or assistance that you will often need—need to be able to provide that for us. The bill also amends the Radiocommunications Act 1989 to create an enforcement mechanism to provide that radio or spectrum licences may be revoked, suspended, or restricted when or if telecommunications providers do not comply with their obligations.
Now, as the introduction speech from across the House alluded to, the Minister for Media and Communications asked for this bill to be wrapped into the other Telecommunications Amendment Bill that had its first reading last week, but the proposals in both bills are qualitatively different. I must admit there were two reasons I was surprised that the Minister asked to associate the bills: the first because the area and scope of each bill is so different, and the second because for a Minister who promised immediate action 18 months ago and has done next to nothing since, I would’ve expected keeping the bills separate would’ve at least kept up the premise that he's busy and doing things in this portfolio space when, in fact, he is doing very, very little.
So I think because we support this bill, it's important to come back to why. We support this bill because it's critical that we keep New Zealanders connected. It's also critical that consumers are on a level playing field. So we will support this bill to make sure that happens, but we do expect to see more from the Minister in this space.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill. We also note that there could have been an opportunity to have this bill grouped with the other telecommunications bill that is in front of us, but we agree with the previous speaker that there are two distinct issues here that we need to address.
In relationship to this bill, we support it, and we note that it is important that Parliament is able to adapt as new technologies emerge and key services change the way that they provide things like internet to our communities. For example, we've got services like Starlink, which can provide internet in some parts of our country. While I acknowledge that right now, through gaps within the sector, Starlink has become a relatively big player when in areas where perhaps there is little internet access, there is now a gap because there could be—and providers that, effectively, don't have to set foot into the country for people to be able to access those very same services. Those providers may be owned by billionaires who may not always be seeking to represent the best interests of our communities.
I think it is important that this bill helps us create regulatory requirements that, basically, bring those in line with providers that would be operating, literally, physically onshore. Some of these include contributing to telecommunication levies, where the provider meets existing liability tests and legislation; complying with relevant retail service quality requirements, for example—and this is an important part—complying with Commerce Commission codes or the requirement to join a dispute resolution scheme. This is where there's a new obligation seeking to be established in the other telecommunications amendment bill. That part will, in my view, help support consumers as well, and I think it'll be important to see in the select committee how this could be tested out in complying with obligations of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, including those relating to interception capability and network security.
The bill also has some related enforcement mechanisms being put in place, and we think that this will be useful to also test out at the select committee stage. The reality is that telecommunications services are becoming more and more essential for people to, literally, be able to move around their daily lives. Access to the internet would have been seen as a “nice to have” a few decades ago, but nowadays, literally, as our Government moves to digitise more of its Government services, access to things like the internet are, literally, essential services. I think the legislation that we had previously would have not adequately recognised this nor would have anticipated that many of these telecommunication services, as I mentioned earlier, would have been set up in a way that meant some of these internet providers, for example, would not have to set foot in the country. Yet what we do have is, for example—say that you're a person on income support, living in an area that's deprived of internet through ordinary means.
These services could provide a lifeline for people to have the means to, literally, survive. That is power that, therefore, is handed over to, often, corporates that would be running these telecommunication services. Having these regulatory frameworks and requirements being placed upon them is important, because it's critical that these corporations are subjected to the very same requirements that telecommunication providers onshore would. That's critical, as well, because when it comes to contributing to telecommunication levies, we know that some of these providers, like Starlink, are owned by people who have a huge amount of wealth, who clearly have huge amounts of resources, and they should be contributing through those levies. We should not be creating them to be exempt from them. It will also be interesting to evaluate, at the select committee stage, how much these levies are likely to provide to the country. So we also look forward to further analysis being made and unpacked at that stage for us, to be able to evaluate the benefits of this bill.
So the Green Party is supporting this bill because we recognise the need for us to build cross-party consensus to modernise our legislation in light of new technology and services. We look forward to our colleagues evaluating this in the select committee.
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): What an exciting time we live in. Who would have thought, only a few years ago, that this little device [Holds up cellphone] could connect to a satellite in the sky, and, actually, anywhere in New Zealand, you could send a message and soon you’ll be able to speak on it. It really is an exciting time. It’s great to know that, today, I think, we’re going to have cross-party support to send this bill to a select committee so these issues around overseas providers of telecommunications technologies can be looked at. It’s really great.
We have already heard that we have a company like Starlink, for example—we have a very high uptake of Starlink connections per capita in New Zealand. That is because of our unique geography, but it does mean that more and more New Zealanders have access to very fast internet regardless of where they live in the country. We are going to soon also have the ability for Amazon Leo, which will be launched next year. I really am looking forward to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee looking at this, so let’s get the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill linked back up with the other bill we passed in the House. I commend this bill.
JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill. As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Media and Communications, it is a pleasure to stand to speak to this bill, acknowledging the Minister’s contribution in the first reading of this bill.
Now, this bill is really important, because it provides clarity to ensure that overseas companies who provide telecommunications services to New Zealanders are, in fact, subject to our telecommunications laws and obligations, regardless of whether they or the infrastructure they are using is based in New Zealand or overseas. The bill will provide a mechanism to also address non-compliance or any breaches of that. It’s an omnibus bill; it amends three pieces of legislation, the Telecommunications Act 2001, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act—also called TICSA—2013, and the Radiocommunications Act 1989. These amendments are primarily targeted to satellite providers, but they could in fact apply to future types of delivery that are yet to be developed.
Some have mentioned Starlink. Currently, there are about 7,000 active satellites in their constellation. We’ve seen remarkable growth in New Zealand—a significant satellite market uptake here. In 2024, the Telecommunications Monitoring Report noted that satellites serve around 50,000 rural customers; 19 percent of all rural connections are via satellite, and it’s the fastest-growing broadband service in New Zealand at the moment.
We’ve heard about Amazon Leo, and although there is no start date yet for it, they’ll be launching about 3,000 satellites into their constellation when they begin operations. While there’s no confirmed start date, as I mentioned, it is expected to be a major competitor to Starlink, which will provide excellent competition for price and also performance—so that’ll be good competitive pricing for customers in New Zealand.
If overseas providers are delivering services to New Zealanders and to New Zealand households, they need to fulfil their obligations, and there are three obligations under telecommunications. One is that if they have a gross income of more than $10 million, they need to be contributing to the Telecommunications Development Levy. That levy contributes towards the 111 system and also to the relay service for the deaf, so it’s important that they contribute as a levy for that. The second obligation is that they need to be part of the Telecommunications Dispute Resolution Scheme. Over the last three years, every year, about three and a half thousand people have laid a complaint for some problem with their telco service. Starlink currently doesn’t—there’s nowhere to go for people to complain, so bringing them in under this obligation would be a good thing for those who have a Starlink service. The third obligation is relating to regulations for emergency calling, and including our overseas providers simply makes absolutely logical sense given the essential nature of telco services.
Finally, the bill provides clarity for the overseas providers’ obligations under the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, or TICSA, and it makes it explicitly clear that New Zealand legislation applies, and the overseas provider must follow lawful intercept and security requests under TICSA. For these reasons, I commend the bill to the House.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill in this first reading. This bill is an omnibus bill, as has been described earlier, and it is bringing together a range of modernisations to bring communications Acts into the modern era. I commend the bill to the House.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Obviously, we'll support a bill that brings a bit of equity out there. It's a fair-paying bill. It's going to ensure that our rural communities are all set up. So, obviously, Labour will support this type of bill.
But I think the real question is how useless the Minister for Media and Communications really is—so useless that he can't even turn up to actually speak on his own bill. The other question is how useless is Jenny Marcroft, but, I mean—
Jenny Marcroft: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It’s not appropriate for a member to call out whether a member is in the House or not in the House, as the case may be, as Willie Jackson just did.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah. Can I ask the Hon Willie Jackson to refrain from talking about the absence members in the House.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, OK, thanks, Mr Speaker. OK, well, the real question, then, is how useless is the member for New Zealand First, because she was speaking on the wrong bill. So I've just got to ask that question.
Jamie Arbuckle: Point of order, Mr Speaker. That is unparliamentary, and we take offence to those types of comments.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Just to clarify, you can't take personal offence on behalf of somebody else.
Jenny Marcroft: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at being called useless. I think that's something where the member clearly was looking in the mirror at himself.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I've got a mind to make you both withdraw and apologise, to be honest, but I'm going to call it a draw and go back to the Hon Willie Jackson.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Please refrain from calling people useless, Mr Jackson.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, Mr Speaker.
This bill is really important, because in terms of broadcasting—and I want to talk about this in a broader sense, and this is a bill we'll support, obviously, because they're both part of a programme of regulatory reform to ensure that the regulatory environment of the telecommunications sector operates in a fit-for-purpose way. So, obviously, we're going to support the bill.
But I question and challenge what this Government is doing in this area. We've got a spokesperson for broadcasting here who has challenged this Minister to come up with something, to do something, in terms of broadcasting. Still on the Order Paper, we've got the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. If you really want to help broadcasting, do something, actually do something, for media outlets out there. Now, the Fair Digital News Bargaining bill, which I actually championed in terms of this House, when I was the broadcasting Minister, looks after communities, makes sure that big companies pay their way instead of taking news from the local newspapers. This useless lot on the other side, they've got their local newspapers, who've been ripped off by big corporate companies, and they don't care. The Minister of broadcasting doesn't care, despite giving assurances to the broadcasting world that—
Jenny Marcroft: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —the digital bargaining bill was on the line. Oh, useless again. OK.
Jenny Marcroft: Just bringing the member back to the bill, it's the communications bill—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Sit down. I will determine whether he is on par with the bill, is that understood?
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. For that member, she should know, having been a spokesperson for broadcasting, that the media people around the country are crying out for support. The little people that that member and these members on the other side purport to represent, they are all losing their jobs. The journalist and media industry has halved in the last few years. Newspapers have closed up everywhere. Why? Because this useless Government is doing nothing. All they're doing is amending bills like this, which anybody could do. You don't even need a broadcasting Minister to amend these types of bills. A blind man could change these bills. But here's the question. Do something for the people. We had the digital bargaining bill, we had Newshub close down, and we had all these journalists knocked off or lost their jobs because of this useless broadcasting Minister, who didn't come up with a plan, didn't come up with a—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Mr—
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Come back to the bill?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Come back to the bill. I’d be grateful if you came back to the bill.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I was coming back to it, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah, come back to it right now.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Okay, just for you, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Just for me—just for me.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The bill also amends the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Oh, he’s reading it. This is great.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —to ensure that the existing provisions of that Act apply to network operators who provide services to New Zealanders—who've been ripped off by this Government, ripped off by this Minister of broadcasting, who has done nothing in terms of providing a strategy for journalists, for media people. All he's done is taken funding off Radio New Zealand. What's happened in Māori broadcasting? No funding. Why? Because you've got a useless Minister for Māori Development—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Back to the bill.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, I’ll come back to the bill, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Try reading some of it. There you go.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: But the bill ensures that both domestic and overseas providers operate on a level playing field. Now, we all agree with that, don't we? We all agree with that. It would be a better a playing field if this useless broadcasting Minister could actually do something for our media people, for our journalists all over the country. Shame on him and shame on this Government. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Well, that was an incredibly long five minutes.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Not only was it long, it was abysmal for someone who should know better. The only thing the former Minister can broadcast is hot air. I am glad to stand in support of the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill. Telecommunications is very important. We saw with the previous National Government the introduction of the ultra-fast broadband programme, and by 2033 it’s projected to add $163 billion to our economy. That highlights how important telecommunication is. But we need a level playing field and that’s what this bill does. I commend it to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I think we can all agree that no matter what I say, I'm going to look calm and collected—though I agree with everything that the Hon Willie Jackson said. Heoi anō rā, e tū ana au ki te tautoko i tēnei pire, e te Māngai o te Whare; I do stand in support of this bill, because, at the heart of it, this bill is about connection and, of course, ensuring good quality governance of excellent connection.
I want to talk about a place in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti I haven't been to for a very long time: my house. Where I live, I live up a dirt road on a farm—where I actually do drive a Personal All-Terrain Vehicle, actually, whānau. Heoi anō, where I live on Maraehara Road, there is no cellphone coverage, and recently, landlines have been disabled. Some might say that's the price of living in paradise, and while I agree we live in paradise, it is also a significant safety risk—you know, to not be able to ring 111. So over the years, we have become increasingly reliant on the internet for things such as Wi-Fi calling to stay connected and continue to make phone calls.
It's also appropriate that our marae—symbols and hubs of connection throughout Ngāti Porou—provide connectivity for whānau through providing internet services, particularly in our rural areas. The issue of connectivity became absolutely undeniable during Cyclone Gabrielle. Not only were we physically cut off with roads closed in and out, stopping delivery of food, etc., but all telecommunications were gone. The only means of communication we had were (1) me physically going around knocking on people's doors to tell them what the civil defence plans and instructions were, and (2) good old Radio Ngāti Porou–Te Reo o te Iwi, who's been bringing people together for years.
While disconnected, there was no EFTPOS, we couldn't access online banking, so I just want to acknowledge the local businesses, particularly supermarkets, who showed the locals goodwill by offering them credit. Then came saviours by way of our own iwi and iwi from across Aotearoa and whānau from across Aotearoa, some not even related to those of us cut off—they came and provided aid through the provision of Starlink.
And so there we were: we were back in business and we were back connected. Whānau were able to contact their relations around the world to say “Kei te pai mātou, kei te ora mātou”; “We're OK, we're alive, we're safe. We are cut off, but we don't mind being isolated off the East Coast.”—and so it became the norm throughout the East Coast. We had marae, we had fire stations, we had community hubs with satellite dishes outside, keeping us all connected.
So while we love that service, we all know that fairness is the Kiwi way, and this bill will clarify that although offshore, these services being provided for in Aotearoa must be subject to the same regulations as domestic providers. That includes paying levies to help support ongoing development and—one of our favourite words up the coast—infrastructure, which is sorely needed throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti.
Of course, in a time of increased cybersecurity awareness, of course there has been some scepticism about what's going on with all these satellite dishes. Who's watching us? Who's in control of us? The stronger enforcement powers enable—
Hon Judith Collins: You’d be surprised.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Oh, what's that?
Hon Judith Collins: I said you’ll be very surprised who’s watching you.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: No, I wouldn't—I wouldn't. After sitting in this House with you guys for two years, I would not be surprised.
So the increased security is something we do support. But like I said, at its heart—and the reason I support it on behalf of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti—is that this is about connection. It's about keeping people connected in a quality way through quality infrastructure and providing quality governance. I commend this bill to the House.
SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill ensures that telcos based overseas will be subject to New Zealand’s regulatory regime. It strengthens oversight. I commend this bill to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is, That the Telecommunications and Other Matters Amendment Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.
Bills
Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Land Information) on behalf of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology: I present a legislative statement on the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): 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 Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.
It’s a pleasure to bring this bill to the House on behalf of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. The purpose of the bill is to allow for MetService, a State-owned enterprise—or SOE—to be acquired by Earth Sciences New Zealand, a Crown research institute referred to in the bill by its legal name: the New Zealand Institute for Earth Science Limited. The bill also will require Earth Sciences New Zealand to publish its access policy for observational weather data.
The bill brings our two Crown-owned weather forecasting companies back together. It will provide more connected weather forecasting and investment for the wellbeing and safety of New Zealanders, protect our infrastructure, and support the growth of our economy. Weather forecasting provides many economic, social, environmental, and cultural benefits to New Zealanders. It’s an input to many of the goods and services we enjoy. Accurate and timely weather forecasting allows for safer travel and personal pursuits, more informed farming, and better decisions on how and where to build infrastructure.
For example, farmers rely on short- and long-term forecasts to plan irrigation and protect crops. Knowing when rain or severe weather is coming can mean the difference between a good harvest and safe animals on the one hand, or a costly loss. Further, airlines rely on accurate and timely weather forecasts for route selection and safer air travel. Weather forecasting is also relied upon heavily in the built environment—for example, in terms of building site selection, resilience and design, worker safety, build scheduling, and project budgeting. Of course, as cricket fans know, the reliable way to know if rain is forecast for a particular area is to check cricinfo for an upcoming one-day international, T20, or test match.
Bringing the nation’s two weather forecasters together was a key recommendation in the weather forecasting review. I acknowledge our colleague and friend, the Hon Judith Collins, for some of her early work in that regard—of course, brought forward subsequently by our other colleague and friend in this space, the Hon Dr Shane Reti.
We expect to address a number of identified problems as a result of the review now leading to this legislation, including uncertainty during severe weather events due to inconsistent messaging from having two Crown-owned weather forecasters. This has created increased risks to public safety, infrastructure, property, and the economy; next, a lack of integration between climate science, forecasting, hydrology, and coastal hazards—resulting in fragmented weather forecasting advice; and, finally, inefficiencies within the weather forecasting system, as evidenced by duplicated effort and investment. [Maureen Pugh takes the Chair]
This change will provide a more connected weather forecasting system that brings climate science, forecasting, hydrology, and coastal hazards together to provide truly integrated advice. The change will deliver economic benefits by providing holistic weather forecasting that individuals and businesses can rely upon. It will also improve understanding of hazards, strengthening our ability to plan for and build resilience against severe weather events. Madam Speaker’s own electorate is all too familiar with the dangers associated with heavy and severe weather events such as flooding.
Put simply, we are creating a weather forecasting system that meets the needs of New Zealand now and into the future. Key features of the bill include that it is relatively short but technical. It’s designed to enable the acquisition of MetService and improve transparency around weather data policies. But I would like to take this opportunity to summarise some of its key features.
Specifically, the bill: (1) removes MetService from the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, allowing it to be acquired by Earth Sciences New Zealand; (2) exempts the acquisition of MetService by Earth Sciences New Zealand from Part 3 of the Commerce Act 1986—a relief to us all, I’m sure—(3) requires Earth Sciences New Zealand to publish its access policy for observational weather data; and (4) includes standard provisions to make the transition smooth and protect existing agreements. For example, the acquisition won’t give anyone the right to cancel a lease, end a contract, or speed up obligations just because the ownership changes.
Following the acquisition, MetService will cease to be a State-owned enterprise and will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Earth Sciences New Zealand. Bringing MetService and Earth Sciences New Zealand together is a broader part of the organisational changes we are making to our science, innovation, and technology system. These changes to the weather forecasting system are part of the biggest science system reforms in over 30 years, creating scale, efficiency, and alignment across our science organisations so that they deliver greater benefits for all of New Zealand.
This bill is about more than integrating organisations. It is about building a weather forecasting system that protects lives, strengthens our economy, and ensures that New Zealand is ready for the challenges of a clang—changing climate. And a changing final paragraph. I commend this bill to the House.
REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Madam Speaker, thank you. It's a privilege to take a call on the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill. I just would like to acknowledge, it being Movember, the member who has just taken his seat’s attempt at supporting Movember. It's evident we're under urgency, because I had hoped that it would have advanced since the last bill, but it remains more of a suggestion than a Selleck.
The bill at hand today: the purpose of this bill is to allow for the acquisition of the Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited—we know it as the MetService—by the New Zealand Institute for Earth Sciences Limited, or the NZIES, and to require the NZIES to publish its access policy for observational weather data. That's what this bill sets out to do. MetService, as we've heard, is the designated provider of severe weather forecasts and warnings for New Zealand under the Meteorological Service Act 1990, and is currently a State-owned enterprise. Its purpose is to help us all stay safe; to help us all make informed decisions based on timely and accurate weather forecasts, including during severe weather events. We have seen—and even in the last bill talked about—some of the impacts those can have.
Now, it's important up to make it clear that reform was required in this space, but cuts are cuts and I will continue to call them out when we see them. It's important that we talk about what's really going on across our science sector and across our science community, because whilst we can talk about alignment and whilst we can talk about “going for growth”, what we need to see in this sector is that that growth and that talk of alignment is actually matched in budget and is actually matched in investment, and is actually an investment into these important fields of work and expertise.
Instead, what we're seeing at this point in time is a huge number of job losses. We're seeing bigger investments in redundancies at Callaghan Innovation of $11 million than we are in some really important areas of our science sector and science community, so let's not kid ourselves when we talk about “going for growth” and when we talk about investing in innovation and when we talk about investing in research and development. Let's not kid ourselves that what we're actually seeing here in real terms is cuts—cuts to the sector that drives discovery, that drives our science, that drives our innovation. Let's not dress all of that up and disguise those very real cuts, those very real job losses in our science sector, that will mean that that we continue to lose many of our best and brightest overseas, where the opportunities are.
This is not just me calling this out. This is a number of people across the sector, including the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Science Prize, who has had some fairly blunt things to say both about the Prime Minister and particularly about the science budget, or the lack thereof—the reprioritisation of funding into things like roads rather than into critical areas of science, where it could make a real difference for all New Zealanders. There's a suspicion that this is a Government that wants to silence science rather than invest properly in it to see the kind of innovation that New Zealand needs and that New Zealand deserves.
What this bill also does—to come back to it—is it amends the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986 to remove the listing of MetService as a State enterprise. It also exempts the acquisition of MetService by NZIES from Part 3 of the Commerce Act. One of the other things that I think we need to keep a close eye on is that it amends the State-Owned Enterprises (Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited and Vehicle Testing New Zealand Limited) Amendment Act 1999 to repeal certain provisions in the Act that will become redundant when this bill is enacted. Now, I said that very quickly, so you may have missed that “Vehicle Testing New Zealand Limited” is in there too. For a Government that's also started talking about wanting to sell some things off, I think we need to keep a very close eye on anything that starts to move the areas in which some of these State-owned assets sit—starts to move some of that legislation around. So we do support the bill, but not a Government that disrespects and underfunds science, and that what is what we've got at the moment.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As we have heard, this reform is part of the biggest science system reforms in 30 years. The Green Party supports this bill, but we support it with concerns. We want to express some concerns, because of course we have seen a Government that is not favouring science, despite a reform that we heard and we understand is making some good progress in some areas. But as my colleague Rueben Davidson has just said, there are very real job losses in our science sector. We are experiencing a brain drain at the moment. The bigger picture is that these reforms are probably transgressing all of Vannevar Bush’s five fundamentals—that stability; we want stability in the science sector.
At the moment, we’ve got hypercontestability—full cost funding, politicisation of science and priorities, and defunding. And that is a problem. That is a problem, because if we politicise science, we lose the true value of it for society. We also see that there’s a lack of expertise and experience because we are seeing a loss of capability because of the job losses, because of the defunding of our science sector. We are losing people. We are losing some of our youngest and brightest, but we’re also losing some of our most experienced, at this point in time.
So that’s another concern. We don’t think that the Government should operate or direct the laboratories funded. What we’re seeing is an ongoing erosion of independent governance. There we see some institutional independence at risk, and we also must ensure that we’ve got accountability, but we’ve got, at the moment, overheads, lack of transparency, in what’s happening in our science system. So while this merging makes sense, we are seeing a whole range of other issues in the science sector, because the Government has decided, in its wisdom, that science is not a priority, that science does not need the funding despite the most radical reforms in 30 years—it’s got to find the money to do that from within the sector, and it’s got to try and retain stuff that have no job security, because they don’t know what the hell is going on.
This is where we see the disjuncture between what the Government wants to do—it wants to do the reform of the science system on the cheap. We are one of the countries that invests the least in our science system. We also know that investing in our science system gives us, for every dollar invested, between $8 and $20 back, boosting our economy. But in going for growth, this Government doesn’t value that, because when science disagrees with their desires, such as cutting the methane target, then it is ignored, and this is the real problem that we have.
So while it’s nice to think that we might need to understand what the weather’s doing for cricket games, we also need to know what the cost of reducing our methane target is for our climate commitments, for our climate targets. We also need to know what impact importing dirty cars has for our climate commitments; this is evidence that we need as well.
This is a bill that we will support, but my concern is that this is part of the breakdown in our science system, the de-funding of our critical science system that is sending our youngest, our brightest, and our most capable scientists overseas at a time when we need them the most. That is my concern and that is the concern of the Green Party—that this Government only respects science when it does its bidding, and rejects it when it doesn’t. That is a concern. That’s the politicisation of science that we cannot afford in this country. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I'm taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill. It was very interesting to hear that speech from the Green member Scott Willis. The member thinks that the weather forecast is important only for cricket matches, but the member forgets that our economy is reliant on agriculture and dairy and that the weather forecast is really important for these kinds of industries. That is why we are so focused on ensuring that our weather forecast system works the way it should.
The other point I want to highlight from that member's speech is that the member thinks that the science should not be politicised. I fully agree with the member that science should not be politicised. It is this Government that has established the Science System Advisory Group, to see how we can align science to improve innovation in our country and to contribute to our economic growth.
Now, coming back to the bill, actually, this is a bill I would say is not anything that is debatable, in a sense, because it's a really good move. We know that earlier this year, it was announced that the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) was going to acquire MetService. It's really good to bring these two entities together, our national service and our research institute. That gives a lot more credibility and authority to the weather systems we have in our country. I also want to highlight this: that because of the Science System Advisory Group’s work, our CRIs, our Crown Research Institutes, are being merged into public research organisations. One of the newly formed public research organisations is Earth Sciences New Zealand, and now, because NIWA has become part of this, basically, that is NIWA’s new identity. Now this newly formed institute is going to acquire MetService.
We believe in improving efficiency and improving productivity, in the ACT team. We believe that by doing this, we will be avoiding duplication. We will be merging capabilities. We will be merging data, expertise, and technology. That is going to work really well for the safety of people and also for economic activity in our country. So the ACT Party is supporting this bill and commends this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First): Madam Speaker, thank you. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill. I'd like to sort of reflect a little bit on what some of the Opposition speakers have said to us—both from Labour and from the Greens—in support of this bill, because I don't think it's just simply a rationalisation.
Who remembers the surface pressure map? You know, the lined one on the—yeah? I used to go in my twenties and look at this thing, pick up the Herald, because that was the only place you could get it, so I could see what the tropical cyclones were going to do, hitting Fiji and providing waves for us. Well, they're a little bit more sophisticated these days at the MetService. They've got great research and I really, really enjoy having discussions with them—maybe I'm a little bit of a nerd. But in terms of the sophisticated meteorological software and services they provide—and you start to combine that with what NIWA does; I've had some time to work with NIWA. NIWA have developed the land-based kingfish farming production at Bream Bay, and if you've ever been on the RV Tangaroa vessel and looked at the oceanographic capability that they have, you can say, wow, this is an amazing, amazing group of people adding to the value of our research and science in New Zealand.
A lot of people, though, if you asked them, wouldn't know the difference between MetService and NIWA. Isn't NIWA the guy that comes up on the TV and gives us the weather every day on TVNZ, and that's it? So why are they doing the weather and why is MetService doing the weather? A lot of people won't understand these nuances. On top of that, we have Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited coming together to form this new institute, which is called the New Zealand Institute for Earth Sciences. Well, I think this is actually more a case not of rationalisation; this is a case of synthesis, synthesising these skills, recalibrating so that we can focus on some of the major issues confronting this country right now around hazards, around climate change, and all those sorts of things.
We're getting smart here, and this is the right way to work with our science institutes. It is focusing on the challenges of today—and interesting we used to focus on nuclear sciences; I'm not sure that'll be part of the new challenge going forward. I think that this merger makes complete sense, and if we can get this recalibration, then we're going to get our scientists focusing on the research domains and equip us to meet those major challenges. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill. This is bringing together the organisations that make sense to come together under one organisation, which is the earth sciences, bringing together MetService into this. It brings all of our capabilities in the earth and atmospheric sciences together, and I commend the bill to the House.
ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Speaker—an opportunity to speak about something that will affect all New Zealanders. This is a bill that looks technical, it looks like a rationalisation, or, as New Zealand First has said, a synthesisation. This is about really important services that New Zealanders all need. Aucklanders were affected by the Auckland Anniversary floods—
Simon Court: Auckland Council ignored the warnings.
ARENA WILLIAMS: —and, later, Cyclone Gabrielle had a huge impact on our regions—on growers, on farmers, on people, and, ultimately, a loss of life and limb. It is incredibly important for councils around the country that responders have access to timely and useful data.
I hear Mr Simon Court on the other side saying councils had that accurate and up-to-date data. In fact, what we have learnt from the two reports into the response to those disasters, particularly the Auckland Anniversary floods, is that councils did not receive some of that important weather data in a timely fashion, and it would have changed the way that the response was dealt with. So to be able to rationalise our weather services like this is incredibly important for those locally elected representatives who need to respond quickly, and to all of us in this House who have responsibility for our regions and for making sure the people on the ground can ready themselves, ready their families, and respond to severe weather events that will happen more in future because of policies that we’re seeing that are supported by someone like Mr Court.
So there’s broad support for this merger in the sector—largely our meteorological services in New Zealand have made supportive comments publicly, and that’s important when you consider a history over the years of a competitive environment for these services and a very limited ability to work together and to cooperate because of the way that these things have been structured. It’s important to acknowledge just how much it would have taken for many people in the sector to be able to come around this and get behind this, but that seems to be what has happened here, and that’s a really good thing. It should give all of us some comfort that the goodwill going forward is going to allow this merger to occur in a way that will be cooperative and collaborative. Things like joint unlimited access to the technology, to the super-computer, to both of these organisations’ assets that they are bringing into the merger is a really good thing, and we should see a result from that that will benefit all New Zealanders.
The only points that I wish to raise at this reading, before we consider this further, are that we do have concerns here, particularly around not only the funding of science but also in terms of how these amendments are being done to the State-Owned Enterprises Act. It is very simple in this Act, and it sets out here just how a Government that is so minded would be able to carve off State-owned assets from the protections of the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986, and simply take them out of a schedule and move them into another ownership structure. In this case, it is one where those are largely going to be enjoyed—publicly, they are going to have a public benefit. But it sets out very baldly, in what is a very short Act, just how quick and easy it would be to privatise assets like this that have enjoyed the protections of the State Owned Enterprises Act since the late 1980s in New Zealand.
One thing that’s particularly striking is around the removal of the provisions of the Commerce Act from a merger like this. It’s very simple. It looks like, on page 11, at clause 29, a simple provision that allows Part 3 of the Commerce Act not to apply to an acquisition like this. What does that mean for New Zealanders? It means that these two entities can be merged without any thought of the impact on the downstream consumers or the people who buy their services. In this case, there is a strong rationale for that, but you can imagine an instance where the Government has taken ownership and retained ownership of the State-owned enterprise that is this critical to New Zealand’s ability to respond, in this case, to disasters and severe weather that could occur where you would simply need to take it out of any oversight of the Commerce Commission and to be able to roll this up.
It is very quick, it’s very painless, for a Government moving fast, and a reminder of Geoffrey Palmer’s comments that we have one of the fastest legislatures in the West to be able to do something like this to assets which have been built up over many generations of New Zealanders in their tax dollars. It is something that we must do soberly and we must consider very, very carefully. That is why Labour has expressed reservations about the support here. We’re keen to work this through and we’re keen to ensure that this is a robust process which makes sense for everyone who uses the services and for those responders who need this information into their weather events.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): Excellent, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This bill brings together two Crown-owned weather forecasting companies—brings them back together. It will provide more connected weather-forecasting and investment for the wellbeing and safety of New Zealanders, protect our infrastructure, and support the growth of our economy. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. The Government’s objective is to bring meteorology, climate science, hydrology, and oceanography together to create a stronger, more connected—
Hon Member: Speak up—we can’t hear you!
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: —weather forecasting system to improve New Zealand’s resilience to severe weather events. I must make the point that the heckling coming from that side is so ironic, because it lasts longer than their speeches. If you want to have something to say, at least have the decency to make a decent contribution. Hoi anō rā [However], for now—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I assume that comment was not directed at me.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: OK. Well, I’m just happy to have made that point, Madam Speaker.
Hon Judith Collins: Point of order—point of order.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: It’s quite a disgrace to these bills, I think—
Hon Judith Collins: Point of order.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: —when people take more time to interrupt quality contributions—
Hon Judith Collins: Point of order.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: —than they do to make their own.
Hon Judith Collins: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I think—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Is that a point of order?
Hon Judith Collins: It is. Thank you, Madam Speaker. The fact you couldn’t hear me for five calls for a point of order shows that the member who is speaking—if she could just realise that the microphone is very live, and it’s very loud, and that’s why people are maybe saying, “Can you keep it down a wee bit?”
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Speaking to the point of order.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): It’s not a point of order, and so there’s no need to speak to it.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Thank you, Madam Chair. Now, given the objectives I’ve just outlined, why would we not support it? In particular, why would I not support it when that’s exactly what a holistic Māori worldview has had mai rānō.
When I worked in the broadcasting industry, thankfully we didn’t have to say, “Here are the meteorological reports for the day.” It was as simple as saying,
[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
Here is what’s happening to the wind; here is what’s happening with the tides. We know in te ao Māori, we’ve got Tamanuiterā; we’ve got Te Uira, the lightning; we’ve got Hinepūkohurangi, the mist. These are concepts that we have been living with for a long, long time. For millennia, our ancestors lived by the moon, the tides, the stars, and even behavioural patterns of the birds and animals: planting, harvesting, fishing, diving—my favourite—hunting, travel. Life was determined by these connections with the elements. Now, while there are still many who are still very proficient in our Maramataka Māori, the majority of us simply grab our phones—those of us who are not familiar with isobar patterns—and check what the long-term MetService forecast is.
Therefore, as I said, I’m standing on behalf of the Labour Party to support this bill. This bill also presents an amazing opportunity to continue the work started by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, who worked with iwi, hapū, and whānau to establish Te Kūwaha: working together to integrate and embed mātauranga Māori with modern science, to ensure quality monitoring processes that fit with our country. Through internships also provided through that programme, they have built not only Māori capability but, vice versa, they’ve had access to mātauranga Māori to supplement the science.
As you know, Cyclone Gabrielle has obviously had a massive impact on Te Tairāwhiti, and I want to acknowledge all the emergency response people that we have out there. But that definitely emphasises the importance of quality monitoring.
While I support this, I do really think we can take considerations of the solutions that these might provide for weather-affected communities, particularly those in the area of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. There are a lot of dispossessed people but they want to stay on their whenua, so how can we utilise this science to support that, rather than just find reasons why people have to leave—how can we find reasons to support people and stay? This is also an opportunity to think about how this quality new organisation can support research that will help inform insurance companies in flood-prone areas so that they can not only stay there but also have better consideration to be insured. There are some communities within Ikaroa-Rāwhiti now deemed uninsurable, and I think that is a positive opportunity that this bill could support.
So, as I’ve said, I think this bill has the opportunity to absolutely complement mātauranga Māori, and I commend the bill to the House.
SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): It's a pleasure to be able to rise and speak on the first reading of this bill. You know, we focus on innovation and growing our economy. That is what this bill does. It helps to drive productivity, higher value jobs, and better living standards for New Zealand. I commend it to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.
Bills
Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing): I present a legislative statement on the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and be found on the Parliament website.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: I move, That the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
I made a submission to the Standing Orders Committee yesterday about the value of legislative statements, and I said that they were originally intended to allow Ministers the opportunity to put forward the policy intent of the bill and to no longer have to read from their speech. It would be remiss of me not to try and attempt to put my money where my mouth is and, rather than read my second reading speech, point to the thrust of what the committee came out with in their report—some of the highlights, and some of the lowlights, to be fair, in some of the submissions—and talk about why this bill is an important piece of the hunter-led management conservation framework.
First, can I just start by acknowledging all of those submitters who did submit on the bill at select committee and the work of the Environment Committee in managing the bill through. They’ve come back with a report and the commentary, which doesn’t recommend any substantive changes really, but it does provide some relatively good insight as to the views and thoughts of individuals out there, both in the hunting sector and in the wider conservation sector. I say wider conservation sector because, of course, hunters are part of our conservation efforts. Hunters are one of our best conservation tools. They are the ones that are out there day in, day out, repairing the tracks, resetting the traps, and taking care of species—whether that’s deer, whether that’s goats, whether that’s possums. They’re the ones out there on the ground and doing the work, and they’re the ones that should be acknowledged and appreciated for that work.
I want to acknowledge all our hunters that took time out of their busy days, their busy work schedules, to make submissions on this bill to emphasise the value that hunter-led conservation has in our wild animal management framework, and to emphasise how important an approach like herds of special interest is to more effectively and sustainably managing game animals in New Zealand. Our game animals, while they are introduced species, they are valued introduced species. They form a part of our culture and our society, and they have done so for many, many decades now. They are important as a food source to many of our whānau and families on the land who go out there and just want to bring a bit of venison off the back blocks. They are an important economic tool for our international tourism operators and our international guided hunters, who raise, at last count, I think, $280 million from the international community, in terms of economic value, and they are important to our conservationists.
Again, as I repeated at the top of the speech, if you look at what the achievements have been of the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation and the Central North Island Sika Foundation up in the Central Plateau, but also the New Zealand Tahr Foundation in and around my part of the world, central South Island, and also on the West Coast; if you think about what the Rakiura Whitetail Trust has been doing down with the Department of Conservation (DOC) and with locals down in Stewart Island; and if you think about the proliferation of these community-led organisations around the country, you can only come to the conclusion that by including hunters in our conservation efforts, we will get better conservation outcomes.
At the same time, we will be able to better manage our herds for lower numbers but healthier herd numbers. That’s going to be more venison taken off the land. It’s going to be lower deer numbers. It’s going to mean better conservation outcomes. All I need to do is point those members who are going to get up in about six minutes time and say that these are invasive species that need to be completely eradicated, totally forgetting that many of their own supporters rely on these animals for daily food, they rely on them for their cultural and social values, and they actually rely on them, and the people around these animals, to take care of the environment.
If they actually took the chance to read the departmental report and they go to the part of the departmental report, which actually responds to questions about how effective this kind of management has been down in Fiordland, particularly through the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation—I will take them to the particular page so they don’t have to spend too much time trying to chase it because they clearly haven’t read it. It’s page 20 of the departmental report. It actually asks, “What do the results show?” Well, I can tell everyone what the results show. The Fiordland Wapiti Foundation, for decades and decades, have been implementing a community agreement, which is basically a herd of special interest in everything but name. I will take you to the exact point which says, “What are the impacts? Overall, vegetation monitoring results in the Wapiti area indicate a reduction in deer browse impacts in alpine areas and signs of improving regeneration in forested catchments”. I can say that again if the members would like me to. I can point to another point, which is that “In 2024, the proportion of browsed plants in the Wapiti area had significantly declined to 8 percent, meeting a newly established target. In managed areas, outside the Wapiti area, i.e., the area, which is not being managed by hunter-led conservation, browse increased from 10 percent in 2016 to 2018, to 16 percent in 2022.” In the areas outside of hunter-led conservation management, the biodiversity is in a worse state than inside the area which is currently managed. If that is not proof that this is an idea that is worth pursuing and worth enforcing, then I don’t know what else is.
Finally, in the time that I’ve got left, I wanted to address some of the disinformation, misinformation that is being put out there by proxies of the Opposition in the public. They are saying things like, “This bill will set up, in the future, things like sanctuaries for stoats.” Well, if that’s a way to disparage our hunting community, I don’t know what is. The thing that this bill does is it puts in place a management tool and a management regime, which allows our most effective conservation tool, our hunters, to get out there and better manage our wild animal management system. The final one I’ll leave on, and I won’t say which organisation made this comment, but they disparagingly said that “All our hunters do is go around flying in on helicopters and staying in their luxury lodges.” Well, I think that was a mistake that that organisation did because the resulting response from hunters around the country was to send in examples of the luxury lodges. I can tell you, I flatted in Dunedin for about 10 years, and compared to the some of the accommodation that our hunters were filming and showing us they were staying in, I think the student accommodation in Dunedin was luxury lodgings compared to some of the hillsides and windswept environments and bivouacs and lean-tos that our hunters put themselves into as they go out day and night to collect food for their families and to do what they love doing, which is to hunt and to be out in the outdoors and to enjoy our natural environment and to do their bit for conservation.
That was my attempt at putting aside the written speech. Let the legislative statement talk for itself. Let the commentary from the select committee speak for itself. I commend this second reading to the House and look forward to its passage as quickly as possible.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to reply to the Minister for Hunting and Fishing on the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill. You will see, anybody who’s looked, that the bill itself is very little, one page at the back here—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Great committee of the whole House coming up, ha, ha!
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —yes—so there’s not very many clauses, so you will not be hearing from me a long speech that reads out bits of the Act or the bill, because it is very short. But it is important to set some context here about how our conservation legislation works and how our Department of Conservation works and also our approach to mammals. We know—well, most people in this House will know—that a third of New Zealand is in some sort of conservation estate. Of course, most of that is in the best island, Madam Speaker, and I will bring you into this debate a little bit because a lot of it is around where you live.
Hon James Meager: I’ve always liked you, Rachel Brooking.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Well, that’s right it’s the best part of the world; the Minister and I can agree on that, I’m sure.
Hon Mark Patterson: Aren’t you going to run some defence for Dunedin’s student flats, Rachel? Come on!
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I’ve been asked—by a Minister, no less—to speak on Dunedin flats, and I will get to that at some point, I can assure the members in the House—
Hon Member: What, the flat you’re in—your flat?
Hon Member: No, we never shared.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —because I know that they are looking forward to that part of my contribution, but for now I’m going to stick—
Hon James Meager: There’s no connection between the two, by the way.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —to the conservation land that does not include the area of North Dunedin that the Ministers are referring to, wonderful though that part of the country is as well.
But we know that we have all of this conservation land, most of it is in the South Island, and a huge amount of that, therefore, is in the takiwā of Ngāi Tahu as well. Within that conservation land, there are different types of land. We hear a lot about stewardship land. This bill is not applying to stewardship land, but it’s important that I mention stewardship land because, of course, all of that conservation land that we have, some of it became conservation land through different changes of Government departments in the 1980s and 1990s as well. Some of that land is not pristine land, and there’s not an intent to preserve all of that land at a most pristine level forever, and that is why it’s called stewardship land. That means that that categorisation, different things can happen on that land compared with other higher-status land.
Now, the most high-status land, of course, is that that is in the national parks. The national parks have their own piece of legislation as well, being the National Parks Act, as well as being relevant to the Conservation Act that talks about the different plans and the different rules that are required on these different types of conservation land. But the national parks are very precious. And, Madam Speaker—again from your part of the world—you’ll know that some of those national parks, there were great campaigns at the turn of the last century to hold pieces, pristine pieces, of New Zealand’s ecosystem intact for future generations, hence we have the National Parks Act and we look after these pieces of land in a very special way.
Now, before I get on to Dunedin students, I do want to talk about my Dunedin-made earrings, which are of pekapeka. It’s important to note that Aotearoa New Zealand does not have any indigenous terrestrial mammals except for a couple of species of bat. Of course, we have wonderful marine mammals and—
Hon Member: Are bats birds? Can bats be Bird of the Year?
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Bats are manu, bats can win the Bird of the Year, and it was very good that they did—should have been the manu of the century, but that’s a digression, I admit, I will not go down there.
What I’m talking about is the importance of national parks and that New Zealand does not have mammals, and so much of our biodiversity, our flora and our fauna, has evolved in a different way from the rest of the world because we don’t have these mammals that lots of the world has that eat the undergrowth.
I heard the Minister, in a question and answer earlier this week, talk about the protection of the canopy—that is something that a marsupial causes problems with, the possums. But the mammals, the ungulates, cause the problems with undergrowth, so that is one of the reasons why the National Parks Act says that “introduced plants and animals shall as far as possible be exterminated:”. That, of course, means that the Department of Conservation has not been wanting to protect these introduced mammals, the ungulates, that the eat—
Dr Vanessa Weenink: Understorey.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —the undergrowth, the understorey—thank you.
Simon Court: If this is a short speech.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: So what this bill is doing—I made no promise of a short speech, I just said that I wouldn’t be reading from the bill, that is all, Mr Court.
So this is a big issue and this is what the submitters submitted on.
We heard from the Minister, he invited us all to go to the departmental report. I’d like to report to the Minister that whilst we have looked at the departmental report, it is a different situation than earlier this morning where a huge amendment had come through late in the piece and the regulatory impact statement to that had not been available for some time, and there was some argument in the Chamber about this. In this case, there has been a select committee process, and I was very pleased to hear from many submitters, submitters who are hunters, submitters who are conservationists, submitters who are hunters and conservationists—a whole range of people. They all came from, I believe, a very good place, and all do truly want the best for our national parks and all that nature within them. We don’t need to be directed to different places in the departmental report, from the Minister, because we did hear the submissions about the negative regenerative growth.
The Minister says—well, the departmental report says it improves by the hunters doing the maintenance rather than leaving it to the Department of Conservation that we all know has had its funding reduced and reduced and reduced. There is another way of coming at this issue and saying, well, could the funding to the Department of Conservation be increased, and could this be a priority—
Ryan Hamilton: Magic money tree.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —work programme for them. And then it’s—oh, then it’s the magic money tree, we hear from the other side. But how long does that argument go on that it’s just the magic money tree and that we should be making concession after concession for actors who are not there just for the conservation of our natural and indigenous biology, to come into our very special conservation land and do the management of it? Where does this stop? I haven’t heard an answer from the Minister about that, and of course we’ll be asking questions in the committee stage. But I invite members opposite to tell me about the sort of funding that they’re going to have for the continued monitoring of any of these groups, the hunting groups, that are doing conservation, to make sure that in fact there is better regenerative growth in the areas that they manage, and what learnings there will therefore be for what other groups can be doing that do not require an introduced mammal to be there eating up the undergrowth.
I think it’s important to also note—before I move on to Dunedin flats—this language around high-valued introduced animals. We’re being told that there’s this real tourism focus, that we need them for tourism. Then, the next moment, we’re told, “Oh no, it’s food for your whānau.” These are two very different arguments, and they haven’t been clearly articulated by the Minister about what is the actual driver for this change.
I want to also acknowledge the New Zealand Conservation Authority submission that is worried that this is another way to get the New Zealand Conservation Authority out of decision making. Of course, Ngāi Tahu, in their settlement legislation, has a role on that conservation authority and others, so that is a highly pertinent point to the great South Island, where most of this conservation land is.
Of course, in the fine electorate of Dunedin that has all the student housing, I’m very pleased that there’s now a healthy home standard about—hopefully, it will be much better than all of those hunting shacks.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is my pleasure to come to talk about the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill because I am a hunter and I’m from the South Island and I’m also a conservationist. I’m not one of these people that is going for growth to have the access to trophy heads in the South Island. In fact, I find that odious. I think we need to get rid of these ungulates in our bush, and that’s part of what I hunt for.
There’s also a value in wild meat, but I’m aware and we heard through the select committee of many hunters who were very, very concerned about the impact of this bill, and who opposed this bill. We also heard from hunters who supported this bill and Roy Sloane from the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation gave a great presentation.
The problem with the hunting support for this bill is that it doesn’t actually reveal the evidence or respect the evidence that we have of hunter management of our ungulates, because we have an escalating pest-damage crisis across the South Island. And that’s because hunters are not good at managing our ungulate problem. They’re clearly not good at managing the ungulate problem. And personally, I know of people who have used their horse trailers to transfer fallow deer from one place to another. There is the transfer of tahr to different parts of the Southern Alps that have happened not quite accidentally. We’re seeing pests in places that can only have got there with human intervention.
So while we do have some hunters—many hunters—who are caring about our bush, our communities, and who are conservationists, we also have some irresponsible hunters and people who like to hunt, who are quite happy to feed the populations, to reinject populations. We’ve got wallabies now in Otago.
This is a crisis of pests, not just in our national parks but also in our farmland where we’re seeing pigs coming back, we’re seeing the loss of lambs. It’s a wider thing than simply having what’s claimed to be managed herds in our national parks. But the idea that we can manage herds in our national parks is not only dangerous, it’s a way of taking away from the whole value of our national parks. We are concerned there has been no publicly available inquiries, reviews, or evaluations that have informed or are relevant to the policy that’s been given effect to in this bill, and no further impact analysis has become available for any aspects of the policy to be given effect to by this bill.
We’ve heard from the Minister, and we’ve heard from the Government that this bill is about economic growth. What does that mean? The only way you can make money out of this is by inviting, probably American, guided hunters into our national parks to shoot deer that have essentially been raised to be there for them. And you know, as a New Zealander, I find that inappropriate. I find that hope to get some money from people who really are coming here simply to shoot animals is just the wrong way to go about it. I don’t think we should be supporting that type of tourism in this country.
If that’s the type of economic growth that we’re talking about, I’d like to see some numbers because at least the Government could try and justify it. Because we know it is quite unlikely that there’s going to be anything meaningful in that. And what we’ve heard from the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation is that that’ll bring some money back for them to continue to do some work, which is great—in that little area. What we have is a conservation estate that has been defunded and defunded and defunded. So the defunding of our conservation estate is one key factor that has given rise to the rising ungulate numbers.
So rather than giving access to our conservation estate and our national parks to hunters, why don’t we invest in our conservation estate to protect our national parks, to remove the ungulates, to support the biodiversity, to support our biodiversity that’s so essential for our climate response, not simply for respecting our unique habitat.
We are concerned—we are concerned that this bill is simply something that this Government wants to do to please a small portion of the New Zealand community. And it is going to do damage even to those hunters because this bill will not stand in the next Government. Any investment that’s made now, any hope that a small group of hunters have that they’re going to have a free ride is going to be swept away in the next Government. Rather than working with our hunting community and the different parts of our hunting community, many of whom are doing good things, this is running roughshod over a process. It is not building consensus. It is simply saying, “We want to do it and because we can do it in urgency, we’re going to push it through—push it through.” This is the problem with the Government in general. And it’s probably why we’ve all had enough and in 2026 we’ll get rid of them.
What we’re really concerned about is, and what we’ve seen in the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation is that this is also presenting a real challenge for other pest control, because they don’t want 1080 drops. They don’t want 1080 drops because the deer might eat them. Then that might not be a good thing if they’re bringing people in to hunt trophy animals. So that makes it more expensive. DOC’s work to control possums in the national park becomes harder.
Here comes another problem: if we have the Minister for Hunting and Fishing, the Hon James Meager, being able to designate herds of special interest areas in our national parks, but the cost of maintaining those national parks falls on the conservation Minister, how do we manage that? Is the Minister going to dedicate some funding to support the conservation estate? Is the Minister going to dedicate the money we need to properly fund the conservation authority? Is the Minister going to properly fund the Department of Conservation?
These are questions that we should be getting a response to, because ultimately this is pushing a problem onto another budget and creating greater expense for people who are working their hardest, who are doing their hardest to reduce the pest numbers—reduce possums, rats, stoats in our conservation estate, as well as reducing the number of ungulates, and reducing the damage that is happening in our bush.
So we oppose this bill. We oppose it because it is simply the wrong way to go about managing our conservation estate. And not only that, it is simply a way of rushing a process, which is typical of this Government, to do poor legislation, to push it through under urgency—urgency in a way we’ve never seen from any other Government; as everything starts falling apart, trying to make it work. It’s a sad day when we have such ridiculous, dangerous—dangerous—bills through the House under urgency.
We will oppose this bill, and we will remove it in 2026. It’s going to have a very short life. It’s a very short bill; it’ll have a very short life. Less than a year—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired. I need to put the question. The question is that the motion be agreed to.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I look forward to agreeing to the motion. This bill is a very short bill, overriding the considerations from 4(2)(b) in the National Parks Act. It's doing something that is removing a roadblock. I put an alternate view into this report to make sure that it's on the record that I think that the threats that we've heard from the other side of the House tonight, saying about how this has got a short life, are exactly why we need to make sure that the intent of this bill is carried out.
At the Environment Committee, we heard hyperbole which was ridiculous—introduced animals are going to be thrown all around the country with this bill. It was insane. The Game Animal Council is a fantastic organisation advising, informing, and educating the hunting sector. It should be encouraged to be able to use tools like herds of special interests to get good outcomes for the taxpayer, the hunters, and our bush. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Hon MARK PATTERSON (Minister for Rural Communities): I rise to support this bill on behalf of New Zealand First. It’s a very sensible bill—a very sensible bill. It does clarify the inherent tension between the Game Animal Council Act and the National Parks Act, and it allows the Minister to designate herds of special interest to be managed within a national park.
Look, hunting is almost a Kiwi birthright. It’s a cultural treasure for so many New Zealanders. It puts meat on our table, and, I think that, actually across the House, people would understand that, or at least they should. It is also the tourists that come in for these trophy heads. I heard Scott Willis over there before, and it seems to have offended his sensibilities, but they would be some of the most high-value tourists that come into this country. This is a very, very high-end tourist.
Scott Willis: Oh, come on, Mark.
Hon MARK PATTERSON: We need to drive some economic growth here, Scott, otherwise, we’re going to have to be making some pretty hard trade-offs. This is but one way that we can attract those very high-value tourists.
There are some challenges with this, and we will have to manage them, and the Minister will have to oversee this carefully. The farming community, particularly, will be looking that these herds are managed. We did hear the example of the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation and how this this model was, essentially, working in practice now. We think it’s a sensible bill. It’s well worth doing, and New Zealand First support it.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Statutes Amendment Bill.
Visitors
Chinese People's National Congress—Chairman
SPEAKER: Members, before we go into committee, I wonder if those who are present would like to join me in welcoming to our Parliament the chairman of the Chinese People’s National Congress, Chairman Zhao.
The House is in committee.
Bills
Statutes Amendment Bill
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to Accident Compensation Act 2001
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is in committee on the Statutes Amendment Bill. Statutes amendment bills are bills that consist entirely of minor and technical amendments across the statute book. They are drafted with cross-party consultation and support and there is a strong convention that they will be supported unanimously. There are special procedures for statutes amendment bills. Standing Order 313(2) provides that if any member objects to a clause standing part, that clause is struck out of the bill.
Therefore, at the end of the debate on each part of this bill, rather than asking for those in favour and opposed to the question, I will ask whether any member objects to the relevant provisions standing part. We come first to Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 3 to 7, “Amendments to Accident Compensation Act 2001”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Madam Chair, I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Leave is thought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: OK. I am very pleased to be leading the Statutes Amendment Bill through the committee stage. This bill plays an important role in the ongoing maintenance of our statute book. Statute amendment bills are legislative vehicles that make small, technical, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. These changes are intended to improve clarity, correct errors, update terminology, and ensure our legislation remains current and fit for purpose. These bills allow amendments to be made that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually.
I want to emphasise that the Statutes Amendment Bill does not make substantive policy changes. Instead, it serves a housekeeping function, ensuring that the laws we rely on every day continue to operate smoothly and as intended. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support and it’s a good demonstration of all parties working together.
The bill as reported back amends 41 primary Acts administered by various Government agencies. The key changes made by the Governance and Administration Committee include clarifying in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 that address verification is not required as part of a standard customer due diligence process but as part of an enhanced customer due diligence process. This change will provide clarity to reporting entities, to avoid unnecessary and burdensome over compliance.
It includes clarifying in the Privacy Act 2020 that the six-month limitation period for a complainant to bring proceedings in the Tribunal starts only when the Privacy Commissioner or Director of Human Rights Proceedings has made final decisions about all related complaints and matters and has notified the complainant about those decisions under relevant provisions in the Privacy Act 2020.
It removes references to audio link in the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957 and replaces the term “in writing” with the term “in a document”, inserting new section 2A and 2A(1A) to make it clear that in cases where audiovisual software includes the option to turn off a camera, the camera must remain on. This change will improve the accessibility of oaths, affirmations, and declarations while ensuring the person is visible to the person administrating it.
The committee also recommended removing the amendments to the Racing Industry Act 2020 and the Conservation Act 1987 from the bill. The amendments to the Racing Industry Act are no longer required as they are included in the Racing Industry Amendment Bill, and the proposed changes to the Conservation Act are being considered as part of other pieces of work.
I commend the Governance and Administration Committee for their hard work and dedication, which ensured that changes made through this bill are minor, technical, and non-controversial. I welcome the deliberations from the committee on this bill, and I commend the bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It's been a long Tuesday, I think we can all agree, and it's still going. It's a privilege to be able to contribute to the Statutes Amendment Bill. I enjoyed being able to engage with this bill on the Governance and Administration Committee, which looked at this bill, and did go through many of the different parts and sections with officials during our select committee stage. I think that was relatively thorough, but as you mentioned at the beginning of this committee stage, this is a special type of bill. It is by its nature less contentious.
We do have questions in relation to many of the parts, and they might not be the substantive contributions that maybe we would make on policy issues and other bills, but genuine questions that we have for the Minister around how the bill works. If they are a little bit technical, because this does cover 42 different primary pieces of legislation, then hopefully she'll be able to get advice, and we understand that that may be necessary, but we do have a few questions.
So the first part that I wanted to start with was Part 1 in relation to the Accident Compensation Act and the changes that have been made there. So this is in relation to clause 4, which amends the Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights, which is a relatively significant part of the Accident Compensation Act, and anyone who's dealt with the ACC legislation will know that the ability for claimants to be aware of their rights and also for these to be clearly set out is very key.
So, essentially, my reading of this particular section is rather than the current requirement which requires publication in a newspaper in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin of the changes or when an ACC bill of claimants rights’ is put in place, this will now be changed to publication on one of the corporation's main websites. So I imagine that the reason for this is to update the way that people engage with information, so rather than in the past, people, say, looking in the newspaper to see what news has changed in relation to ACC, they may be checking the website.
So the question I had for the Minister in relation to this part is has there been any advice around whether there would be a notification of any change on that website or if it would be, say, with a media release or, say, a heading on the website to signal that there had been a change to the ACC claimants’ rights? Has there been any assessment of whether that would be sufficient to actually let people know in these important areas that there has been a change to the Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights? Because I imagine, when this was originally enacted by Parliament, the reason that those major centres were, in fact, chosen was because that would allow people to be aware that this Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights had, in fact, been put in place. So that was the first question that I had for the Minister.
The other change, I think, has just been to repeal the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act 1960. I did look at that and I did understand, from my quick analysis of this Part 1, that perhaps that's been removed because that is no longer on the statute book. When you look at the legislation website, you're unable to click through that link. So I just wanted to double check that my understanding was correct, that the reason that that has been removed from the list of relevant statutes is because in fact it perhaps is no longer valid. Those are my questions on Part 1.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Miniter of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for her work in the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill. In the first instance, I think, a lot of the feedback that came back—I agreed with all of it, and I thought that with the contribution from across the Chamber, we got the bill in a really good state.
I thank the member for her question. I haven’t received advice about how ACC will notify the different individuals of the change, but my expectation is that that would have to be ongoing. There would have to be some way of being able to tell people that there’s a change in the way that we are letting people know that they can contribute in some way. I think doing it through the internet means that we’ll get more contributions, but there are still those people who look for it in the newspapers. I cannot answer your question directly, but I will take it on board and say that I do expect that there will still be some notification, even if it’s on the internet, that things have come up or will be popping up. I will make sure that our officials are aware of that.
In regard to the second point, on clause 5, you are absolutely correct. It was a technical amendment because that piece of legislation had been repealed. It was just a tidy-up because we can’t refer to it anymore.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn’t lucky enough to sit on the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill. I had a chat to the Clerk, who did inform me of the special nature of this bill and the fact that if I thought there could be improvements, it certainly ran into some procedural difficulties. Nevertheless, I do think, in terms of how the bill works and its operation, it’s a good opportunity. There’s really quite a lot in this bill and, as was identified, some non-contentious amendments, but, nevertheless, they do have some significant law changes.
I really just want to talk about one clause, and that clause is clause 7, because it relates to a really important thing, which is consultation requirements for levy setting. The question, basically, is this: how do we make sure that people who pay levies have their say? Because, in fact, it’s a requirement that appropriate levy payers are consulted in respect of proposals to impose new or increased levies. Look, I get it—going away from public notices in newspapers, which have limited circulation, and to the internet is understandable. One of the challenges is that there are people out there—lawyers are one of them—who actually get the paper and go through the notices for this very reason, because it’s understood as a repository of notices of consultations and other important legal matters that is easily and publicly available in one place. The challenge with putting it on a website is that if you want to understand what’s going on, not only do you have to go to the ACC website, in this case, but you actually have to find it on the ACC website. Were I to propose an amendment, it would be to that. ACC, like many Government departments—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, IRD—have circular emails. If you are paying ACC levies, they’ll have your email address, and they often send updates on operational changes and how to comply with obligations and how to stay safe—all great stuff.
I guess there’s two things I would like to know, in an operational sense, as to how this lands. Will the consultation be easily found? I think that’s really important. Will it be there on a regular consultation page that, essentially, you find from the front page of ACC? Because, many a time, you come to find a consultation document, and you’ve got to click through many levels, and sometimes it’s just impossible to find. I guess the other thing is, will ACC be using other tools to make sure that affected people actually know about levies? Because levies, they’re not quite a tax, but you’ve really got to make sure you’ve got legitimacy, and consultation is not just about getting the details right around the edges. It’s about having a legitimate process where people have been genuinely asked, and I just am a little concerned that if we just put it on an internet site—either ACC’s or their agents’—a lazy person would simply tuck it away in the background there. I’d be interested in the Minister’s comments in terms of how that will operationally land.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair; and thank you, Dr Duncan Webb for your question. As the member will be aware, the Statutes Amendment Bill is making small, technical, non-controversial amendments. If the member was wanting to get really into this and the operational side of it, I would have thought he would have gone along to the select committee process—but he hasn’t. I’m not—
Hon Kieran McAnulty: This is his right—to do that here. He has the right to do that here.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: It may be his right and it’s my right to also speak to what he’s talking about, so I’d suggest that the member just be quiet or at least—[Interruption]
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Order!
Hon NICOLE McKEE: —take the stand himself.
Nevertheless, what I will say is that when we are modernising the Act so that we can look at the internet, a part of the reason why we’re doing that is because people aren’t buying the newspaper. When you look at the accessibility in finding it, one of the things that the member actually said was—he actually said it’s all in one place and so it’d be easier to find. I dispute that, actually: people are finding it quite difficult, and I would have thought that putting it onto the internet, where people have more access; that they know that they can go to a site and they’ll be able to look it up and find all the information in one place instead of trying to look through certain newspapers and find copies of those newspapers.
This is modernising it. How the agency; how ACC goes about doing it and informing people—I would expect that they would inform people because it’s a change, right? As a Government agency, they would be expected to do so. But to be fair, I have not got into 42 different Acts and the operations behind every single clause that’s in there. I will answer what I can on the minor and technical and non-controversial amendments that have been made here to the best of my ability, but I am not the Minister for ACC and therefore the operational side of how they work would probably be better directed to them.
But I hope that the member would agree that, actually, internet access for some of these will mean that we will reach more people rather than less, and it’s modernising for the modern age.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a very short question on that note to the Minister, and potentially this will cover other questions later on in terms of other amendments when it comes to the digitalisation of some of our legislation when it comes to consultation.
Looking at clause 7, updating from a “daily newspaper” to “Internet”—and I agree 100 percent with the Minister that it will give more availability—would “Internet” in this case also include other forms of, I guess, website or things like social media? The reason I mention that is because social media now in terms of advertisement plays a similar role as daily newspapers, and we just heard a really good example yesterday in the debate on the stalking and harassment legislation where the select committee uses social media to open up for things like consultation. So that’s my only question—whether we can actually interpret “Internet” in that way.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): That’s a really good question and I thank that member for that. I think the answer to that will come down to the different agencies, and also whether or not they have a social media presence. If you think about it, some of them will; some of them won’t. But I think when we talk about using the internet, it’s actually about trying to access as many people as possible.
So my expectation as a Minister is that if we’re going to use modern technology, we should use it to reach as many people as we can; that would be the expectation. Otherwise, why change it? We’d just stick to newspapers. But I think that’s a very good point, and I would encourage all of the Government’s agencies to use all of means possible. Because all we say is “the internet”; we don’t say “the website”, we say, “the internet”. So, in my view, that opens it up for use everywhere.
Part 1 agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments to Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, we come now to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 8 to 12, “Amendments to Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism Act 2009”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, just in terms of the Minister’s earlier, original speech, she did observe that this is a non-contentious bill and that it’s bundled together because they might not get the legislative attention they need. I must say, it’s surprising to see this being done in urgency, because I think that is the definition of a non-urgent bill. Having said that, we are here in urgency, and one of the jobs of an MP—all MPs—is to scrutinise. So that’s exactly what we will do as we go through these various parts.
I want to talk about clause 9 because it’s actually a really unusual clause, because clause 9 deals with occasional transactions. The original section 5(1) identifies a number of transactions which are one-off transactions which raise red flags, and therefore kind of fall within the anti - money-laundering regime. Then, further paragraphs carve out things, and one of the things they carve out was cheque deposits. Now, in 2009, a one-off cheque deposit was unexceptionable. I can understand that’s why it was carved out, because if someone gets even a large cheque, sells a car, gets $20,000, it could be paid for by cheque if you were a trusting person back in the day, and you deposit it—a transaction which is occasional but doesn’t really cross the threshold of suspicious.
However, where we’re revisiting this definition, which is what we’re doing, by adding “made at a registered bank or non-bank deposit taker.”, which is a strange addition because they’re the only places at which you could deposit cheques, anyway, the fact of the matter now is that you can’t actually deposit cheques at a bank. If you are going to somewhere which accepts cheques, you’re doing something which is truly odd. It may be that you could make a special arrangement or there may be non-bank deposit takers out there which will, essentially, take your cheque and, essentially, buying it off you at its face value and then clearing it through a unique system, because there is no clearing system for cheques any more. Cheques are gone. So I would have thought that if someone’s bandying about with a cheque for $20,000 now, that is a red flag.
In fact, I’m interested to understand why we are making provision for cheques deposited at a registered bank or non-bank deposit taker, when that is not a system that actually exists, and someone going around with these negotiable instruments is, in fact, I would have thought, something which the police and their financial team would want to know about because it’s a suspicious transaction.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his comments and for his question, because I admit, when I first looked at it, I thought very much the same thing. But, actually, there are banks that still honour bank cheques, and what has been the status quo is now actually just being tidied up. So the whole reason for this is because there are still bank cheques out there that are still being captured by these, as well.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I'm sorry, members, but the time has come to break for the dinner break.
Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7 p.m.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora, everyone. The committee stage is resumed.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following on from my colleague Duncan Webb’s questions to the Minister, which were, I believe, around clauses 8 and 9, I wouldn’t mind moving on to clauses 10 and 11 in Part 2. These are also in relation to the changes that are proposed under the amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. The question in relation to clause 10 is just really a very quick question—both in relation to subclause 10(1) and subclause 10(2). They seem to be just reorganising the same information. I can’t recall, specifically, discussing that or the rationale for that, but if the Minister has anything to add, I’d be interested in that.
Then, in relation to clause 11, which makes changes to section 40 of the Act, I do have some more substantial questions for the Minister, because, in this particular part, there appears, to me, to be more substantive—I’m not saying it’s substantive in the sense that it goes against what the bill is trying to achieve through making minor and technical amendments, but there is a few changes to a couple of things. The first thing I noted was, essentially, there’s a carve-out, as I can see it, for law firms. When I looked at the original bill that this is replacing, it appeared to me that there wasn’t a carve-out for law firms. I could be wrong on that, but I wanted to know specifically why law firms would have a longer period of time to report suspicious behaviour than other entities. In a way, I would have thought it was the other way around because, I think, law firms are often used to being able to identify suspicious activity. Of course, there’s a carve-out there for privileged information. I suppose a possible reason could be that they are assessing whether the information is privileged and whether they can make that disclosure. I just wondered if there was any further explanation that officials could give as to why that was put in place. That’s my question in relation to cause 11.
Now, in clause 12, there is an additional extension of the period of time—in fact a doubling of the reporting entity’s period of time—that they have from 10 days to 20 days. Again, it’s a doubling of the time. It’s a longer period of time. I imagine there’s a public interest in having these things reported as soon as practicable, and I don’t know if there was a particular instance that led to wanting to make this period of time longer, but I will be interested to know the rationale for that.
Essentially, those are my questions: Why is the law firm specifically carved out? Why the extension? The other question’s more minor—if there is any information the Minister has?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. In relation to the questions for clauses 10, 10A, 11, and 12 in Part 2 on the anti-money laundering: the amendments have been made because the current provisions are unclear as to what needs to be gathered. As a result, the enhanced customer due diligence is being undertaken everywhere. This is the issue that we’ve had with kids no longer being able to open bank accounts because they cannot provide a letter or a bill that has their name on it and, therefore, they don’t meet the criteria.
Clause 10 was about removing unnecessary customer due diligence in areas where there is no risk, for example, kids trying to open a bank account. But I really like what the Governance and Administration Committee did, which is they basically confirmed that we don’t need to have the minor customer due diligence there, but rather have enhanced due diligence where it’s need. So the select committee made a change at that stage and I’ve accepted it. I thought it actually made it quite tight.
In regard to clauses 11 and 12, which is extending the time frames from three to five working days for the law firms for the carve out. Also, for the extended time frames for the prescribed transaction reports from 10 to 20 days. This is actually to get better, more well-informed reports, instead of having rushed reports. It allows more time so that the agencies can produce something that is more meaningful.
At the moment it’s being rushed and it’s not very high quality. If we’re to really go after the criminal assets, or not criminal assets but the criminal intent I should say, then having really good, prescribed transaction reports and the extended couple of days’ time frame for the law firms means that they can do not only their due diligence, but also come up with some really good quality reports.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair—couple of different points. The first relates to clause 10A, which talks about due diligence according to the level of risk involved. My reading of it—and I’m happy to be educated about the Act itself—is that there is no real expansion of what level or risk is. I know that this is going to be administered by the Department of Internal Affairs, and they can give guidance and so on, but there’s always a danger when it’s just guidance rather than legislative direction.
Obviously, things like where the funds come from, who the customer is—if it’s a kid it’s less risky but there’s still some risk there—the length of time that the customer has been a customer, and all kinds of other matters would contribute to the level of risk. I think that when we’re debating this—and this debate is taken as some guidance as to legislative intent—I’d invite the Minister to talk about what kinds of things would be relevant to assessing the level of risk. The danger is always that people who want to make life easier for their client or customer kind of downgrade the level of risk and say, “Well, I’ve known you for a long time so you selling me gold bullion isn’t risky at all.” So I’d be interested to know that.
The other question is about clause 11, which talks about suspicious activities, and it has a couple of exceptions. It says, in section 40(1), in clause 11, “A reporting entity other than a high-value dealer or law firm must, as soon as practicable but no later than 3 working days …”. I’m really interested in high-value dealers, because if you look at the definition of high-value dealers and you see what they deal in, it seems that bullion, fine art, jewels and jewellery, luxury motor vehicles, and luxury boats are the kinds of things, and these are things that are absolutely the stock and trade of money-launderers. The other thing about it, particularly things jewels and bullion, is that it moves quickly and is largely untraceable. Cars might be one thing—a bit easier to track down—but if you’ve got someone with a million dollars’ worth of gold bullion, it’s actually not that much gold. If you wait a long time to report it, then you’ve got a problem. So I’m interested in why high-value dealers are put alongside law firms, because law firms deal with known parties, with bank accounts, and with electronic money transfers mainly, whereas high-value dealers are dealing with tangible movable goods, which would seem to me to be an entirely different level of risk. So I’d be interested to know why high-value dealers are put alongside lawyers and law firms in that respect.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Unlike the previous Government, this Government actually wants our agencies, especially in the anti-money laundering area, to be able to take a risk-based approach on activities. They haven't been able to do that, and this is the importance of having a single supervisor that will give guidance to how businesses will operate. We don't need to put everything into legislation. What we actually need to do is allow businesses to get on with doing business and to do it as unhindered as possible. So the risk-based approach means that those agencies will take all things into account. At the end of the day, they are the ones that are going to have to report suspicious activity reports, prescribed transaction reports, and they will understand what it is that they have to do with guidance from the Department of Internal Affairs. And I will note that guidance has been minimal if at all from the three supervisors over the last 12 years. So moving to the single supervisor to provide guidance is freeing up businesses to be able to get on and do business.
In regard to the other businesses that are beside law firms, I think the member might have actually answered his own question about why we have got these high-value businesses alongside the law firms. It’s because they are dealing with high-value commodities, those that are transacted, as the member himself pointed out, in useful money laundering. This is why they have been bought in. I commend the member for answering his own question.
Part 2 agreed to.
Part 3 Amendments to Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 3. Part 3 is the debate on clauses 13 to 15, “Amendments to Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971”. The question is that Part 3 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re moving on from money laundering to the armed forces, and a relatively old—well, I wouldn't say old; I wouldn’t want to offend anyone who was born in 1971, but a statute which has been on the books since 1971, which is a reasonable period of time.
I looked at this part, and I was interested in clause 14, which is the operative part of this Part 3. I did look it up to see what the deletion was. The deletion is limiting the Armed Forces Discipline Committee, which is a committee I actually hadn't heard of before.
I was unsure as to why that was the case, and I'd be interested if the Minister had any insight into: is the Armed Forces Discipline Committee working as it should be? Is there a reason that this section requires, as a minor and consequential change, to be deleted? Obviously, it's been in place for a significant amount of time.
The second quick question I had in Part 3 was in relation to clause 15, and I did look at this as well: when you look at this particular section, 117ZA(2)(b), it actually doesn't really make sense to have “wider” instead of “under”. I wanted to ask the Minister: was this change made in the 2009 changes to the primary legislation, which I understand—I could be wrong—was when 117ZA was put in place, and is that, in fact, so minor and inconsequential that it was in fact a typographical error? So that's my question to the Minister on Part 3.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Clause 14 is really just fixing a historical oversight, and it’s removing any inference that the power identified in section 87A(2) rests with the Armed Forces Discipline Committee. In other words, the committee does not have such a power. It’s fixing that. I think that actually might have come about because this bill was first introduced under Labour, and I think it was one of the things that Labour had picked out, so I’m carrying it on because it was picked up. The changing of the word “wider” to “under” is just fixing a grammatical error.
Part 3 agreed to.
Part 4 Amendments to Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 4. This is the debate on clauses 16 to 18, “Amendments to Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021”. The question is that Part 4 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have two quick connected questions for the Associate Minister of Justice, just noting that the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021 doesn't actually have a definition as far as I can see in the primary legislation for historical information. Can I just check with the Minister to what extent is any information considered historical? The reason I ask that is under clause 17 in Part 3, a person does not need to confirm their identity to request access to historical information, but if that historical information is still referring to another person who is alive, I wanted to check how that's going to work. Does that mean that anyone can actually then request that kind of information? That's all.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I hope this answers the member’s question. Please let me know if it doesn’t sufficiently, and I’ll get further advice from officials.
My understanding is that us inserting “for non-historic information” after “in respect of a request” is to clarify the policy intent. It’s only to obtain evidence of identity when accessing non-historical and historic register images.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Oh, OK.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: Yes. You can’t sort of put a time frame on what is historic; it’s the capturing of the information that’s there.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the Minister’s comments. I just acknowledge that, yes, my understanding is a lot of this work was done under a previous Government and has come through, and I appreciate that it won't be the Minister herself who's been drafting this, but I appreciate her being able to access the advice through officials and just to clarify some of those instances. But, yeah, I do appreciate that this is a piece of work that has gone on through at least two different Governments now and that it’s a regular way of updating the law. I appreciate the purpose of that, and please don't think these are directed at her as an individual—but I very much appreciate her candid responses to our questions.
In Part 4, I just had a couple of questions. When I looked at this section, I think it may have related to some of the comments the Minister made earlier in relation to getting rid of barriers in place for people who are wanting to access information—and so this may be another area that she may have been thinking of, as well. This particular section, when I looked at clause 17(1), “Section 88 amended (Person must confirm identity to access information under this subpart)”, the part that was being deleted—and that's always of interest, of course, because usually, with the minor and consequential amendments, the reason that you would delete something is that either it's no longer relevant or it's duplicated, or something like that. But when I did look into this, this particular section, I think, refers to a lot of the historical information that is actually held online that people may be able to access, and so I just kind of wondered why that would be a deletion entirely—but hopefully the Minister can elucidate on that. I understand that that intention was easier access to information, so hopefully that's consistent with that goal, even though it is deleting that.
Then the second question I had on this part is really in clause 18. This is replacing a particular clause, and it's really saying that the identity may be confirmed “(if required)”, in brackets. There's slightly unusual drafting there, and I just wondered why that why the advice was that this be put in the bill, because, as I understand it, the intention was to require fewer checks in relation to identification to allow that information to go ahead. I appreciate it's a tiny part of a much bigger bill, but if the Minister did have any information that she could share with the committee around how those jigsaw pieces work to achieve that aim, I'd be grateful.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think this answer might also help with the Green member’s earlier question as well. The drafting of sections 88 and 91 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2021 has introduced an unintentional shift in policy where evidence of identity requirements are being applied to all records, regardless of their historical or non-historical classification. The amendment clarifies the original policy intent and makes it clear that an evidence of identity check should only be required when accessing non-historical records and historical register images available online.
For the next clause, clause 18, it’s the same reasoning, which is that the drafting of those sections 88 and 91 in the 2021 Act has introduced an unintentional shift in policy direction.
Part 4 agreed to.
Part 5 Amendments to Building Act 2004
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 5. Part 5 is the debate on clauses 19 to 21, “Amendments to Building Act 2004”. The question is that Part 5 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Just a brief question on this part, because it is a relatively short part. It appears that waivers and modifications under section 67 of the Building Act relate to the building code, and then 67A, I think, relates to swimming pools, in that there’s a separate regime—I think under a separate Act, actually—for swimming pools, and that’s reflected also in the section 177 amendment in the Statutes Amendment Bill.
But I’m curious as to why the words “the building code” are removed, because I’m assuming that section 67 waivers or modifications or the applications for determinations are still under the building code and seems to be a kind of retrograde step to no longer refer to waiver and modifications and determinations under the building code, because it simply lacks clarity. Even if section 67A is about swimming pools, section 67 is still absolutely about the building code. So I’m just wondering why there’s the removal of the words “building code” in those clauses.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. For both clauses 20 and 21, I’m advised that these are consequential amendments that should have been made in 2017, but they were missed.
Part 5 agreed to.
Part 6 Amendment to Burial and Cremation Act 1964
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 6. Part 6 is the debate on clauses 22 and 23, “Amendment to Burial and Cremation Act 1964”. The question is that Part 6 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, we’re dealing with all of the quite interesting Acts in this bill, and this one is from 1964. When I—
Grant McCallum: Great year—great year.
CAMILLA BELICH: “A great year.”, Grant McCallum says. Obviously, this Act has been in place for quite a period of time.
Now, this was actually quite interesting, when I looked into this particular clause. It appears to me that in clause 23—which is the only operable part, really, in Part 6—that, essentially, what this is doing is making sure that a certificate on the cause of death can’t be entered if there is a suspicious reason for that particular death. That seems to me like it’s quite a serious matter, and I just wondered maybe—obviously, it’s such a small part of the Act, and I have gone back to the Burial and Cremation Act 1964 to kind of make sense of this provision. But the question I had, really, is that this appears to be a bit of an operable change in terms of making sure that a really important thing—a certificate as to the cause of death—is not given in inappropriate circumstances, and considering that this has been in place since 1964, what has arisen for this change?
I did look at whether there had been some further amendments to the 1964 primary Act, and I think that there was a 2018 change to a change that was brought in in the 2016 Parliament. But I suppose that the question I have—and I’m slightly hesitant to ask the Minister for fear of her response. But does that mean that from 2018, we’ve had a bit of a hole in the law in terms of the nature of how—these are very serious matters, and very important matters for families, of course—certificates as to the cause of death were or could have been issued in inappropriate circumstances?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s not the 2018 amendment. It was the Coroners Amendment Act 2016 That one actually repealed section 13(1)(b) of the Coroners Act 2006. This is a consequential amendment, because that subsection was actually replaced with section 14(2)(f) but the reference was not updated at the time.
Part 6 agreed to.
Part 7 Amendments to Conservation Act 1987
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we’ll come now to Part 7. This is the debate on clauses 24 to 35, “Amendments to Conservation Act 1987”. The question is that Part 7 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sure my friend Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan will have something further to say. I'm just curious for a clarification here as to the need for this amendment because it appears to me, if I've got it right, this creates an infringement offence called “Taking indigenous freshwater fish without authority”.
I think that the short name for indigenous freshwater fish is whitebait; at least, that’s the general view. Although there are, of course, other freshwater fish, the most fished freshwater fish is whitebait. I haven't managed to trawl through the statute book, but it was always my understanding that it was already an offence to whitebait out of season.
Having had a chance to have a quick look at some of the other sections—26ZHB, “or an authorisation”, and so on—I understand that they're essentially saying that where the season is open, you can go and get your whitebait providing that it's, essentially, for personal use or even for sale, but within set rules: location, timing, and so on. Now, am I to understand that whitebaiting out of season to date has, in fact, not been an offence and this is the first time that we need this because there's a gap? Or have I got that wrong? If I have got that wrong and it is already an offence to take indigenous freshwater fish without an authority, why do we now need this? That's the question there: just, essentially, what's the gap that we're filling? Was there a gap? If there was, that's surprising. If there isn't, why do we need this section?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m a little, I guess, surprised by the member’s question, especially around the indigenous freshwater fish, because in 2019 the then Labour Government put through the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Act 2019. This amendment here in clause 34 relating to Part 6A of the principal Act is addressing the gap in the infringement regime that should have been amended by the amendment Act. The previous amendment omitted to amend Part 6A of the principal Act, which is dealing with the infringements. There is now a gap in the infringement regime as a result. So the penalty is actually consistent with other lesser offences under the principal Act.
Just while I’m on my feet, Madam Chair, I think I might just speak to clause 35 amending section 59 as well, because I expect a question on that. The amendment that we’re making there is to seek to align the Conservation Act with the Fisheries Act and remove any potential legal uncertainty that may be there. So the proposal that we have for that section is also just clarifying the status quo.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for the clarification. Just an initial comment for the member who said that 1964 was a very good year, I would have assumed that for that member, 1974 would have been a much more appropriate year—i.e., because you look so young, just in case that was lost.
Now, just to the Associate Minister of Justice, in terms of clause 34, to clarify, the Minister’s saying that the “person must not take indigenous fresh fish” is already in existence, but the infringement aspect wasn’t there, so hence this particular clause is adding 51CA(1) to add the infringement part of something that is already not allowed under section 26ZHB. That’s my first question.
My second question is just on clause 35, amending section 59. I really appreciate the Minister’s clarification, but I want to check in the current legislation, because this part in the principal Act refers to fisheries officers and honorary fishery officers. By deleting “to exercise powers in relation to freshwater fisheries”, is it because the current legislation actually has now inadvertently limited fishery officers and honorary fishery officers to freshwater fisheries only, but then by removing it, fishery officers and honorary fishery officers—because I know that they often also patrol harbours and coasts, etc.—they’ll actually now be able to exercise the power in saltwater environments. Is that why that bit was removed?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just answering the last part of your question, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, the description of fisheries officers’ powers aligns with the Fisheries Act 1996. So we’re looking for consistency there.
And, yes, the offence for clause 35, creating an infringement offence, is to match the existing offences currently in section 26ZHB of the Conservation Act.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. These changes to the Conservation Act 1987 are probably some of the more substantive changes in this bill, so I think that’s probably the reason that there are a few more questions on these changes. I thank the Minister for her earlier answers, too, because there were a few questions that I had that she’s now addressed in relation to this. Of course, the next part is also focused on Conservation Act changes as well.
The question that I really had is: the Minister said that these changes, especially in relation to offences, were to be put in because there was a gap in the piece of legislation that had previously been passed by an earlier Parliament—and I accept that. I just wanted to check whether—because another thing that I thought was that, obviously, in the last Parliament, the Resource Management Act was repealed, and there were a number of consequential changes to lots of different pieces of legislation as a result of that repeal, and, of course, there’s a number of references to the Resource Management Act in a number of additional statutes, not just the primary piece of legislation. I wanted to ask, was the reason for some of these amendments needing to be put back in place partly as a result of that subsequent repeal, and then the fact that the Resource Management Act is now—until it is again repealed, which we understand it may be by this Government—the primary piece of legislation? That’s specifically in relation to clause 33.
The other question I had is just in relation to these fines, and can I just check with the Minister that these fines that have been imposed—because these are quite significant fines in this Act. It’s essentially making someone liable, if they’re convicted in respect of offences under this Conservation Act, for a term of imprisonment “not exceeding 2 years and a fine not exceeding $100,000”, and also to a further $10,000 fine. I just wanted to clarify: is that new, is that a rewording, or is that filling the gap and making this particular offence that is under the Conservation Act consistent with existing law? I’ll refer to my colleague Dr Duncan Webb, who I would say is more experienced in criminal law, but this does appear to be an unusual provision to have within a Statutes Amendment Bill and also in the Conservation Act. I’m sure that there’s a very, very logical reason for that, but I just thought, because it is a substantive restriction on liberty, that we should probably make sure that we have that exactly well clarified in this type of bill.
Another question I had was in relation to clause 32 and whether these responsibilities that are put in place in relation to the Fish and Game Council—in relation to their focus on sustainability and the impacts of fishing—are not new provisions thought up under this Act but are somehow adding consistency or restating the policy reasons that are already in place within this new section, section 7, which comes after 17M(6). I’m just wondering if the Minister did have some more advice and if she might be able to just assure the House, really, in relation to these provisions.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. My understanding is that clauses 25 to 32, which were in the draft, have been removed. It could be that I’m looking at something different but maybe the member could just clarify a little bit.
In relation to the other questions that the member asked, she made a comment about these being potentially substantial changes. They’re not. We’re basically clarifying the status quo, and with regard to the infringement offence, the offence already exists. We are simply creating an infringement offence, and I think an infringement offence is much better for a person to be able pay—an infringement or a fine—than having to go to the District Court. So that’s why there are changes there.
Part 7 agreed to.
Part 8 Amendment to Conservation Amendment Act 1996
Amendment to Conservation Amendment Act 1996”. The question is that Part 8 stand part.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 8. Part 8 is the debate on clauses 36 and 37, “
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a very short question for the Minister on this part. My understanding of Part 8 is that the replacement sections we're looking at in clause 37 are already in existence in the current legislation and this part is just a tweaking of the numbering. But based on what was in the introduction section, what did pique my interest is that this section has not gone live because it requires an Order in Council, but everything else in this Act has gone live almost 30 years ago in 1996. I was just curious, with this update, is there an intention by the Minister or by the Government to potentially put through an Order in Council to make it happen?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. My job, or my role, in this is not about the implementation of things but rather fixing an error where we’ve got two parts that are numbered the same.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): It's good to see officials here who are able to help the Minister out if she doesn't have the details at her fingertips, and I can perfectly understand why that's the case here. The question as to why we're amending an amendment Act is actually really relevant. The other thing is this: it strikes me that the substance of these sections are exactly the same; no person should act as a sports fishing guide; a person must not act as a sports fishing guide unless they hold a current sports fishing guide licence; unless he or she holds a current sports fishing guide license.
So I'm perplexed as to why we are—because all this is doing is updating wording, which is actually a revision task rather than a statute amendment task. We're doing a really odd thing, which is amending an amendment Act. One question: why couldn't we just use a revision Act if we just want to modernise language. But the other one is: why aren't we just amending the Conservation Act? If we wanted to make it an offence to not have a sports fishing guide licence or to use a gaff on freshwater fish, all of which is fine by me, then why aren't we just amending the Conservation Act itself? I see you've got some advice here, so it would be useful to know that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): These are minor, technical, and non-controversial amendments. We’re not going into amend whole entire sections. The whole point of trying to get cross-party support on these statute amendment bills is because of the minor technical and non-controversial nature of them. We are renumbering clauses.
Part 8 agreed to.
Part 9 Amendments to Coroners Act 2006
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 9. This is the debate on clauses 38 to 41, “Amendments to Coroners Act 2006”. The question is that Part 9 stand part.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister. I’ve been listening intently, understanding the exercise of this legislation, particularly as the Minister has already answered in terms of Part 6.
In terms of Part 9, I’m interested in clause 39, “Section 14 amended (Deaths that must be reported under section 13(2))”. What is helpful is that in that section—in the principal Act—it lists all the different reasons, and right at the end it describes and categorises different illnesses and why they must be reported, and I’m just curious, Minister, as to what advice you received from—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Can I just clarify please, member, which particular section you’re referring to?
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: Section 14—it’s clause 39, “Section 14 amended”.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: What I’m interested in is that it lists deaths that must be reported. In terms of the list, I’m curious and what I want to understand—and the Minister’s explained a number of times that they’re minor technical amendments and they’re non-controversial, and there is cross-party support—is what was the advice to the Minister in terms of the amendment. Secondly, in terms of unnatural deaths, what I just read was that sometimes when medical staff have to give a clear reason as to the illness that leads to the death, they have to make a call in terms of describing how that person passed away. I just want to understand very quickly what advice has been given to the Minister in terms of that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. This amendment that we’re making here is just correcting a missed consequential amendment. My understanding is that Labour put through a piece of legislation in 2018—I might be wrong there, but it’s effectively the definition of a doctor’s certificate in the Burial and Cremation Act 1964 was repealed by the Burial and Cremation Amendment Act 2016 and replaced with a new definition of “certificate of cause of death” in 2018. All we’re doing here is aligning the wording so that it matches and is consistent.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just another short question for the Minister. For clause 41 amending section 132: this particular section 132(2)(a) I think currently—please correct me if I’m wrong—the reading is that it is an exclusive list and there are six items on that list. I want to check with the Minister on whether that should be more of an inclusive list, i.e., by framing it as “which may include the following items that will allow the chief coroner or associate coroner to have more flexibility.” Or does the Minister think that those particularly named six items—subparagraph’s (i) to (vi)—including the two that have just been added here are actually sufficient and those are the limitations that we want in terms of practice notes?
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call the Minister, the Hon Dr—the Hon Nicole McKee. I’ve promoted you!
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. For the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question around a more inclusive list, if we were to delve into that, we would move out of the minor, non-technical area there. Especially with the Coroners Act, it becomes quite subjective with two different people, so we’re not looking at that. We’re just making these minor amendments.
Within that amendment to section 132(2) in clause 41, the first amendment is clarifying that the Chief Coroner may issue practice notes to improve the consistency of decision making and conduct. Currently unclear in the current legislation is whether it is sufficient to enable the Chief Coroner to issue such practice notes.
We’re basically making it really clear that the Chief Coroner can help by issuing these practice notes, but in regard to those six items on the list that you’re talking about, that becomes more than minor, and hence we’re not even delving into that here.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Just a really quick question that follows on from my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question. So in clause 41(2) it actually repeals section 132(2)(b)(v). When I looked up section 132(2)(b)(v), it says that when a coroner issues practice notes, they may have regard to determining whether a person is appropriately regarded as an expert in a particular area. I just wondered if that is a direct repeal. Maybe it is a consequential and minor amendment, but it wouldn't be unless that came up somewhere else earlier in the legislation or whether it's duplicated somewhere. So I just wondered really whether this is a repeal because that's no longer necessary or if, in fact, for some reason it's drafted so it is included earlier in the legislation and so that is why it's being repealed. So the question is why is that particular section being repealed?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m advised that the changes we’re making, we’re making to clarify the law. We’re already having practice notes delivered by the coroners, so it’s already happening in practice, but it isn’t clear as it should be in legislation. The second amendment that is being made in clause 41—amending section 132, which authorises the issue of practice notes relating to expert evidence—to section 132(2)(a), is to correct a drafting error.
Part 9 agreed to.
Part 10 Amendments to Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 10. Part 10 is the debate on clauses 42 to 44, “Amendments to Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003”. The question is that Part 10 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act is an Act that’s dear to my heart, and, certainly, if Andrew Bayly was here, he would know what I’m talking about. Don’t worry, David Seymour, you can still get your lattes. Obviously, clause 43 deals with new section 9CA, which is about the inquiries, and the inquiries are affordability inquiries. The rule is that records about affordability inquiries have to be kept, and, I think, they have to be kept for seven years. That is so that if, down the track, someone defaults and they say, “Oh my goodness, they should never have lent me this money,” then the bank can produce the analysis that they did and say, “Here you go. You can see that we went through and checked out whether it was affordable or not.” Then, it says here, that “To avoid doubt, the lender is not required to keep records about inquiries when an application is declined or withdrawn.”. Obviously, if you go to a bank and you get halfway through the application process and it’s pretty clear that they’re going to turn you down or you get finance elsewhere and you say, “It’s all right. I don’t want to be your customer.”, then you can see why this would apply.
I guess, my question is: would this also apply where there’s an existing customer and the inquiries are about, for example, a variation of an existing mortgage? When people are a bit hard up, for example, they often go and ask, “Can I have a little bit more money to tide me over? I’ve just been made redundant. Can I draw another $10,000 down to get me through while I find a new job?”, or, “Can I please reduce my payments, extend my term, or go interest only?” and so on. Those variations also have affordability testing around them as well. Given that they are a customer and it’s about affordability and whether or not the bank should extend them either additional money or some variation to their credit contract terms, if the application is declined—“No, we’re not going to let you go interest only, even though you’ve just lost your job”—it would strike me that there’s a good argument that those affordability testing information and records should be kept. Whereas, if it’s a person who’s not a customer and never becomes a customer, it’s quite a different situation. Just to avoid doubt, can you confirm that this relates only to loan applications and not variation applications for existing customers?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. This change that we’re making is—the reason why we’re doing it is because the current wording is inaccurate and it’s inconsistent with the requirements of section 9CA(2) of the principal Act. So we are merely giving a clarification of the status quo and there is no policy change here.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. A quick question to the Associate Minister of Justice on clause 43, the new section 9CA(10). I understand that the lender’s not required to keep records about inquiries when an application is withdraw, but for an application to be declined, surely the lender would want a record of that in case that person applies again or makes another inquiry, because then they can go “Oh, this person has been declined multiple times.” So I just want to check in terms of the rationale of including “declined” as a part of that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. The reality is that we don’t keep a lot of papers—or we’ve been required to keep a whole lot of papers—for people who have been declined. Once they’re declined, they don’t need to enter into that system, so there’s no need to keep the paperwork.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you. Just moving on to another section, which is clause 44, amending section 35, which is about disclosure. This is more paperwork, of course. Disclosures are the documents that contain the key terms of the lending arrangement, which is provided to the borrower and the guarantor. In section 35(2), this section that’s being amended, it says, “after ‘specified’, insert ‘the same address for the purpose of subsection (1)(b) or’ ”, and that relates to electronic addresses. It allows financiers to provide a single set of disclosure documents when borrowers or guarantors provide the same address, and when it’s a postal address, you can see that. If you’ve got two borrowers who might be partners, to send one envelope with one name on it and another envelope with another name on it is a bit silly. The section actually talks about “information systems”, and so what they say is that where the person has specified the same information system, you can send them the same electronic set of documents. That’s actually quite problematic, because an information system—parliament.govt.nz all goes into the same information system. Were my colleague Camilla Belich to be my guarantor, and we both—
Grant McCallum: Ha-ha! Oh, wow.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Ha-ha! Well, I would guarantee you any time—I trust you. The point being, if I was the debtor and she was the guarantor, and we both provided parliament.govt.nz addresses with our first names, that is the same information system, so in fact it should say something quite different. It should say “the same email address connecting to the same information system.” If we both agree that the appropriate email address is “camilaandduncan@xtra.co.nz”—that’s an unlikely address, but there you go—that would be OK because it’s just like our joint letterbox. But an information system is not the same as an email address or a unique email address, and that’s a common error in this kind of email service and email notification framework. There’s a real danger there. The danger, of course, is that I’m a rogue, and all the disclosure documents are sent to me, and I don’t hand them on, and my guarantor never fully understands exactly the extent of their exposure.
My question there is whether, in fact, the same address should not be clarified to be the same email address for the purposes of subsection 1(b) and so on an so forth. It is actually quite a problem, and what people don’t understand is that there are some ratbags out there who use rules like this to deceive people—often parents and the like, in fact, and spouses—to enter into either joint arrangements or guarantee arrangements in quite dishonest circumstances. Those disclosure rules are really important.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. The change in clause 44, section 35(2) is really just clarification to ensure that we have consistency across all legislation.
Part 10 agreed to.
Part 11 Amendment to Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 11. Part 11 is the debate on clauses 45 and 46, “Amendment to Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995”. The question is that Part 11 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a question that relates to this Part 11—and apologies, I’m going to slightly jump the gun and also say the same question applies to Part 12, so if the Minister answers this question, it covers both of these parts for me.
In both this particular legislation and the next one, I can't find a definition—nor in sort of any legislation—on what “certain persons” is defined as. Just want to check the Minister's clarification on how to define that?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I will presume that there is such a definition, because in law, we need to look for consistency—so I'm going to suggest that there will be one in there, and it will be one that will be more recent. If you have a look at some of these horrid words that were being used—so we're always looking for consistency in the statutes amendment bills: how do we fix up these small errors? And so that phrase of wording will have been captured from somewhere, in order to create that consistency.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, just to finish off his questions.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Just one little thing, thank you. I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister, but if the Minister, maybe, or the official through the Minister, wouldn't mind, just to satisfy my curiosity—which legislation will be able to find the definition in? That'd be fantastic.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): That was going to be my question, too. But I did just want to add to the Minister—I think she maybe is turning around to ask her officials, but I did look in the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act for the definition. I did look in the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act which I know is the next part. And I did also look in the Crimes Act, and I know the Crimes Act is a very long Act so it may be that I’ve missed it in there, but it would be, I think, very helpful if the Minister could come back with where that definition of “certain persons” is. I just want to add my voice to the Minister’s concern that she raised around these words and isn’t it regretful that this House put those words into legislation. If the officials who are assisting her tonight—I think a good focus of this House would be to make sure that no words like this continue to exist in New Zealand’s legislation because they certainly are very offensive and regretful to be included in our statute books.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. This is actually quite an important point because the list in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act is the trigger for when the police can get a DNA swab. It lists the offences which if you commit, you’re obliged to give—and it can be forcibly taken—a bodily sample to go on the DNA register. Everything that’s been said about the outdated titles is true, but if you go to the schedule that’s being amended, it gives you the name of the offence and then the corresponding section in the Crimes Act, and it’s section 138. In fact, the correct section—there is no such crime as “sexual intercourse with certain persons”, it’s just not a crime. So to say, “If you are convicted of the crime of sexual intercourse with certain persons, then you must give a bodily sample,”—there is no such crime, you will not have to give a sample.
Section 138 is in fact the offence of sexual exploitation of persons with a significant impairment, and you can see how that corresponds with the outdated language in the earlier section. It is of a concern to me that, whilst there would be a stretch, it is conceivable that a court could say, well, that old section has been replaced by the by the new section—the old section 138 has been replaced by the new section 138, and so it actually means sexual exploitation of persons with a significant impairment. But if we have an imaginary offence of sexual intercourse with certain persons, no court, no judge, is going to give an invasion of the person, taking a bodily sample, on the basis of the commission of a crime which simply doesn’t exist.
I would suggest that the Associate Minister of Justice might want to get her officials to actually clarify what they mean by “sexual intercourse with certain persons”, because there’s no such offence and I’m concerned about that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. This amendment is to take out really foul language and replace it—I mean, it’s as simple as that. I’m not going to get into detail about what it actually means, because I think it’s quite disgusting. But I think, also, when the member speaks to whether or not we should just have “impairment”, not everybody who goes through this is impaired, as such. So I suspect that’s why “certain persons” rather than “impairment” has been used. Officials are on notice to have a look at “certain persons”, and if we move on past this section and I get that answer, I will address it when I’ve got that answer.
Part 11 agreed to.
Part 12 Amendments to Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 12. Part 12 is the debate on clauses 47 and 48, “Amendments to Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004”. The question is that Part 12 stand part.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I know that some of the language we’re traversing to Part 11. I just wanted to agree with the Associate Minister of Justice in relation to the modernising of the language in Part 12, as well. What I did want to get—and this is a genuine, good-faith question to the Minister—is whether she, in now using gender-inclusive language in Part 11 and Part 12, thinks there’s a genuine benefit to using gender-inclusive language throughout all legislation. It seems to me like this is a genuinely, really good way of addressing really outdated language, but what I’m aware of, though, is that there is still none the less debate more broadly as to whether using gender-inclusive language in legislation is genuinely beneficial. I think that in this case, in Part 12, it definitely is.
I know that we’ve touched on some of the more kind of graphic terms in Part 11 and Part 12, but I did want to ask more specifically around the benefit and the intent of using gender-inclusive language and the rationale behind that, because I think that’s a genuinely good part of the modernisation of the language. If the Minister wanted to elucidate as to what that means in practice, that would be useful for the committee, and whether she, in her role as Minister, is also intending to explore just any other means to utilise gender-inclusive language for the purpose of legislation to better capture population groups.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. In answer to the Green member’s questions, I think where we can use inclusive language as part of modernisation that we most certainly should, and there’s an opportunity here to do that. I’ve also just been given some information about the “certain person”. It’s not defined in legislation; it’s determined by the context of the law in which it's used. The reference being replaced in Schedule 1 is a phrase summarising what section 138 of the Act is about. The “certain person” refers to the persons described in section 138, which is the impaired person and person with significant impairment. I hope that answers the questions.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Associate Minister of Justice for that clarification. I’m sure the officials are giving me the advice that they have; I hope that it meets the requirements when it comes to getting bodily samples.
In terms of the amendments to the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004, a strange little thing is thrown up here—in particular, clause 48, the definition of “specified offence”. It replaces the very old frame of “defiling idiot or imbecile woman or girl” with “defiling certain persons”—still using “defiling”, strangely, but anyway. The interesting thing about this is that that phrase and a whole lot of other ones are actually offences under the Crimes Act 1908, right? The purpose of those clauses are that it’s a schedule saying “These things are not clean slated.” Now, the Crimes Act 1908 stopped in 1961 when the new Crimes Act came into force. So the prospect of anyone still alive having committed an offence—how long ago is that?—65 years ago is extremely remote.
The other thing is this: in exactly the same list, it says “the following cannot be clean slated:”—and members of this committee might be interested in this—“including unnatural acts”, and those are the old acts against homosexuality. So we’ve got a very strange situation where we’ve got crimes from pre-1961 which cannot be clean slated, including crimes against homosexual, you know, acts, that can be expunged. So I’m very surprised that when we come to do this Statutes Amendment Bill, we didn’t look at the old offences pre-1961 and say, “Well, let’s put a line through those; they’re, essentially, spent and offensive.” Rather than doing that, we’ve got a simple modernisation of the wording, but we’ve still got a problem that pre-1961 offences, including offences which are no longer offences and which we have agreed should never have been offences cannot be clean slated. I find that quite problematic.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I see a member’s bill right there.
Part 12 agreed to.
Part 13 Amendments to Crown Entities Act 2004, and Schedule 1
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 13. Part 13 is the debate on clauses 49 to 57—“Amendments to Crown Entities Act 2004”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 13 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was pleased to see some amendments to the Crown Entities Act 2004 because this falls within the area for which I am spokesperson for our party. Unfortunately, there is not much substantive changes to comment on in here and I think most of the changes speak for themselves.
I just do have a very quick question for the Minister in relation to clause 57, and that is: is there a more effective way of describing, essentially, which schedule we're referring to? Because if you read through this, and this is kind of more of a drafting question, but I do think because this is minor and consequential amendments, that is worth raising within that context. Throughout Part 13, we talk about existing statutes that we are amending. Then we get to clause 57 and it states that amendments to other legislation are set out in Schedule 1. Now, the first Schedule 1 I looked at was actually in relation to the Archives Act, and of course, that was wrong. It's the Schedule 1 that is in this Act which sets out a number of additional name changes to public entities. And so I just wonder if there was a clearer way of showing that the Schedule 1 we're actually referring to is the Schedule 1 of this Act and not any of the forementioned other enactments which we are amending.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll take some advice from officials on that. Clause 57 isn't within my pack because it wasn't changed. But if your point that you've raised is relevant to any changes, I’ll take advice from them on that.
Part 13 agreed to.
Part 14 Amendments to Defence Act 1990, and Schedule 2
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 14. Part 14 is the debate on clauses 58 to 65, “Amendments to Defence Act 1990” and Schedule 2. The question is that part 14 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a very quick question on Schedule 2—this is in clause 65. In terms of the definition of regulation 3, I want to check why—and I feel that other members in this Chamber who are wing commanders may be better at answering this question—why the leading aviator classification includes an aviator classification and an air force cadet.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): As we did with the earlier clauses that we spoke about, it’s trying to be gender neutral and inclusive as well. It’s bringing this up to date in terms of known use of certain words in modern legislation and in the workforce. It’s modernising for our future and being inclusive while doing it.
Part 14 agreed to.
Part 15 Amendments to Electoral Act 1993
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 15. Part 15 is the debate on clauses 66 and 67, “Amendments to Electoral Act 1993”. The question is that Part 15 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I find this one a little bit tricky, and I just really want to be sure that we’re not doing something we don’t want to do. The amendment to section 3(1) in clause 67 sets out the definition of “candidate” in the Electoral Act. In general, it makes it that “candidate” includes a constituency candidate and a list candidate, and, if I’ve got this right, what this does is it distinguishes constituency candidates and list candidates for certain purposes set out originally in Part 6AA and Part 6A of the Electoral Act, but it appears now to say that list candidates are not candidates for the purposes of Part 6B, as well. Part 6B is about the provisions relating to loans and the obligation to disclose loans, and section 214BA makes it clear that candidates must keep records of loans.
I’m not entirely clear as to why list candidates, and I presume it’s list-only candidates, because if you’re a—although if you’re a list candidate and a constituency candidate, could you say, “I’m having a loan for my list candidacy, but not my constituency candidacy.”? I don’t know. But are we carving out list candidates from all of the regulation around loans, and, if not, what exactly are we doing with this particular section, because if we are carving list candidates out—and I can see that the Minister is getting some advice there—that would be really, really useful to know.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): My advice says that it is “Consequential only. No policy change.”, but I’ll give you a bit more, Dr Webb. We’re amending the definition of “candidate” to include a reference to Part 6B. This is a consequential amendment to ensure consistency with the new candidate loan provisions added into Part 6B of the Act by the Electoral Amendment Act 2022. Part 6B was updated previously, and this update amends the definition to reflect those updates. So it is consequential only, and, as my advisers have just told me, there is no policy change.
Part 15 agreed to.
Part 16 Amendment to Employment Relations Act 2000
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 16. This is the debate on clauses 68 and 69, “Amendment to Employment Relations Act 2000”. The question is that Part 16 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. This is another one of my favourite pieces of legislation to look at, so I’m pleased to see it here. I have to say, though, that I’m struggling a wee bit to work out exactly what the change will be in clause 69. That is partly because when I look at the primary legislation which is amending section 233B(6)(g), I look at that section and I try and look for the parts where it says, “replace ‘section 28B of the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992’ with ‘section 191 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015’.”, and it might be the website I’m looking at, but it seems like that change has already been made in the legislation I’m looking at. Maybe I’m totally wrong—probably, that’s the most likely thing—but I was just trying to work out what the change was, and I couldn’t. I don’t know if the Minister could look at that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re replacing the reference to section 28B of the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 because it’s been repealed. It was repealed and replaced with section 191 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. We’re updating the Act so it doesn’t refer to a repealed piece of legislation and, instead, we’ve put in the new piece of legislation.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you to the Minister for that explanation. It was just that in the version that I looked at, it appeared like the change that’s in this legislation was already made on the New Zealand Legislation website. I know that’s not a perfect website, and I know that if I was a better lawyer or if I was still a lawyer—I actually can’t call myself a lawyer, because I don’t have a practising certificate—I’d go and get the statute book out, and I’m sure that that would be correct. But I just wondered, maybe, as we move on from this part, if officials could just check that that’s the case. Obviously, it’s no big deal if it’s already been made and the change is exactly identical, but it’s maybe just something to note.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you to the member for looking at that and for raising it. Officials will have a look at it, but even if there’s a word that’s different in what you’re looking at, we need to make sure that there’s consistency. I back my officials with the information, but what I will say is if there is something different, they will bring it to my attention while we’re in the chair, and I will stand up again—even if we’re past this—to explain further if there’s anything else to add to that.
Part 16 agreed to.
Part 17 Amendment to Heretaunga Tamatea Claims Settlement Act 2018
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 17. This is the debate on clauses 70 and 71, “Amendment to Heretaunga Tamatea Claims Settlement Act 2018”. The question is that Part 17 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a little unusual. I mean, I have been around a couple of years or so now, and using a Statutes Amendment Bill to change a Treaty settlement Act—and it’s not the only one—is a little unusual. It does look like a technical amendment. The key bit seems to be that there’s a marginal strip—it’s unclear how large it is—that ceases to be a marginal strip under Part 4A of the Conservation Act. It’s unclear to me if that is perhaps going to the iwi or not. But, I guess, there’s just a couple of things I’d ask: what does this actually do, other than change the designation of a marginal strip, and is this something that’s come out of, essentially, consultation with the iwi around implementation of their Treaty settlement and just a wrinkle that’s being ironed out and needs legislation? I just think it would be good for the record to kind of put that down, because it’s a little unusual to see, essentially, a change to a settlement, presumably in favour of the iwi, I hope—that’s the kind of assurance I’d like—in a Statutes Amendment Bill.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the member is quite right that there are two Treaty settlement bills within here that are having amendments. That is, of course, with the approval, in writing, that we have received from iwi who are wanting us to make these changes for them.
In relation to this particular one, the Heretaunga Tamatea Claims Settlement Act 2018, I’ll, first, start off with “What is a ‘marginal strip’?”, and then explain that to our viewers. A marginal strip is a piece of Crown-owned land generally about 20 metres wide that is reserved along the margins of waterways and are generally retained by the Crown through the Department of Conservation when land is disposed of.
But this proposed amendment is to remove the requirement for a marginal strip of a deferred selection property and replace it with a smaller, tailored esplanade reserve vested in Hastings District Council. This is to account for an error when the property was valued and enable a planned housing development to proceed.
Part 17 agreed to.
Part 18 Amendment to Housing Act 1955
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 18. Part 18 is the debate on clauses 72 and 73, “Amendment to Housing Act 1955”. The question is that Part 18 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I will start, and other people may have questions. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just check—I agree with the change, that probably, we don't use pounds anymore, as prescribed under Land Transfer Act 2017. Now, I think, by just checking online, the current registration fee is $243, possibly. But I wondered, in the current legislation, it’s £1, and there's nothing that suggests that the application of this bill is retrospective. What would that mean for the people who, up until now, have paid the registration fee that is above £1? Can they get a refund?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I thank the member for their question, but, no—there'll be no retrospectivity throughout this. It’s modernising, right? We're moving from the pound and modernising. May I just come back to the member about Part 16? The change in clause 69 has already been made as an editorial change by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO). That was done to fix up an incorrect reference, and it was made on the 18 July of this year, so Part 16 is redundant.
Part 18 agreed to.
Part 19 Amendments to Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 19. This is the debate on clauses 74 to 76, “Amendments to Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007”. The question is that Part 19 stand part.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Looking at the original Act—I’m bringing it up on my laptop—it feels here that we’re adding a few additional criteria in which someone could basically be refused a license, and that the registrar could be able to consider.
I’m curious as to how she sees particularly clause 75 amending section 17(c)(iv) playing out in relation to being basically related by employment or association to a person who has a conviction “for an offence of a kind” referred to in to in paragraph (a) of section 17 of the principal Act, which basically then paragraph (a) in the original Act is just any conviction, New Zealand or otherwise.
Is the Minister concerned that this particular provision in subparagraph (iv) could be used in a way that could weaponise, for example, quite historical convictions—to give an example, on substance use? So if you have someone who’s related by employment to someone who has had a conviction on substance use, that could prejudice them from being able to become licensed.
If so, what is the policy objective to basically have the registrar be able to consider someone who may have had a conviction for say substance use, in relation not just so much to the person trying to get registered, but in relation to someone they may have been related to by nature of employment or association? Because of the way that subparagraph (iv) connects paragraph (a) in section 17 is so broad, I’m just curious as to why it wasn’t limited to quite narrow, specific types of convictions that genuinely, for example, may prejudice someone from being a good immigration adviser.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): The member asked me what the objective of the amendment is. Basically, the reason why we’re doing the amendments, both at clause 75 and clause 76, is to clarify the existing requirements that the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 require. So it’s updated the legislation to align with what that 2007 Act requires.
As to what they look at, that’s getting into operational matters. That’s not for me to determine whether or not substance abuse could be used or not. But what I will say to the member is we do have the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act, so after seven years there is the ability, depending on where they’re applying and who they’re applying with, to not have to disclose some past offences that they may have.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just trying to find the Immigration Act on the little electric machine there but couldn’t see it.
Ricardo Menéndez March: The Immigration Advisers—
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: The Immigration Advisers Licensing Act. I’m just curious whether this is a new provision, because what it seems to be saying is that in terms of this fitness to practise test—which is common across all professions—who your employer is a relevant question. So if you want to become an employment adviser, you need to get licensed, and in doing that you've got to show what your criminal past is or is not and other things as well—whether you cheated at law school, that sort of thing; just the usual.
But it’s quite unusual to say it is relevant to whether you are an honest person whether you've been unlucky enough to be employed by a dishonest person, because that's kind of tainting an employee with an employer's misdeeds. I guess my question is whether—if that's the existing law, I'm surprised; I didn't think it was. If it's an addition, to say: “Whether or not you're a good person depends in part on whether or not the person you work for is a good person”, that's a little problematic. If you have misbehaved—your conduct, as an employee of an immigration adviser, is directly relevant. If you've been dodgy or dishonest, that's relevant. But if you've just been a good employee and your employer has been engaging in modern slavery and all sorts of other horrendous things, you can't really visit that on an innocent employee. So I'm interested to know exactly what this is intended to do.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing I will note is that this isn't a new requirement; this is clarification. We're clarifying the existing requirements that are in the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007. We are amending it so that there is clarity around what sort of information can be gathered, and the licensing and fitness required for the licensing of an individual. We're amending section 18, which is clause 76, to clarify that an application for licensing as an advisor must include the applicant’s aliases and foreign names. That’s so that we can make sure that the right people are in the jobs of being advisers and that they are looking to give good advice to those that are wanting to immigrate here. So it's really just clarifying already existing requirements that come under the 2007 Act.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you. I just have a subsequent question, because it does seem to me like the way that we are replacing section 17(c) with the language, particularly—and I go back to subsection (iv). Basically, in paragraph (a), it says that somebody could be refused because they have any conviction, whether in New Zealand or in any other country, for an offence of any kind other than those referred to in section 15 and 16.
Now, in section 15 and 16 of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007, the nature of the convictions someone can basically be rejected from becoming an adviser for are in relationship to offences that have to do with the Immigration Act 2009 as well as the Immigration Act 1987 or the Immigration Act 1964. So most of the provisions in sections 15 and 16 have to do with people who have basically made an offence in relationship to immigration Acts, but the way in which this is now written is that it would broaden the scope of the consideration to effectively any conviction.
So if you have an employment relationship to someone who has any conviction, then basically now that would be considered by the registrar. So this seems more than just simply aligning things to the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007, but broadening what the registrar can consider. Can the Minister please confirm that the changes that she is making to section 16 do not broaden the range of convictions that a registrar is able to consider when it comes to taking matters into account in relationship to someone's fitness for licensing.
If this is effectively broadening the range of convictions that the registrar can consider, I'm concerned, then, that more analysis could have and should have been done, so that clarity would be useful, to just ascertain as to whether now we're just taking basically any conviction from someone who the person is related to by nature of employment or association.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. To the member from the Green Party, this is the Statutes Amendment Bill that's making minor technical and non-controversial changes. When you start to look into areas like section 16—which we have not delved into; we've delved into 17 and 18—I believe that that would have been no longer small or minor, and therefore that was not considered as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill.
But when looking at and addressing the members’ concerns around past history and convictions within an Act, I'm sure that the member would agree with, when it comes to immigration advisers, making sure that we have the right people that are there, not ones that want to exploit migrant workers. I'm sure the Green Party would not like to have people who do that sort of thing with them. So making sure that we have the right people in the job means being able to have a look at their past convictions, means being able to have a look to ensure that they are, in fact, the right person for the job. So what I can confirm to the member is we're not changing anything here. We're clarifying the process to strengthen it and tidy it up.
Part 19 agreed to.
Part 20 Amendments to Incorporated Societies Act 2022
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 20, the debate on clauses 77 to 83, “Amendments to Incorporated Societies Act 2022”. The question is that Part 20 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. This is a very interesting change that has been made to the Incorporated Societies Act. When I was looking at this change to try and assess what was happening and if I did have any questions for the Minister, I was struck by the fact that we are adding in provincial ordinances to the Incorporated Societies Act. And I have to say, I was not aware of exactly what the definition of a provincial ordinance was. I’m not sure if that shows my naivety or my age, but I looked up the definition in the Incorporated Societies Act—couldn’t find it. But I was not dissuaded. So I googled “provincial ordinance”, and I discovered that perhaps the oldest piece of legislation that we have discussed in this statutes amendment debate tonight is the Provincial Ordinances Act 1892 which outlines the provincial ordinances that are still in force.
I’m assuming this is correct, but it appears from what I'm reading that there are a number that are still in place and in fact any relevant ones will be included now in 2025 in the Incorporated Societies Act. And just for your interest, some of the ones that appear still to be in force are the Auckland Building Act 1858, the Auckland Loan Act 1863, the Gas Company Lease Act 1863. Most of them do seem to be—well, there seem to be actually quite a number of them.
The question I really have is, am I correct? Are these provincial ordinances that were passed under this very, very old piece of legislation—in fact, this Act was passed by the General Assembly of the New Zealand Parliament, which is obviously not what we call ourselves these days. So am I correct in the fact that there are provincial ordinances made under that very old statute still in place that we're in fact upholding and including now in the incorporated societies legislation?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. Yes, so this amendment is clarifying that a body corporate or other association formed or incorporated under a provincial ordinance specified in regulations made under that principal Act can be re-registered under the principal Act as an incorporated society. Who knew!
Part 20 agreed to.
Part 21 Amendment to Inquiries Act 2013
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come to Part 21. This is the debate on clauses 84 to 85, “Amendment to Inquiries Act 2013”. The question is that Part 21 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. In terms of these statutes amendment bills being simply clarification, it’s pretty well entrenched. It's just been a few occasions where I think it's at least arguable that they’ve gone a bit beyond that—and, you know, the immigration one we've talked about before kind of expanded rather than clarified.
This is another one where the Public Records Act—sorry, the Inquiries Act; this is the interface of the Inquiries Act with the Public Records Act. The original phrasing in section 33(4) of the Inquiries Act simply says that “for the purposes of Part 3
This is quite important, because previously, if an inquiry said “Operation Burnham: this is top secret or this is confidential—this is secret information”, the chief archivist could generally make a judgment about that, and doesn't actually have to keep stuff which is classified—classified forever. He or she could say, “Well, in my view, 10 years has passed and there's a high public interest in this coming out, so I'm going to release it, or I'm going to release it in part”—or whatever. But all of a sudden, in new subsection (4A), it says that “must act consistently with the order” means that “if the order forbids publication of any thing described in [the sections]…to that thing as restricted access records as defined in [the section]”, then they've got to do that.
I'm concerned that this is actually making things more secret, in overriding what historically has been a wide discretion of the chief archivist to make a call on when things should be declassified. We can see from things like Operation Burnham that sometimes there's a significant public interest in that declassification—because I think we sometimes miss how important our archivist is in both not just keeping and caring for our public records but also in making sure that they are made public when it's appropriate to do so.
So because the section says, you know, “replace subsection (4)”, but then it introduces an entire new subsection (4A), which doesn't just explain what “act consistently with the order” means, which is the new concept, because we've moved from section 33, “take into account any order” to “act consistently with the order”, and that's a significantly different thing. I'd be interested in the Minister's comments on that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. This amendment is to more clearly enable the relevant department to review or change the public access settings to historical inquiry records. That is the objective of this change. It's not creating anything new—it's just clarifying what is already the status quo. I note that the member thought that there could be files hidden; one would actually be a bit more optimistic than that and think that there would be files opened.
Part 21 agreed to.
Part 22
Amendments to Juries Act 1981
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 22, the debate on clauses 86 to 88, “Amendments to Juries Act 1981”. The question is that Part 22 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just quick questions for the Minister on this—I understand this is just purely deleting a few sections. I couldn’t see why those particular sections—I did look at section 14C(1)(d) and 14C(1)(c), and they did appear to still be in the primary piece of legislation. I could be wrong about that. I’m interested to know what the Minister’s answer to that is.
Unfortunately, there’s not really anything more to say about this apart from that it’s a particularly interesting section that it’s amending, section 12A. This is the section that allows you to be given leave to not attend jury service, and, interestingly, the provision that allows you to avoid jury service if you are dead. I did not realise that it was required for that to be put down specifically in legislation, but, there you go—if you do check out section 12A(1)(e)—
Tom Rutherford: It would be a hung jury!
CAMILLA BELICH: That’s right. Yes, that’s potentially something you could say about that. Anyway, to the Minister: what was the reason for removing those sections?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): The amendments to section 12A and 13 are to correct a drafting error. A replacement summons is issued under section 13, not under section 14C(1)(c) or (d) as currently indicated in the Act.
Part 22 agreed to.
Part 23 Amendments to Land Transfer Act 2017
Amendments to Land Transfer Act 2017”. The question is that Part 23 stand part.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come to Part 23, the debate on clauses 89 to 98, “
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. Here we go again with public notices, section 220, inserted by clause 93. What it does is, essentially, provide that we’re—because land transfer information can be a lot of data. For example, a subdivision plan, if you’re subdividing a large area, not only is it just a lot of diagrams and words, but the document itself is data heavy, it’s usually done on some computer design system. So what this does is enable the provision of the data on an internet site. The problem is it doesn’t explicitly require the publication of the exact internet address where the information can be found.
I would suggest that, really, rather than simply saying it’s available on an internet site or our internet site—so you could have a surveying company saying, “Full details available on our internet site.”, but that doesn’t actually take you much further, you then have to go and navigate your way to it. What you really need is the actual internet address: “The full details can be found at www.”, etc., etc., etc. At the moment, it doesn’t actually give notice, it just says it can be made available. But this is about notice, and notice should be given of the internet site on which it is available—it’s essentially a guide or a navigation tool. If we don’t have that, you can simply have a note: “Full information available on an internet site.”, and that is going to be exactly what isn’t needed. Again, this gets around the problem of having these long public notices in newspapers about marginal strips and the like, that we’ve just been talking about.
It really is important, in these situations, to not just say it’s available somewhere but to say exactly where it is required. If the Associate Minister of Justice is going to say, “Well, obviously, you have to provide not just notice that it’s available; it’s made available on an internet site.”—but exactly where that information is. Amended section 220(2)(b)(ii) does say, “give sufficient detail to enable the person to understand what sort of further information is available on that site.” So it probably should just have a (iii) underneath it saying, “provide the internet address of the web page where that further information is available.”
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. To the member the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, clause 93, amending section 220, is inserting a new subsection to allow for some information on the matter to be published on the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) website instead of all information. So it’s basically allowing LINZ to pull out what is the relevant information, because sometimes the information that they do have is so fulsome that in putting it on the site, you end up losing the relevant information. So it’s basically saying that they can put in that relevant information that is needed—this is a technical amendment—provided that the public notice can clearly identify where to locate the additional information on the website itself. So, basically, they can come up with a part of—this is the crux of whatever information they want to share, and to get the fuller information, it’ll be “Click this link here.”
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a question for the Minister regarding clause 90, which is inserting “registered owner”. Now, my understanding of this is that this clause pertains to the Crown not being liable for compensation should there be loss or damage resulting from a breach of trust by the claimant. I understand that the registered owner part was dropped off between the 1952 drafting and the 2017 drafting, and, now, it’s just kind of being added back in. Can I check: what happens then if people try to make a claim for compensation to the Crown between 2017 and now? Would that mean that their claim for compensation by the Crown, by registered owners, then would stand, because it’s technically not in the legislation?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): This amendment, at clause 90, amending section 61(1)(a), is a minor clarification where losses arising from a breach of trust by a registered owner are not covered by the Land Transfer Act 2017 compensation regime. That’s consistent with the position under the 1952 Act and the model Act drafted by the Law Commission. Because of this omission, the extent of the Crown’s liability in these circumstances could be misinterpreted if this is not made explicit.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Sorry, just one quick follow-up. That would mean that it got picked up, but there hasn’t been an instance at this stage? By clarifying this particular bill, it will hopefully clarify all of that?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Yes. It was inadvertently admitted, so we’re just putting it in there for that clarity.
Part 23 agreed to.
Part 24 Amendment to Local Government Act 2002
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 24. This is debate on clauses 99 and 100; amendment to Local Government Act 2002. The question is that part 24 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. So I've looked at this particular change. It does relate, I believe, to the next part, which, obviously, technically we're not allowed to discuss, but the Minister may like to make a comment about this particular change. So, essentially, as far as I can see, this is in relation to the audited accounts of a local body authority. This particular new section 29A, inserted by clause 100, means that the amount of rates written off needs to be included in the annual report which details the financial statement of the local body authority.
That appears to be a new change, however my suspicion is that it might have been just moved from a different enactment which we discussed in Part 25, so just clarifying that that's correct. It may avoid the need for some questions in Part 25.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): That's correct. For both this part and Part 25, which is the next one, it's a transfer of a section from one Act into another Act to group like provisions without changing the effect of the law, and that's for both Part 24 and Part 25.
Part 24 agreed to.
Part 25 Amendment to Local Government (Rating) Act 2002
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come to Part 25. This is the debate on clause 101 and 102, “Amendment to Local Government (Rating) Act 2002”. The question is that Part 25 stand part.
Part 25 agreed to.
Part 26 Amendment to Maritime Transport Act 1994
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 26. This is debate on clauses 103 and 104, “Amendment to Maritime Transport Act 1994”. The question is that Part 26 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thanks, Mr Chair. This is about maritime insurance, which is a matter close to my heart. I can see what's going on here, but it strikes me there's a bit of a slip, and so I want to draw it to the Minister's attention. Under section 363, ships have to have certificates of insurance—that’s all good—and the Director of Maritime New Zealand can demand, through their agents, to see those certificates of insurance. All well and good so far. Then, in 2014, there was a new section inserted, which was section 363A, “Certain ships to have bunker oil certificates of insurance”. This is ships which have fuel tanks of a certain size—I think that's the case—1,000 gross tonnage or more, and because that bunk oil is actually an environmental hazard, they need to be properly insured.
Then section 364 was about regulated offshore installations that had to have certificates of insurance. I think they were like oil wells. Now, this provision that we've got in front of us—wherever it is—deletes section 364. It says, in respect here—I'm just trying to find it. [Camilla Belich hands a copy of the bill to the Hon Dr Duncan Webb] Here it is, thanks. Sorry. It says, “delete ‘or section 364’ ”, which is the right thing to do. But the problem is this: that was done in 2013, and, in fact, section 363A was added in 2014, so you're getting rid of a redundant section, but you're not enabling the new section, section 363A. No longer does the Chief Executive, or the Director, of Maritime New Zealand have the ability to see certificates of insurance in respect of bunker oil.
It's actually quite a gap, because that's as important as certificates of insurance for other vessels as well, and, arguably, more important, because there's no greater environmental hazard than bunker oil in ships. So I'm wondering whether that's a bit of a slip. In fact, if you were going to catch all the slips—yes, you get rid of the redundant reference to section 364, but, in fact, you should have included section 363A as a new reference in that clause.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): The only slip that I see is where a member with a law degree says that he doesn't understand why we are removing a section that has already been repealed, because this is a technical amendment that is referring to removing something that's actually not there. It's as simple as that.
Part 26 agreed to.
Part 27 Amendments to Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to Part 27, the debate on clauses 105 to 108: “Amendments to Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003”. The question is that Part 27 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a starting question on this regarding clause 107, inserting new section 88A. Now, my understanding in terms of the “Continuation of approval of assessors” is it’s to bring the end of term in line with that of adjudicators. But just checking, in terms of the principal Act, the appointment process, as far as I can see, between adjudicators and assessors is a little bit different.
I just want to check with the Minister that if the appointment process is different, what’s the rationale behind lining up the end of term process? For example, as far as I can see, the Minister appoints the assessor, but it’s the Governor-General, on advice from the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Justice, who appoints the adjudicator.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have not made any amendments to clause 107. Amendments have been made to clauses 106 and 108. Can the member just clarify for me, please?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): This is clause 107, inserting new section 88A. I’ll just double check—this is the copy I’ve got from today. Yeah, so clause 107, inserting new section 88A, “Continuation of approval of assessors”.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you. I have it down as clause 106—but we’re there. I’m looking at clause 107, inserting section 88A. What I’ll say is this amendment is to include the standard end of term provisions for assessors. The Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Act 2018 introduced standard end of term provisions for members of tribunals administered by the Ministry of Justice. But the assessor position was actually overlooked. The amendment just corrects that omission. I hope that answers the member’s question.
Part 27 agreed to.
Part 28 Amendments to New Zealand Geographic Board (Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa) Act 2008
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to Part 28. This is debate on clauses 109 to 118, “Amendments to New Zealand Geographic Board (Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa) Act 2008.” The question is that Part 28 stand part.
Part 28 agreed to.
Part 29 Amendment to Ngāti Rangi Claims Settlement Act 2019
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to Part 29. This is the debate on clauses 119 and 120, “Amendment to Ngāti Rangi Claims Settlement Act 2019”. The question is that Part 29 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I just thought it would be useful—again, because it's a claims settlement Act—for the Minister to speak briefly to this. It’s the Ngāti Rangi Claims Settlement Act 2019, and I can kind of see—and I did have a look at the Act itself—that as part of the settlement, I think what the original Act said was if a contract is reached or an agreement is reached within four years, then the land is transferred to trustees.
I guess there's two—firstly, it'd be nice to have an assurance that the iwi are all on board with this; I'm sure they are, but it'd be nice to hear it from the Minister. Also, the other question is: has that four years expired already, or are we still within that four-year period and just extending it by another three?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. I assure the member that I have been informed that we have received from Ngāti Rangi, in writing, their agreement to make these changes.
The redress provides Ngāti Rangi and the New Zealand Defence Force with a period of four years to enter the binding agreement for the transfer of Defence land at Waiouru for the purposes of commercial housing arrangements. The four years is a statutory deadline, as the legislation provides the necessary provision for the New Zealand Defence Force to be able to transfer the land to Ngāti Rangi if the opportunity comes to fruition. Accordingly, it needs a statutory amendment to change that time frame.
Why were seven years chosen as being appropriate: this is the time frame that the parties asked for both New Zealand Defence Force and Ngāti Rangi. They agreed to the seven-year time frame and they're both jointly confident that this will be sufficient enough to get the job done.
Part 29 agreed to.
Part 30 Amendments to Oaths and Declarations Act 1957
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 30. This is the debate on clauses 121 to 123; amendments to the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. The question is that Part 30 stand part.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, I have seen much of this, but a question has occurred to me about how we’re going to manage the change. During the pandemic times, it was OK to have the audio, and I think it’s correct to ensure that oaths and affirmations have the audiovisual. But it occurred to me that sometimes submitters to select committees are intending to do the video and we also have the audio as well, but, when the line is bad, they’re not able to actually use both, and they often turn off the video so that we can actually hear them properly. I just wondered, and, presumably there’s no intention to make exceptions, but they would just have to find a better connection somewhere else. I’d like the Minister’s clarification.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I thank the member Celia Wade-Brown for her work on the Governance and Administration Committee. There were some very good changes that were made to the Statutes Amendment Bill with cross-party help and support, so I thank the member for being on that committee. Yes, it’s really critical that we can modernise the way that people are heard, but when it comes to oaths and declarations, if we only have the audio—and this is what the select committee picked up—you may not actually be dealing with the right person. Having the declaration made where you can see the person and hear the person is what this change is all about—enabling that.
When it comes to bad connections, what we’re trying to do within the justice system at the moment is slowly upgrade—well, not slowly; I’m trying to do it quickly—the audiovisual connections within courts, for example. Other Government agencies will be looking to do similar. Just for the oaths and declarations, I think the committee made a very good point of saying, when you’re trying to verify who a person is, you need to be able to see them as well. That’s why it’s important that that change that the select committee made has only been made to the oaths and declarations and not to the overall presentation of, say, evidence that may be required, especially where there is mixed connectivity occurring.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. This was, as the Minister has said, one of the substantive changes that was made at select committee, and our thanks go to the Minister for also agreeing with this change. I think that it does make this a wee bit stronger.
When we were originally analysing this particular change, we did have some concerns that it would lead to a situation where there could be more coercion. I was reminded of my early days practising law, when, as the most junior person in the office, I was always set out to do the oaths and declarations, and all of the other evidence and affidavits—and I can see that other lawyers in the House are looking, with knowing eyes, at me. It’s not the “funnest” job in the world, but it is a very important job.
One of the key aspects of it is ensuring that you don’t just go through the motions of an oath or a declaration but that you actually ensure that the person who is taking the oath or declaration understands what they’re doing and is undertaking that oath without coercion and actually has capacity—I don’t want to spend too much time going over this, because I think we’re all in agreement—to make that declaration. There are special roles under the Oaths and Declarations Act, which outlines who can undertake that particular type of work.
Obviously, technology means that things have moved on, but I’m proud that the committee agreed to make this particular change, and that the Minister also agrees, because I do think it upholds the integrity of oaths and declarations. They should never be something that can be done entirely online, and I don’t think this an area where we can think of AI making a substantial contribution. There are some legal tasks, and our society is really built on the ability to verify people’s ability to undertake an oath or declaration.
Although it can sometimes be quite a boring job to take these oaths and declarations, it is really important, and I think this has made it stronger. I wouldn’t like to see this further watered-down, and I think, probably, with the original proposal, it was too much of a substantive change. I don’t think we did get submissions from the New Zealand Law Society on this, but I hope, if they’re watching tonight—undoubtedly they are, as committed legal eagles—that they do agree with how this has been changed.
I don’t really have too many more questions for the Minister, but I just wanted to acknowledge that that change was made. I think this upholds the integrity of the Oaths and Declarations Act—I hope so—and I hope we don’t have to make further changes to it.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I thank the member Camilla Belich for her contribution there, and I totally agree. For the person who takes the oath and declaration, it is important to be able to see the demeanour of a person who takes a declaration, and not just to hear their voice but also to look at whether their eyes are moving sideways. This is why I think it was so important, the change that the select committee made. It actually strengthens that proposal, and, again, I just commend the committee for the work that they did there.
Part 30 agreed to.
Part 31 Amendments to Privacy Act 2020
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 31—the debate on clauses 124 to 134: “Amendments to Privacy Act 2020”. The question is that Part 31 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to start by just checking with the Associate Minister of Justice on clause 126, which amends section 27. Essentially, it’s saying that information privacy principals 5 to 12 aren’t applicable to an individual who is holding information for the purpose of that individual’s personal or domestic affairs. Recognising that for those particular principles, a lot of the time it does refer to when an agency holds personal information, but from a different perspective, how would that work when that person is holding personal information for individual use or domestic affairs? It’s like placing their personal—well, not so much personal information, but I guess their personal information, on a social media platform. How would that work in terms of them retaining the privacy of that information? In the age of social media, sometimes one could argue that you’re putting stuff on there for personal use, but some will argue that while that’s why you’ve put it on there, it’s now available publicly. So I just wanted to check in terms of the breadth of individuals’ personal or domestic affairs.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. The proposal in clause 126, which is amending section 27(b)(ii), is really just to correct an omission. This personal information was never intended to be within the scope of a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner or proceedings in the Human Rights Review Tribunal. This proposal restores the policy position in the Privacy Act 1993 that was intended to be retained in the Privacy Act 2020.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m sure my friend Rachel Brooking will have something insightful to say shortly. I just want to talk about both clause 131 and clause 132 because these relate to the Privacy Act. Clause 131 relates to the procedure after completion of an investigation relating to access to personal information, and then clause 132 relates to the procedure after completion of other investigations. The Privacy Commissioner has looked into something, and the question is, well, what do you do next?
One of the things the commissioner must do under the current framing is to seek for the parties to resolve the issue by settlement, mediation, or whatever, if the investigation shows the complaint has substance. So that’s a mandatory direction. What these two amendments do in clauses 131 and 132 is insert “and [the commissioner] considers it appropriate to do so”. So no longer is it that if the complaint has substance, you must seek to resolve the issue; it’s that if the complaint has substance, you can, if you want, seek to resolve the issue, and that’s a significant watering-down of the rights of people who are the subject of privacy breaches and other investigations.
I’m a little concerned because these provisions relate to steps that the commissioner is required to take if the complaint is found to have substance. In particular, under the current section 91, they’re required to seek settlement of the complaint, or seek an assurance that the breach will not reoccur—that’s subsection (4). This amendment would make that subject to the discretion of a commissioner. The question is whether it’s appropriate once it’s been established that the complaint has substance that such a discretion exists, and that’s the same in the respect of situations where there’s another investigation in respect of some other matter, as well.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. To the member, I say that this particular change will give the Privacy Commissioner the discretion to use best endeavours to settle or seek assurance across all complaints he receives, providing consistency across the Act, and the commissioner is not required to seek settlement or assurance where the conduct of the parties to a complaint would render this effort futile or a waste of resources. Sections 77(1) and 83(2) already give the Privacy Commissioner the discretion to decide whether to use best endeavours to secure a settlement or assurance while he is investigating a complaint.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Chair, for allowing me to make a contribution in this committee stage. I want to note that the Minister is answering all the questions, and thank you for doing that.
An earlier question from my colleague from the Greens was about clause 126, and the Minister’s answer referenced 132(a). And I note that the select committee report also references 132(a), and I would like the Minister to tell me if I'm right or wrong: that this seems to be one of the more substantive parts of these changes to the Privacy Act. And it is to enable that six-month period to be widened to include any related—if there is more than one matter going on, then the six months goes from the end of the final matter. So that seems to be a good change to be making. So, one, if I'm right if that's the major policy change here.
And two, if she could explain how that relates to the changes at clause 125 and also clause 126. So if we go back to clause 126 which we talked about earlier, the wording is changed around from the principal Act and it's now about whether or not “(ii) received by the individual unsolicited; or (iii) created by the individual.” If those changes relate to the changes at clause 132.
Further to that, going up to clause 125. This is the replacement of subclause (1)(e) and some of it is very similar. So you “believe on reasonable grounds that B is subject to privacy laws of a prescribed country…”, but the bit that is new is this: “…and the disclosure is not precluded by any limitation or qualification prescribed in respect of that country under section 214(3);”. And 214(3) doesn't change. That relates to “A country may be prescribed…” based on the type of foreign person or the type of personnel.
So I was just wondering if the Minister can tell me if these changes relate back to clause 132(a) or if they're totally different and it's a different sort of tidy up.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. The member may not have been in here when I just answered the question more recently on clause 126, so I'll just abbreviate and answer again.
Hon Rachel Brooking: No, I was.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: OK. So what these are are just small, minor technical amendments on clauses that affect—there's no rolling effect of one will affect another unless there is a change that specifically makes an effect on a different clause, if that makes sense. So with clause 125 for example, that amendment clarifies that information can only be disclosed when consistent with section 214 of the principal Act. The Act requires that information shared with prescribed overseas countries—countries with broadly similar privacy protections to New Zealand—are subject to any limitations imposed when the country is prescribed.
However, the wording of IPP 12(1)(e) does not mention this and creates uncertainty. So that's why we're making the changes to clause 125, because of that uncertainty.
And then of course clause 126 was correcting an omission and the proposal restores the policy position in the Privacy Act 1993 that was intended to be retained in the Privacy Act 2020.
And then clauses 131 and 132 is giving the Privacy Commissioner some discretion as to the best endeavours to settle or seek assurance for that settlement.
So the only time that you'll see the rolling effect is when we make one change that actually influences or has a minor or non-technical amendment to something else. But really these are all just tidy-ups—individual tidy-ups.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Just further to that—thank you, Minister. I was in the Chamber for that discussion of clause 126 and I might have misheard the Minister. So the point is that 132(a) is the most important change and then everything else is some unassociated other tidy-up, or it could relate to 132(a). I think I just heard the Minister say that those changes to clause 125 and clause 126 not related to the change at 132(a) and they are their own separate tidy-ups, is that correct?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Correct. Clause 125 is a clarification, clause 126 is correcting an omission, and clause 131 and 132 is giving the Privacy Commissioner discretion.
Part 31 agreed to.
Part 32 Amendments to Public Service Act 2020
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 32, the debate on clauses 135 to 139, “Amendments to Public Service Act 2020”. The question is that Part 32 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Another one of my favourite Acts to look at, the Public Service Act. I looked at some of these changes in detail, and I've kind of satisfied myself in relation to some of the questions I had around clause 139; I think I understand that. I've looked and there is a definition of an interdepartmental venture. There are boards; it was actually quite interesting seeing the different interdepartmental venture boards that are outlined in the Public Service Act, so I won't ask the Minister about that. But I did want to ask about clause 137(2). This is a change to Schedule 3 of the Act, specifically a change to clause 16(1). Now, it's, maybe, a slightly minor point, but essentially, as it currently stands, the commissioner is required to give the Minister a briefing every three years. Now, this bill changes that to “in every 3-year period after 7 August 2020”. which seems a bit unusual.
Additionally, it won't be news to anyone in this House, although, it is still Tuesday, which means we have suspended time in some manner, that we, in fact, have missed a three-year period after 7 August 2020—in fact, two three-year periods now. So the question I have is: why make this change where it appears to give retrospective duties in the past to the piece of legislation—and I might be misunderstanding this, and the Minister may want to clarify—which are unable to be met by the commissioner due to the fact that 7 August 2020 is now over six years ago?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I thank the member for her question. I'm advised that this change—replacing “every 3 years” with “in every 3-year period”, following the commencement of this section—will clarify the time frames for agencies to deliver their long-term insights briefings. So it's clarifying the preferred interpretation of the clause, and I understand it will not affect time frames to deliver the first briefings.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have such a minute question and pedantic question. I hope the Minister is able to prove me wrong in terms of my interpretation. I just want to check—“after 7 August 2020”, for me, implies after that, which means 8 August 2020. The Royal assent for this bill is the 6 August 2020. Does that mean 7 August gets skipped altogether? I think that one day, at this stage, is now inconsequential, but I would just like to check my interpretation by the Minister.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I don’t believe that there’s an issue there. That’s not been pointed out to me at all. In fact, I’ve been told that it will not affect time frames to deliver first briefings. I think the key words here might be the commencement of this section. I am understanding that there will be no effect to the time frames.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Just a follow-up. Thank you to the Associate Minister of Justice again. I echo the comments of my colleague Rachel Brooking, we’re very grateful for the Minister engaging with us in good faith when answering these questions. The answer in relation the long-term insights briefings, those are currently due to be repealed, in the sense that there will be a requirement to have, as I understand, one long-term insights briefing done by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet now, and the rest of the—I always forget the exact number, but it’s over 20; maybe somewhere between 20 and 34—long-term insights briefings that are required to be done will be abolished by the Public Service Amendment Act that the Government is currently putting through.
I know that the policy question is not for the Minister to ask in that debate; that’s for the Minister for Public Service. But just maybe if the officials could clarify that because there is substantive change happening to long-term insights briefings under a bill that is currently due to be reported back to the House from select committee shortly: will these changes still be drafted in the way that will make them longstanding? We don’t want to see, of course, these come back in another Statutes Amendment Bill straight away; we would like to make sure that they were able to at least survive the passage of the changes to the long-term insights briefing. So not really a policy question, but a technical question: due to that change, are these provisions still fit for purpose? I appreciate that this bill went through the select committee prior to that bill. So that’s really why I’m asking that question.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. Yeah, it’s a good question to ask, but we’re dealing with the bill that we have here. While there’s another bill that might be under way, it hasn’t gone through the process of the House. So we are dealing with an issue that we found that has, of course, got cross-party support. So we will fix this here and, should there be any other changes in any other legislation, we would all hope that the transitional provisions would pick up any changes that would need to be made in the future.
Part 32 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): For those on the edge of their seat in anticipation, there are 10 more parts left to go of this.
Part 34 Amendments to Radiocommunications Act 1989
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): We are up to Part 34. This is debate on clauses 143 to 147; amendments to the Radiocommunications Act 1989. The question is that Part 34 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to really thank the Minister for that previous response. The Minister is absolutely right; the commencement date is the day after the Royal assent, so everything does line up, which is a huge reassurance. Thank you, Minister.
I’ve got two questions for Part 34. The first one is to do with clause 147 subclause (1). It’s actually very helpful that we’re now allowing for an electronic address of the person in cases when they are not there. But I guess while that closes one loophole, I’m still curious to know what happens if we don’t have any of those when we’re issuing an infringement notice: neither electronic nor physical means. Are there any other mechanisms that it could be using?
My second question is for subclause (2), “Replace section 128B(3)”, and I’m specifically looking at subclause (3)(b). I’m specifically looking at this clause, and I wanted to ask the Minister to help interpret it, which is, what does “first enters an information system that is outside the control of the Secretary or the authorised person.”, mean? Does it mean the moment that the secretary or the authorised person presses send and that is no longer in their control? Or the moment that the person who is being served receives that in their inbox, so to speak?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. Sorry to the member, I just missed the beginning of the second part of that question, but I can answer the first part and invite the member to try again for the second.
The first part is making an amendment to include that an infringement may be sent to a person’s electronic address. The member said, “Well, what if they don’t have an electronic address?” Well, there are other means, which is by sending it by mail. There could get to a point if they do not collect it that they end up having bailiffs serving upon them, so there are always other ways. This is modernising the Act; recognising that there are faster, more efficient ways to serve people.
I’m sorry, I missed the member’s second question.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): No, you’re all good, Minister. My second question: in section 128B(3)(b) there’s a line that says, “is to be treated as having been served at the time the electronic communication first enters an information system that is outside the control of the Secretary”, so I want to check what is the “moment”? Is it the moment when, for example, the secretary or the authorised person presses send, or the moment when the person served receives it in their inbox?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, and thanks for your patience in repeating the question a second time. I am going to make a presumption that it is when the person presses send. My reasoning for that is because you will not be able to know when an email has been received. So my thoughts are it would have to be on the send.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think my first question has probably been answered, because it's when it enters the information system, but we all know of cases where mailboxes are full and it never quite gets delivered. But I suppose you're saying that the sending is what is important, and if somebody's mailbox is full, then perhaps you would say that that is their problem, not the sender's problem.
But if you could hold your thought on that for a moment, I have a different question, which is on clause 147(3)(a), and it's about when it would have been delivered in the ordinary course of post. With the relatively recent changes to the post, rural delivery is received five days a week, but you're terribly deprived—for once—in towns and cities, with it arriving only three times. So I just wonder whether there is an unintended consequence, where there is a difference between people who are living rurally and people who are living in towns.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you to the member for that question, and they’re really good points that have been made. I think it would maybe even require a member's bill to be thought of, because the issue that is raised is probably more than a minor and small technical issue that needs to be raised. I think that the effect of the postal service would have implications over many Acts as well, so I understand the reasoning for that member's question.
I'm just going to go back to the first comment that the member made about the sending, and what if a mailbox is full. As a person who has had a full mailbox just recently, I have been contacted by people to say, “I'm getting replies that your mailbox is full.”, and I think that there is the ability for that notification to go back to the sender. What happens then, I'm not sure; I'm looking at the smaller amendments that allow the person to send it electronically in the first place.
Part 34 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I’ve just been corrected. Part 33 was actually removed at the select committee, so there are now only eight parts left.
Part 35 Amendments to Real Estate Agents Act 2008
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Part 35. This is the debate on clauses 148 to 150, “Amendments to Real Estate Agents Act 2008”. The question is that Part 35 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m just curious here because this is another occupational regulation Act. We’ve seen the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act already, and section 74 deals with when the complaints framework need not proceed, so you can, basically, kick out a complaint. Some of the traditional ones are that it’s frivolous or the vexatious, but the language has somewhat changed, and I’m just curious as to why this change is necessary. At the moment, there’s already a power to refuse to consider a complaint under section 74(3)(a) if the complaint is inconsequential or concerns—I forget the exact word, but “inconsequential” is the core concept—and all of a sudden, we’ve got a change coming to the House to change it to “is not sufficiently serious” to warrant further action.
I’m kind of perplexed as to why someone—and, presumably, it’s the Minister of Justice; this is one of your tribunals, I think, Minister—in the Ministry of Justice tribunals unit has said, “ ‘Inconsequential’ doesn’t work for us any more. We want something that’s not sufficiently serious.”, and they would seem to be two sides to the same coin. So I’m just curious to know why it was considered consequential to get rid “inconsequential’ and to now use “not sufficiently serious”, and whether that issue was serious enough to warrant putting “not sufficiently serious” in there.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I like the member’s humour. This change is ensuring that the language reflects the intended lower threshold contemplated for the provision, without diminishing the impact that the circumstances surrounding the compliant may have on the complainant. The current language is seen as being inflammatory to complainants and it is detrimental to the authority’s relationships with consumers and stakeholders, and so they asked for a change.
Part 35 agreed to.
Part 36 Amendment to Search and Surveillance Act 2012
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come to Part 36, the debate on clauses 151 and 152, “Amendment to Search and Surveillance Act 2012”. The question is that Part 36 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I did have a read of the Search and Surveillance Act, and this just looks like a clear drafting error; because there’s not going to be many situations where someone who has had their house searched and a weapon seized is then asked, “Can we destroy your weapon?”, and they consent and say, “Go for it.” I get that.
My question is this: have we been destroying weapons that have been seized without the consent of a person from whom they were seized, in breach of the section to date; or have we been, kind of, recognising parliamentary intent rather than parliamentary words and destroying weapons, in breach of the section?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I think that question is for the Minister that handles the Search and Surveillance Act. I'm here to talk about the Statutes Amendment Bill, and replacing “does not within 30 days consent” with “does not within 30 days object” is merely what we're doing here. The process of whether or not firearms or weapons are destroyed actually belongs to the Minister of Police, to answer that question.
Part 36 agreed to.
Part 37 Amendments to Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 2004
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 37, the debate on clauses 153 to 160, “Amendments to Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 2004”.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Another Act which has quite the quaint title and harks back to maybe a different time—although, I’m sure these days with the focus on reusing, and I’m here with my colleague Rachel Brooking, who is very much focused on that, but this is very much something that should be kept up to date and modernised in order that we can have effective second-hand dealers in New Zealand.
So I have one question in relation to this particular change, and that is: I’ve looked at section 77A of the original Act, which is not mentioned here apart from to say that 77AA is inserted underneath it by clause 156 of the bill—and the question I have is: in reading those two provisions together, they seem, on the face of it, to be a little bit contradictory, and I’ll tell you why I think that, and I’d be interested in the Minister’s thoughts or her officials’ advice. You may not have this in front of you, so I’ll let you know what section 77A says, and then everyone can read section 77A, inserted by clause 156 of the bill. Essentially, section 77A(1) states that “All Licensing Authorities acting together may issue practice notes, to apply to all of them, as they think fit.” So that’s quite a wide power that is given in 77A. If I’m reading this correctly, 77A stands—and this would be the normal drafting, that we would have 77AA after that; that provision then says a more prescriptive requirement that “All Licensing Authorities acting together must set requirements as to the manner in which photographs [are] required to accompany applications under sections 8”, etc.
So my question, really, is: do those two sections fit together? Because 77A seems to be slightly wider and less prescriptive than 77AA. So I don’t know how well these licensing authorities in relation to second-hand authentication of photographs get on, but perhaps if there was a disagreement that one group may rely on 77A, and one may rely on 77AA. So it appears to me inconsistent, but I’m sure that there is a reasonable explanation as to why this drafting is more robust than I initially thought it appeared.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. The proposed amendment being made here would facilitate the introduction of electronic filing in the future by enabling the licensing authority to set authentication requirements for photographs that can be complied with electronically—so modernising it, setting up for a future file of these photographs, and allowing them the ability to prescribe what that would look like.
Part 37 agreed to.
Part 38 Amendments to Serious Fraud Office Act 1990
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 38. This is debate on clauses 161 to 163: “Amendments to Serious Fraud Office Act 1990”. The question is that Part 38 stand part.
Part 38 agreed to.
Part 39 Amendment to Taxation Review Authorities Act 1994
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 39. This is the debate on clauses 164 and 165, “Amendment to Taxation Review Authorities Act 1994”. The question is that Part 39 stand part.
Part 39 agreed to.
Part 40 Amendment to Wages Protection Act 1983
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 40. This is the debate on clauses 166 and 167, “Amendment to Wages Protection Act 1983”. The question is that Part 40 stand part.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. This is another piece of legislation that I feel affection for, the Wages Protection Act 1983—a particularly good year, I might add, and also the year of the Wages Protection Act 1983. It’s a very important piece of legislation that essentially means that wages for workers are not able to have deductions made from them in an unreasonable way. That goes back, really, to the foundation of the trade union movement, which was set up to allow workers to work together against employers who would essentially make regular deductions from their wages for things like accommodation and food and transport. Many workers, before they had any protections, would find themselves in a state of servitude, which, of course, is very objectionable. They would be working but never making any money, because all of the deductions from their salary would go towards funding other things that their employer would say were required. Of course, that was addressed before 1983, but the Wages Protection Act carries on a very noble aim of making sure that wages are in fact protected.
One of the key tenets, as I understand it, in this legislation is that all deductions must be not only consulted on but consented to prior to a deduction being made. Many of these things that we do consent to in our wages that are permissible deductions are things like—well, maybe KiwiSaver’s not a good example, because it’s opt-out. You do have to consent to things like—for example, if you’re in a staff social club, it would be contrary to the Wages Protection Act for your employer or, say, the president of the social club to deduct that from your wages without your permission. That is really the fundamental purpose, as I understand it, of the Wages Protection Act. There are many other important parts—but, of course, I’m not sure that going through the history of that would make a good question for the Minister.
My question is—this is a very important piece of legislation. The section that this bill is amending appears to make it clear that it may be possible to deduct—I’m sure that this is not correct, but I just want assurance from the Minister that what this is saying is not that you may make deductions if they’re reasonable, even if the employee has not been consulted. I’m sure that, on reading that full section, which I hadn’t had time to do today, that would not be the case, but just on the general reading of clause 167 as it is listed there, I just want that assurance that that isn’t the purpose of this particular change.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): It’s not the purpose of this change. In fact, the purpose of it is the opposite. When that section was inserted, the corresponding amendment to section 11 to allow for the recovery of wages deemed to have been deducted unlawfully under section 5A was overlooked. This insertion actually allows—where wages have been deducted without the consent or knowledge of the wage earner—either the wage earner or the labour inspectorate, acting on behalf of that worker, the ability to apply to have that money returned.
Part 40 agreed to.
Part 41 Amendments to Water Services Act 2021
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 41. This is the debate on clauses 168 to 173, “Amendments to Water Services Act 2021”.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Mr Chair.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Part 41 stand part. I call the eager Rachel Brooking.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): I’ve stood on all sides of this House talking about variations of the water services Act and I will come to a reference to some recent amendments in a moment, maybe.
My first question is about clause 169, amending section 25 of the Water Services Act 2021: what is wrong with the “the”s? That’s my question. The change here is that “the drinking water supply” is being changed to “a drinking water supply”. I just want to know what the problem is that this change to the “the”s is going to rectify. I note, of course, that there are a lot of references throughout the Act to “a drinking water supplier”, but, of course, that's the entity rather than the actual supply. So that's my first question.
I have second question; it’s a very easy yes or no. It's just that it seems that at clause 173, the amendment to replace “changes” with “charges” is a simple typo because all the other references to “c” words with an “h” in them in that section are “charges”, not “changes”.
And then, I guess, my final question is relating to clause 171. This again appears to be a typo issue because the word “issue” is in the heading in relation to compliance orders, whereas in the text below, it’s talking about “serving”: the service of a compliance order. I have a small point on that, that the Minister might or might not be able to comment on, and that is that amendment to section 120, where I think this drafting error was made, looks to have been inserted on 27 August 2025. I’m happy to be corrected on that. I've just been looking at it on my phone and I'm wondering if this is a case of—I can recall speaking on some large Amendment Papers to this legislation—this coming through an Amendment Paper at a late stage or if it has always been in there and nobody picked it up.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I'm going to work through them one by one and please feel free to stand up if I don't get them all. I’m going to start with clause 169, section 25(3): the “the” and the “a”. It's all about consistency. So as you mentioned, “a” is throughout the bill, so all they're doing is changing “the” to “a” to have consistency. It has no policy implications at all.
In regard to clause 173, amending section 200(2)(c): yeah, that's fixing human error—“charges” and “changes”, it's as simple as that. Clause 171, amending section 120: you may have raised a point that's actually been raised by another member earlier this evening on another clause, where there has been consequential amendments from other pieces of legislation. If that is indeed the case here, like I think it might be, then this just means that this is no longer relevant because it's already been sorted. I'm of the understanding that the Parliamentary Counsel Office have made some changes to legislation that has gone through during the time that this bill has been going through its process. Just recalling that this bill was initially started under Labour, so it has been sitting for quite some time. So if it has been updated already, it will be inconsequential to this.
Part 41 agreed to.
Part 42 Amendments to Wildlife Act 1953
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 42. This is the debate on clauses 174 to 176, “Amendments to Wildlife Act 1953”. The question is that Part 42 stand part.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you for this. Section 175 is about the notice for open season for game, and subsection 15(5) that’s being amended here says, “At any time during an open game season declared under subsection (4), the notice published in respect of that season may in like manner—(a) be amended; or (b) be revoked and be replaced by a new notice.” So my question is: why do we need to replace “during”—so, that’s during an open game season—to “before”, to include “before” as well? The rest of the subclause is about changing a notice, so why would you be changing a notice before the notice period? I’d understand it if this clause was about initiating a notice, but it’s not about initiating a notice, it’s about changing a notice. So I’m just not quite sure how the sequencing of this works and why it is that you need to add in the “before” to the “during”. That’s one question. I’ll let you answer that.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Yes, this is actually just clarifying because the notices currently can only be issued once the season starts. Basically, depending on what the notice is, the notice could have clarifications about where a person can go or what they can do, so it seems reasonable to be able to issue a notice before the season starts so that a person understands what their requirements are instead of waiting till season opening or opening day and then finding that they’re actually breaking rules and didn’t know about it. So, that’s why we’re making that change.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you to the Minister for giving that explanation of the earlier notice to start with. That makes sense. Then, at section 176, in replacement section 66A(3) of the Wildlife Act—there’s an (a) and (b)—we can see the change in the bill is that “(3) A person commits an offence and is liable … to the penalty … if [they]—(a) contravenes subsection (2); or”—and this is the new part—“(b) wilfully gives false information or provides false evidence under subsection (2).” The introduction here is of this wilful false information, so my question to the Minister is: have there been problems with people giving false information that has led to this amendment?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): That’s a really good question. I thank the member for asking it. I would say that no, that’s not the reason for the amendment. The reason for the amendment was because that offence was actually accidentally removed during the Wildlife (Powers) Amendment Act 2017. There is an issue with when rangers turn up and then they get given the wrong information—purposely too—by some people who are trying to evade, especially if they’re poaching. We’re actually just putting back in an offence that was accidentally removed back in 2017, just to give those rangers a bit more power and a bit more teeth.
Part 42 agreed to.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I'm so sorry, Mr Chair. This is a just super, super quick call. I just want to be on record to say how much we appreciate the Minister's engagement in this committee stage. That's all.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Bill to be reported without amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has the Statutes Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Statutes Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on Parliament’s website.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
As the House will be aware, statutes amendment bills make small and technical but important changes to our legislation to ensure that it is up to date and it’s fit for purpose. Many of the amendments in the bill correct drafting errors or references, some amendments clarify the intention of the existing provision, and other amendments make technical changes to ensure our systems and functions can operate effectively. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support. The bill as reported back to the House from the Governance and Administration Committee amends 42 primary Acts administered by 11 Government agencies. The Governance and Administration Committee agreed to the changes recommended by the Ministry of Justice and other agencies in the departmental report.
In summary, this bill will provide much needed changes to the statute book. The amendments will ensure that New Zealand’s legislation operates efficiently and effectively. Again, I want to thank members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their time and their effort, as well as all of those people who submitted on the bill. I also want to thank all members of Parliament for their support of the amendments in the bill. I look forward to working constructively with parties as the next Statutes Amendment Bill is put together. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this Statutes Amendment Bill at the third reading. We’re all at one, holding hands over this bill. And this really is just an example of what David Seymour would call regulatory stewardship. In fact, you know, it’s just a matter of good regulation, good regulatory standards. And it’s good that we have this because I understand that Winston Peters is going to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill very soon, which just goes to show we didn’t need it anyway.
Glen Bennett: Two days.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Yeah, two days in. But look, these statutes amendments are important. I mean, some of them are correcting slips, and the slip that said you had to ask for consent when you search someone’s house and seize their firearm, you have to ask them if you’re allowed to destroy it rather than allowed to destroy it if they don’t object. I mean, that’s a cracker. It really is a good example of the need to be vigilant.
I guess the fact that in reality there’s relatively few slips like that is a testament to perhaps more Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) than our select committee process and other scrutiny that goes on. But PCO are very, very good at ensuring that that doesn’t occur and picking it up when it does, because there’s some modernisations going on there. There’s a huge chunk of the Act with amendments to Armed Forces regulations and the Defence Act simply to stop using the word “airman” and turn it into “aviator”. And I guess that’s fine, right? It’s—
Tim Costley: Is it?
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, it’s fine to change it, isn’t it, Mr Costley? Mr Costley would prefer to have it at airman. Mr Costley doesn’t want to have women aviators, it appears. Or you just want to call them men, is that what it is? Whatever it is, I think spending some parliamentary time getting gender-neutral and inclusive language is actually OK.
The other one that was interesting, and I must say it caused some discomfort, was talking around some of the sexual offences, and people did get a bit queasy about it. But that was in respect of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act and also the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act. I must say, and I’m hoping somewhere out there the justice officials have a quick look at this, because the inclusion in the clean slate Act of offences under the 1908 Crimes Act is kind of weird. But weirdest of all is inclusion of unnatural acts, which are acts against homosexual conduct—they shouldn’t be in there. I’m surprised that if we’re doing a statutes amendment bill, we’re getting rid of references to having sex with—I think the word “imbeciles” was in there. That’s fine. We can do that. But to then not go this step further and say, “Why have we got these other very strange offences which pre-date 1961 in there?” kind of beggars belief.
One of the other things I think we’ve got to be cautious about, and Celia Wade-Brown noted on a number of occasions, is this move towards electronic provision of both things like infringement notices and publication of Land Transfer Act notices, and there was information under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and so on and so forth. I’m just a bit worried as we modernise the provision of information and the providing of notices, that we just do it actually just sloppily. Because to say you can put information up on an internet address—provide further information on an internet address, if you’re going to go down that road, you need to go down it with as much detail as when you set out how to provide it in writing. The address for service, whether it has to be delivered or actually received, and things like that. I just think we’ve got a bit sloppy by simply saying things like, “By emailing it and it is sent when it leaves the information system of the sender.” Well, if you’re going to serve a notice, it’s not enough to put a letter in the letterbox; it has to actually arrive. Now we might not really have—do we still have registered mail? I don’t know, but that’s essentially a registered mail when you can prove receipt or a signed courier delivery.
As we go through and modernise information provision, I do think we need to take care to make sure that it is calibrated appropriately in terms of seriousness. If you’re sending a power bill, not that that’s legislative, then an email is fine without knowing it’s been received. But if you’re sending an infringement notice—and one of the provisions here was about infringement notices—to simply say it’s deemed received when it leaves your information system—and you’ve got to remember, if it leaves my information system, it then goes to my internet provider’s information system. And it may go through another a number of other internet providers before it reaches the internet provider of the recipient, before it then reaches the information system of the person to whom it’s addressed. And as Celia Wade-Brown identified, it doesn’t often go wrong, but it can go wrong.
The Minister herself noticed noted that our own information systems can reject emails when they do not have the memory to receive them, which was the example she gave. But other situations can exist as well—[Interruption]
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Dr Duncan Webb, I’m sorry to interrupt you. Can I please have some quiet on the right side of the House? Thank you.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: You can interrupt me for that anytime you like.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Carry on, thank you.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was just talking about how the Minister accepted that emails in particular can get rejected for a number of reasons. Spam, of course, is the other reason that can occur.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Faxes were much better.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Oh yeah. And in fact, faxes were much better because whilst there’s a read receipt function on emails, you could actually always tell when a fax was received at the other end because you’d get a notification. And you know, it goes back a while now, but many a lawyer’s file had the original fax and a little slip of paper that was proof that it had been not only sent, but received.
Of course, the other thing we talked about was the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and just in keeping records of affordability testing. I can understand that keeping records of everything is onerous. There’s no suggestion that every time a bank has an enquiry or a financier has an enquiry about a loan, they need to keep records. But I was concerned that the Minister didn’t really get the point that when a non-customer seeks a loan and is turned down or withdraws their application then there’s nothing to see. But in situations where a customer goes and asks for some variation, it’s actually important that those records remain because they’re part of the customer’s kind of record of relationship with the bank and also a record of their financial position. Because if they are seeking hardship relief, even formally or informally, then I think it’s appropriate that the bank keeps full records of those.
The other thing I’ll say just in closing, and you know I didn’t sit on the select committee and these the statutes amendments bills are circulated prior to introduction. But I do think we need to exercise a little bit of caution about the extent to which they don’t just clarify, they actually change meaning. This is not the place for improvements in legislation. There is a place for modernisation and there’s a place for modernisation of language. There’s a place for correction of errors, but substantial changes in how the rules work is problematic.
So it’s interesting in the Real Estate Agents Act, the change from “inconsequential” to “not sufficiently serious”. Same meaning but better for dispute resolution by not aggravating the complainant. But some of the other changes went a little bit further than that.
So look, good to see we’re all at one on this. Good to have a little bit of fun around the Statutes Amendments Bill. In an evening of an urgency debate, this is the archetype of a non-urgent bill. It shouldn’t be on the Order Paper today, but here we are.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to also support the Statutes Amendment Bill. Like the previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said, this was actually a bill that—although it’s quite long and there are many, many parts—we did have a very wholesome discussion on and engagement with the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage.
To start with, there are 42 parts to this bill—technically, now 41, because one of the parts has been removed and introduced as a separate bill—and they have wide-ranging topics, as well. Again, it’s just one of those bills that really exemplifies the way that, as a Parliament, how we do these sort of incidental corrections on a number of legislations as an omnibus bill that is agreed upon by the entirety of Parliament. Again, this is a bill that is supposed to make these sort of technical amendments, because, again, a lot of these—regardless of what has recently been passed in the House—once a bill is enacted, the only place to actually make any changes and make any corrections is through an Act of Parliament, because of the fact that parliamentary sovereignty, but also the fact that Parliament is the place to make law.
I do want to touch on a few of the broader themes of the things that come up. Like I said, there are 42—technically, now 41—parts to this bill with a wide-ranging scope in terms of the different bills that it covers. But one of the first themes that we do come across is the theme of an update in the digital age. To give an example: at the very beginning, in terms of Part 1, we are looking at an update to the Accident Compensation Act that allows the consultation of levy setting, etc., rather than just solely being in newspapers, to be allowed to be done on an internet site maintained by or on behalf of the corporation. For this particular section, the Minister was incredibly helpful at also clarifying that “internet”, in this case, is much broader than a website, or otherwise it would have stated “a website”, and “internet” does capture the scope of how we use anything that is online—in which case, social media. It was very heartening to hear from the Minister that there is the encouragement that we do what we need to do—as in, in general for Public Service agencies or departments—to use all tools that are available now, including social media should they have a social media account, to also engage with other members.
The previous speaker the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned quite a bit regarding one of the technical amendments to Part 34. This is around the Radiocommunications Act 1989. Both parts of this talk about in terms of how an infringement notice could be presented. Currently, an infringement notice could only be delivered either things like in person or physically through a mail, but it doesn’t really capture instances where the person does not have a known place of residence or business in Aotearoa New Zealand—so, in those cases, what this bill has upgraded to allow is for electronic addresses to be used.
But like the previous speakers have mentioned, and also my colleague Celia Wade-Brown has mentioned, there are things that are more technical in terms of how, then, would we be able to track when it comes to a valid electronic address and how an issuing of that infringement notice, particularly when we’re using lines that are technical in nature, that requires a particular ministerial intent or particular interpretation to know what is meant. In this case, it is “an infringement notice sent to a valid electronic address … is to be treated as having been served at the time the electronic communication first enters an information system that is outside the control of the Secretary or the authorised person.”, which is a very long-winded way of saying “when the Secretary or authorised person presses send”. But again, that does cover a broader thing, and this is something I will touch on a little bit later. Those are just two examples; one element of the theme that we see throughout the Statutes Amendment Bill.
The other one that we’re seeing is the use of inclusive language or updated language or languages, or adjustment from languages that are no longer accepted or is considered appropriate in the 21st century. I think one of the ones is in Part 11, for example, when we’re looking at amendments to the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, where the term has been updated to the use of “certain persons”. The definition of that, according to the Minister, is something that can be determined through common law and through just general practice, rather than having a specific defined term. I think the other one that has been touched on by the previous speaker, as well, is around the Defence Act 1990, as well. There is language that is being updated to be a little bit more inclusive. These are, again, some of the things that we are seeing as running as a core theme of this bill that needed updating.
The third theme that I want to touch on is inconsistencies, and these inconsistencies could be anything from aspects of the bill that, when they’ve been updated, have been left out in terms of the drafting. A good example of that is the Land Transfer Act 2017. When it was updated from being the Land Transfer Act 1952 to the Land Transfer Act 2017, the term “or the registered owner” was dropped off, instead of being after “claimant”—and this is clause 90 of the bill, and this is Part 23.
There are also other instances where certain terms, for example, were incorrectly drafted or inappropriately drafted. One of the examples of that is in Part 36, when we were looking at amendments to the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, where the word “consent” was incorrectly drafted, when it’s supposed to be “object”. Again, something like this we’re seeing as being a technical update on something that, potentially, could have broader implications.
Another really good example that I think is worth mentioning is the amendment to section 29 of the Housing Act 1955, which is in clause 72 of the bill, and I think this is just so lovely. This particular section is replacing the term of “1 pound”. It was only recently picked up through this bill, for example, that the registration of an easement certificate still uses the pound as a currency as opposed to the New Zealand dollar, which is what we’re using now. That has been updated from “1 pound” to “prescribed under the Land Transfer Act 2017”. So—
Andy Foster: What’s the exchange rate?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Great point. This is another thing, and the last part is just removing certain areas that has been repealed and hasn’t really been updated as a part of this.
One of the things that we also explored—and it’s a theme in a few multiple areas—is just in terms of some of these amendments, what does it mean when the legislation was, for example, drafted incorrectly or when the bill has been enacted and has taken effect, but now we’re making these kinds of changes? The Housing Act 1955 and also the Search and Surveillance Act are really good examples of, “Well, we haven’t picked up on that.”, and so what happens for all of those people who have been paying for a registration of easement certificate up until now, when the legislation says “1 pound” versus what it’s meant to be—and I think the Minister has articulated those really well.
Finally, one of the last things that we explored as a part of this bill during the committee of the whole House stage is some of the concerns that—again, the Minister has accurately said this is a technical bill. We can only do so much within this bill, but there are next steps that people could consider exploring through a member’s bill on things that are a little bit broader than that. But with that, it was a really enjoyable bill during the committee stage, and the Green Party is supporting it.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): It was New Zealand’s Governor-General in World War II, Sir Cyril Newall, who famously started his speech, “Men of the army and navy, gentlemen of the air force.”, and those gentleman and ladies who served in our Permanent Air Force and Royal New Zealand Airforce, from 1923 and 1937 respectively, have always generically been known as airmen. Regardless of gender, of trade, or of rank, they were just all airmen, in the same way that we have soldiers and sailors. We’ve now changed that, in Part 14 of this Act, to “aviator”—except, of course, traditionally, an aviator was a man, and an aviatrix was a woman. We’re ironically going for something that, traditionally, is a more gendered term. Now, I understand, and I accept the rationale for it, that it’s just a shame to see 102 years of tradition go by the wayside. Regardless, I’ll be voting for this bill.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): I had the pleasure of being part of the Governance and Administration Committee, which spent some good time discussing and perusing this bill. You’ll note that there were a number of areas—and this, really, is going to be minor and technical stuff and things which are agreedto by everyone. There is no demurral in this House. I think, in the committee of the whole House and in some of the speeches which we’ve just heard, the magnificent efforts of members occupying 10 minutes talking about these sorts of things, like Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan—
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: It’s such a delightful bill, to be honest.
ANDY FOSTER: Yes, it’s remarkable. I’m not going to try and do that. Anything that was any substance whatsoever—as you’ll see in the report there—we have said is outside of the scope of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This call is a split call.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thought I would manage a No. 6 call—thank you.
I was on the Governance and Administration Committee, and it was a remarkable introduction to the breadth of legislation in this country. I would like to make a few comments about some of the items we discussed, and one of the things that I enjoy and, I’ve heard, my colleagues do, at least on this side of the House—I’m not sure about the other side of the House, but we could be enlightened—are great op shoppers. But who knew until we got this Statutes Amendment Bill that there was Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act? I imagine pawnbrokers would need regulating, but I didn’t realise that it was also real estate and second-hand dealers.
There are some really serious and important Acts in here that just needed to be brought up to date—some unpleasant language that should be removed. I do have some slight sympathy with the word “aviatrix” being a fantastic word that it’s great to get into Hansard. We don’t call a chairperson, “chairman”; in fact, it was until quite recently there would be certain female members of leading organisations that would like to be called the “chairman”, but that’s an unusual situation.
In the main, Parliamentary Counsel Office and/or the legislators at the time pick things up, but, over time, those little errors accrue, and it was our job to look through these and even spot a few more opportunities. It’s very good. I don’t think it needed to be done under urgency at half past 10 at night, to be honest. However, until that point, until the point of urgency for both the committee of the whole House and urgency for the third reading—I do think it needs a higher bar to go into urgency—the process had been pretty good, because there was initial consultation about the things that should go into it, and that was consultation across the different parties, and they all agreed these things straightforward.
There were a few, like the audiovisual link and the question of sending things by email and when it’s judged to be sent, and we even found a few more interesting questions tonight—such as the potential difference in delivery dates between rural areas that we’re proud to receive mail five days a week, and I have to say the rural post is amazing, but with the towns and cities, I believe it’s about three times a week and difficult to predict exactly when it’s going to arrive.
I am glad that I’ve been introduced to this way of looking across a whole range of bills. I don’t think it replaces the legislative design committee, which is actually a really good way of looking at law. It should be used, in my view, for members’ bills and all Government bills, as well, and that would have meant that we wouldn’t need what I would call the ephemeral Regulatory Standards Bill. I would commend this bill to the House and we fully support this bill.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Oh, this has been fascinating to sit here for the last—it feels like my full 28 years I have sat here, actually, for the entire Statutes Amendment Bill. But it has been really interesting to watch and see members engage in the process and look to improve it, but I also commend the Associate Minister of Justice for her proactive approach with trying to sort out what are minor, technical details that she is remedying and fixing. I just commend it to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the third reading—already—of the Statutes Amendment Bill. It was quite a journey to go through all 42 different pieces of legislation that are amended by the Statutes Amendment Bill. I’ve recently been watching the Back to the Future movies with my kids, again, and it felt a wee bit like that. We’d be zipping from the 1890s, in fact—I think was the oldest bill that we looked at—through to 1955, 1983, and just going all over the place with the different bills and their historic relevance. This was an interesting process, and I came into this bill during the select committee stage. I wasn’t there for the entire select committee stage, I don’t think, at the Governance and Administration Committee. But I do want to acknowledge my colleagues who are part of the Governance and Administration Committee and who have been contributing to this bill, including Celia WadeBrown, Tom Rutherford, and Tim Costley, I think, and others who are not on that committee, who also made contributions to this bill.
This is an interesting process: the bill is shown to—as others have said—all parties prior to it being introduced. I think I would concur with the comments made by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb when he said that this process that we’ve been through tonight may have been more fruitful had we been through that process some months ago when it was first circulated. I think that’s probably a lesson for all of us here, that when you do go through something in quite granular detail, there are important questions that arise. I don’t think that there’s anything that would prevent us, necessarily, from supporting those particular sections or changes, but I do think that when you do go through it so thoroughly, you do pick up additional things, so I think that that’s something that we can all take on board.
Of course, this was a bill that was started under the Labour Government, continued under the National Government, and is very, very dependent on the very, very hard work of many, many different officials. I think I was reading before that there were at least 12 Government departments—someone, maybe, who’s familiar with that part in the bill could correct me if I’m wrong, but there were a great number of Government departments who were involved in, probably, the drafting of this bill. I’m not sure if they follow this type of thing, but I’m sure it would have been something to be in a department who found a minor and technical error of the bill, have put it forward, have it form part of the Statutes Amendment Bill, and now they can see the satisfaction of that coming into law. So if anyone who has been involved in that is watching, thank you very much—not you, Madam Speaker, but those watching—for their hard work in bringing this bill forward.
This is an important type of bill to come forward. I don’t think these types of changes should be left on the statute book. In this Statutes Amendment Bill, we saw some particularly egregious examples of some particularly abhorrent and offensive language which is still on our statute book. I think, at the time, during the committee stage, I mentioned to officials that if we do see that, I think it is really important that we do seek to amend that. I don’t think there’s an excuse for leaving that type of language on our statute books, so I’m pleased that we’re able to amend some of those words—I’m sure there are some others. I would just really encourage people that if they do find that type of antiquated offensive language in legislation, raise that with a member of Parliament, and, hopefully, they will be able to bring it to the next Statutes Amendment Bill, and we can tidy up our legislation so we don’t have those types of problems.
There were a few funny things that were in this bill—I mean, my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s mentioned the reference to £1. How ridiculous that it’s 2025 and we still have that currency included in our statute book, so that was interesting. I enjoyed looking back at provincial ordinances, which I did not know were still in place. When New Zealand had provincial governments, they put provincial ordinances in place, some of those are still in force—very, very historically interesting—and have been continued through the Statutes Amendment Bill. So that I thought was particularly interesting.
We also had some more minor things. We had some typos that had been sitting on the statute book for a number of years, so a chocolate fish to whoever the official was who found the typographical error. Then, we did have changes to the Oaths and Declarations Act, which was one of the changes that we made at select committee. It’s very important, I think, to make sure that, although technological advances continue, we don’t lose some of those important things about face-to-face contact—looking at someone to assess if they have capacity, which is always a question that a lawyer or someone taking an oath will ask; if they do have capacity, do they do they freely enter into an oath and declaration? Very difficult to do that with just audio, which was what was proposed in the initial version of this bill. I’m very proud that the committee did take on the recommendation, and the Associate Minister of Justice did accept changing that, to make sure it was audiovisual, because I think that does uphold the integrity of the Oaths and Declarations Act. I think that was really important.
I do want to pick up on the issue that was raised by my colleague Tim Costley around gendered language. I think it’s really important that we do not dissuade ourselves from the task that is inclusive language. When I’m talking about inclusive language, I’m not talking about anything more than not including language which is overtly sexist in legislation. Unfortunately, it is just simply the fact that if you say “men” or “man”, generally, people think you are referring only to a man or men and not, in fact, to women or humans. I think it’s such an easy thing for us to update that language, to use a term which includes both men and women, rather than sticking to what I believe are sexist stereotypes which make our children, if they hear them, think that certain professions are only open to one gender. We can change that through having inclusive language—I don’t think there’s anything sad about it, and I would strongly push back against allegations from the other side of the House that there is anything that we should be looking back fondly on for language that tells our children that because you are a certain gender, you may not be able to do a certain job. So I very, very strongly push back on that, and I support the inclusive words which are included within this piece of legislation, which I think is very, very important.
Joseph Mooney: It’s a little bit off-track. That’s not what he said.
CAMILLA BELICH: I was here, I listened to it—
Carl Bates: It is not what he said.
CAMILLA BELICH: —and I’m responding in a debate. So that is very much what—
Joseph Mooney: Aviatrix.
CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah, well, I actually—
Carl Bates: He was saying use the correct language for gender.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): It’s not a conversation; it’s a speech.
CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah, it’s not a conversation; it’s a debate. He raised a point; I’m saying let’s make language inclusive. Let’s not be equivocal about that, other side of the House; let’s stick up for inclusive language.
Joseph Mooney: He was saying it could be “aviator”, “aviatrix”.
CAMILLA BELICH: Well, it’s very interesting that other members of the House disagree with it, because this is a bill which everyone in the House has to agree to—
Joseph Mooney: That’s not what he said.
CAMILLA BELICH: I’m not talking about him any more; I’m talking about you, sir. You are challenging what is in this piece of legislation. If you want to vote against inclusive language, then you can vote against this bill and it will not go ahead. And I challenge you to stand—
Carl Bates: That’s not what he said.
CAMILLA BELICH: If you’re going to make comments across the House, stand up, vote against it, and let the public decide whether inclusive language is something that this House stands for or not—totally up to you, and totally something that was raised in the debate and is perfectly appropriate to be discussed.
Dr David Wilson: False flag.
CAMILLA BELICH: So that’s what I think. I think we should encourage our children to do whatever job that they want.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Aw, “falsely”. He said it was “falsely”.
CAMILLA BELICH: Madam Speaker, this is a lot more drama than I expected from the Statutes Amendment Bill. Generally, it is not a bill which people get excited about, generally, most of the stuff in it is quite inane and just minor and technical amendments.
Look, I think we can show that, with intellectual curiosity, with the fact that we go through this and we take our jobs seriously as legislators, we can actually find all sorts of interesting facts, not only about our history, not only about the history of New Zealand, the way we see ourselves as a country, the way things used to be, and the way we want to see things in the future—all wrapped up in what we wouldn’t usually spend so much attention on.
I do want echo the comments of my colleague Dr Duncan Webb when he said this isn’t an appropriate bill to be put through urgency—it is important, but it’s not urgent.
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to make a brief contribution on the Statutes Amendment Bill. It’s an omnibus bill that makes changes, mostly minor, to 42 different Acts. I’ll just make one brief comment just in response to the last speaker, Camilla Belich, who I think was arguing with phantoms in her own mind, frankly, because everyone in this House is actually incredibly supportive of all men and all women and all young boys and all young girls having every opportunity available to them in this country. We have great people in our armed forces, where I served with men and women. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.
Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I would like to speak about Part 17 and Part 29, which make amendments to two separate Treaty of Waitangi settlements. I happened to sit and speak to both of those when they went through the House.
I just want to draw to the attention of the House, if members aren’t already aware, to the report from the Controller and Auditor-General on how Treaty obligations are being implemented by public organisations. At the time of the report, there’d been 80 settlements with 150 public organisations with 12,000 contractual or legal commitments in them.
Part 17 and Part 29 deal with two of those commitments—two out of 12,000. There are thousands still that have been committed to but have not been enacted yet. Prepare for the onslaught, is what I say to this House. If those public organisations don’t lift their game—because when you think about deferred properties, they have plenty of time to deal with them when we pass those pieces of legislation, and any reasonable person reading it would say, “Oh, they’ve got four years to do that particular contractual or legal obligation—four years.” Some people manage to go and buy a house in three months. Why is it that we are debating a statutes amendment bill and having to extend the time in which these two commitments can be done after the time that they were originally given? It’s not really acceptable.
The Māori Affairs Committee is looking into that very report right now and hearing from some of these agencies. I have to say there are some agencies out there, public organisations, that are doing an excellent job and would be great examples for about 140 others that really need to lift their game. So my contribution on those two parts is that when we pass those pieces of legislation, we apologise for everything that’s gone wrong, we make contractual commitments to the iwi and then we don’t deliver. We need to do better. We need to have these organisations put in the resources, and that means the Government needs to resource them so they’re actually able to meet those commitments. It’s quite clear that they are not being resourced properly to do it.
So when this House passes the next Treaty settlement—I suspect it will be before the end of the year—if you’re in the House, remember this speech. Remember that there will be dozens of commitments in that Treaty settlement, and there will be an expectation from the people sitting up in the gallery that they are going to be delivered on. I think we owe that to them.
I want to support my colleague Camilla Belich. There was a time in this House when—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Part 22 of this bill is an amendment to the Juries Act 1981, which is an Act that I’ve also got a member’s bill currently going through the House to amend as well—so clearly interested in any improvements to that Act. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Madam Speaker?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): It’s a Labour Party call.
Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Bit too early? Ha, ha!
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Lemauga Lydia Sosene.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve been here for a few hours now and what I found fascinating about the Statutes Amendment Bill that we’ve been going through—I was just really listening intently, and I really appreciated the Associate Minister of Justice being so open and also informative. I understand that the Statutes Amendment Bill has covered a range of things.
First, can I acknowledge all of our speakers tonight across the House, but I wanted to really acknowledge Matua in speaking about iwi because sometimes in our role we need to acknowledge—it’s a really important bill—all of those across the House, but also the communities that we serve. We must never forget that, because that’s why we are here, to make good legislation.
What I found helpful about the Statutes Amendment Bill tonight was listening, not just going through—as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, I do recall that we had different provisions of different Acts to go through, particularly in this bill. There are 42 Acts that cover 12 Government agencies. I do want to acknowledge all the officials, because they would come to the committee and explain the changes and the reasons for the provisions.
It is also important that—and I’ve heard my colleagues on this side of the House repeat that in terms of modernising pieces of legislation, the language and the clarity around the language is important to really understand those provisions. I also did hear that some of the talanoa, the kōrero, would lead into problematic areas, and Dr Duncan Webb highlighted that. I wanted to reflect on—and I know Matua ran out of time, but it’s important that this Government has made changes in terms of the strengthening or the empowerment of Te Tiriti. It’s really important to acknowledge, when iwi make a contribution to this Whare that we as politicians, we as parliamentarians may not agree with different decisions, and we have robust debate, but it’s really important that we acknowledge iwi, we acknowledge our people of the land.
What I also appreciated in terms of my colleague Camilla Belich, in speaking about the modernisation—and the Minister explained that really well and repeated the different bills specifically in this Statutes Amendment Bill, the purpose of it. What I appreciated about what Camilla raised—and she spoke about it very strongly in her robust debate was the inclusivity, the inclusiveness, and also when we are talking and making changes and we are agreeing and disagreeing, what kind of legacy are we leaving for our tamariki? Camilla spoke really well in terms of the strong messaging, getting that across.
We understand that some of the provisions are about seeking clarity. Also what the Minister was helpful for was her advice in terms of the consistency of respective provisions and of respective Acts. There were a few Acts that I was quite interested in: the amendment to the Burial and Cremation Act, but also the Coroners Act, because I know that we talk a lot about life in the House but we don’t actually acknowledge when it comes to death, and those two Acts in particular acknowledge provisions, and there was changing of wording. I was quite interested in that because for Māori and Pasifika, we honour and we treat our people who have passed to the other side very carefully. We have tikanga, we have things that we specifically do in our communities because we are acknowledging that when those of our loved ones are passing over, there is law in terms of doing things right and processes and provisions, but we are also spiritual and we treat those who have passed—I just wanted to reflect that.
What I also found helpful were the changes that were intended around clarity and clarifying the various provisions, specifically when it came to sometimes incorrect references. It was really helpful to hear the Minister explain her understanding of the broadness of some of the provisions. So that was really helpful for me because she then talked about alignment of the different provisions.
In terms of the different Acts that we were going through—and it was already talked about, in particular, the oaths and declarations. When we were on select committee, it was really helpful to really be focused and really have clear wording in terms of that specific Act and what it does and why it’s really important to have the person not just talking about it—we needed to have visuals, because the committee’s job was to then look at the provisions, look at the wording, and correct it, and it was helpful for the Minister to acknowledge that.
Just with the substantive changes, it was important to understand, as a committee member, that our work is to strengthen, and we did have robust debates in terms of some of the provisions when it came to committee, because there is evidence in terms of affidavits and key aspects of the different bills, specifically with that bill and any substantive change, which was the one I’ve just mentioned, it is really helpful that when we are correcting our legislation or we are amending legislation, that the public understands the intent of those amendments. I just think that that’s really important, that as we are passing legislation in this House specifically, we are communicating to New Zealanders why the change is important and we still get the purpose right.
So I just wanted to talk about and reflect on my colleague Celia when she talked about—and others have spoken about it—email and then verifying when you press the “send” button that you assume that’s gone. Then Dr Duncan Webb also highlighted about the different email addresses, etc. I met recently with New Zealand Post and one of the things that they talked about was now we’re in an online world, and the difference is 12, 13 years ago, New Zealand Post used to deal with 88 million pieces of correspondence or letters and post. In 2025, that’s now gone to only just over 150 million. So the change to the online world is really important in reflecting that in pieces of legislation. The change also is around the necessity of having correct online email addresses so that we can guarantee through the provisions and the changes that we’ve made tonight that we are cautious on the proposed changes and the modernisation, so that we don’t end up changing things but it becomes more problematic. So on that note, I commend the bill to the House.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker; tēnā tātou e te Whare. In observing the speeches tonight—it’s a bit of a learning exercise for me, too, to be completely honest, when we’re reflecting back on things that were drawn up in 1890 and then coming through to the 1900s and so on and so on. It’s a revealing exercise about the ideas of those times and, fortunately, the change of those ideas to modern times. So it’s a pleasure to stand tonight and offer a small contribution.
I like the idea that outdated ideas should be put away and they should be refreshed with good, strong, and smarter ideas, particularly from the minds of women. Because I would imagine in the 1800s there wouldn’t have been enough women in the House, bringing the energy and the capability and the intelligence of women and wāhine into the House—so good on us.
The omnibus bill addresses 42 corrective measures, longstanding errors, and unresolved matters designed by men. Did I say that? No, I’ll just carry on. But anyway, all right, I’ll stop doing that, but just to say that among these technical changes, one does stand out. I’d like to mention that one: modernising the procedures of the House to allow members to take the oath online, including via Zoom. In 2025, this is entirely appropriate. Our parliamentary processes should reflect the realities of modern life while upholding the commitments that bind us to this service.
For those watching, the oath is the affirmation every member makes when committing themselves to serve the people of Aotearoa New Zealand. I will add that while I support this amendment, I believe the next step is necessary. The oath of this House should expressly include Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Te Tiriti is not a historical footnote; it is the foundation of our constitutional arrangements and the enduring covenant between the Crown and Māori. Embedding Te Tiriti within the oath would ensure that every member across all parties acknowledges that partnership and its obligations whenever we take our seats in this Chamber. This would not only strengthen our constitutional integrity but reassure te iwi Māori, who have endured a series of regressive bills during this Government’s term. It would affirm that the power and responsibilities of this House are exercised in good faith and with respect for the founding promises of our nation.
So while I support the technical amendments before us today, I will continue to advocate that, for Te Tiriti to be placed at the centre of our parliamentary oath and our democratic processes. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): I present a legislative statement on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) 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 ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
This bill is a sensible bill that addresses some gaps in the Immigration Act and will improve both the integrity and the fiscal sustainability of the immigration system. The bill allows the immigration system to ensure that compliance and detention settings are more balanced and more transparent and better aligned with the recommendations of the Casey KC and Heron KC reviews, strengthen both immigration risk settings and the protection of migrants from exploitation, enable the immigration system to respond to more challenges with greater flexibility, and allow the costs to the immigration system to be recovered more fairly. I want to highlight some of the more significant proposals.
Discharge without conviction will no longer mean that residence class visa holders who have committed crimes can escape consideration of their liability for deportation. Decisions around whether they should be deported or not will be made within the immigration system, where they should be. The select committee has recommended a number of consequential changes to other provisions throughout the Act that deal with criminal offending. The Immigration Act establishes powers to restrict a migrant screening of movement in some circumstances—often because Immigration New Zealand is arranging their travel home and there is a concern that the person will abscond before they can get on a plane.
Currently, the only available form of restriction of movement is detention. The extremes of putting someone in a prison cell or, at the other end of the spectrum, an agreement between the individual and the immigration officer about where they’ll reside, which is a RRRA, or a residence and reporting requirement agreement—Ms Casey KC found that to be unacceptable. We have therefore introduced electronic monitoring so that individuals who are judged to be an absconding risk can be appropriately accommodated and overseen without having to be detained in a prison cell.
There was some confusion during the select committee process around the purpose of introducing electronic monitoring as a lesser form of restriction for individuals subject to restriction of movement. Some submitters voiced concern that electronic monitoring would become the default mechanism for monitoring those migrants and would replace the RRRA requirements. This is not the case. As recommended by Victoria Casey KC, it has been introduced to ensure that individuals are not unnecessarily placed in physical detention due to lack of appropriate alternatives. I would also emphasise that the decision to impose a condition of electronic monitoring will sit with a judge and will only be used when it deemed to be both reasonable and the least restrictive measurement necessary to manage the risk of that person.
The select committee has added a number of useful amendments to the provisions as drafted, which will improve their responsiveness to individual circumstances. I’m also intending to introduce an Amendment Paper—or I have introduced it—to address some minor issues that have been identified with the electronic monitoring provisions in the bill. The changes proposed are technical and will ensure that the bill is workable in practice and consistent with other electronic monitoring legislation across the statute book. The changes relate to the conditions that can be monitored by electronic monitoring and the information the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) will need to provide to the court about whether electronic monitoring would be practical and would be feasible.
The Amendment Paper also makes some very minor consequential changes to provisions that cross-reference the warrant of commitment provisions. The warrant of commitment changes come into effect three months after Royal assent, to time the relevant forms to be developed. A small number of clauses require consequential amendments to align their commencement with the main warrant of commitment provisions. These are minor and technical amendments.
Another important change in this bill will ensure a future Minister to respond decisively to emergencies or other unusual circumstances by, for example, extending the visas of groups of migrants or granting visas to groups of migrants without needing applications, through making a special direction. As drafted, these special direction powers have very strong safeguards and their exercise would be very transparent. There is a mandatory publishing in the Gazette and on MBIE’s website and mandatory annual reporting. The Regulations Review Committee could recommend that a special direction is disallowed by the House. The special directions cannot be used to disadvantage the people that they relate to. However, some submitters expressed their apprehensions around the breadth and concerns that they might concentrate executive power without the adequate oversight. In response, the select committee has increased the threshold for the Minister to make a special direction.
I’d like to thank the members of the select committee and the people who took the time to comment on the bill. As I’ve already noted, the committee has recommended a number of very sensible changes which improved or clarified some of the proposed changes and I look forward to debating them. Amongst other things, they also require annual reporting on any applications for out-of-hours compliance visits and tighten the definition of a mass arrival group, where the people concerned have entered on more than one commercial aircraft. A number of submitters expressed concerns regarding the proposed expansion of who can be charged a levy within the immigration system and what that levy can be charged for. It is fair that the people who benefit from the immigration system—not just the visa applicants but others such as the New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA) requesters, employers, and education providers—can help to address the costs that they contribute to and to make sure that the system remains economically viable.
In conclusion, the bill makes a number of changes which, between them, will improve the integrity of the immigration system and help it to be more financially and fiscally sustainable. These amendments strike a reasonable balance between addressing the real risks to New Zealand and better protecting migrants. I commend the bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Labour’s supporting this bill at second reading. The reason is that it does two important things. The provisions in the bill about system integrity improve and add to the systems and procedures of our immigration system and, I think, attempt to make it fair and consistent and effective. That is important to maintain public confidence in the integrity of our immigration system.
Secondly, it strengthens the adherence to human rights standards in a number of respects, including through introducing judicial oversight in relation to the detention of asylum seekers and also in relation to the use of electronic monitoring. That’s important, because around the world right now, so many Governments are walking away from the 1951 Refugee Convention and rejecting human rights standards as right-wing populist parties demonise refugees and migrants. It's important now that New Zealand holds the line and that this Parliament strengthens the integrity and effectiveness and the public confidence in our immigration system and strengthens our human rights performance.
I want to use the time I have in this contribution just to run through the nine different initiatives which are contained in this bill and give a sense of Labour's view on each of them. I look forward to the debate over the coming hours as we move through into the committee stage tomorrow morning and the third reading.
The new ministerial powers that will allow the Minister of Immigration to make decisions, or to grant or amend the conditions, on classes of visas without applications. This is the systems basically saying, “We quite like to have those powers that we gave ourselves during the COVID times. They were practical in times of emergency or unusual circumstances.” We think that that they have adequate safeguards around them, and we think they will be a useful addition to the immigration system.
On the question of deportation and criminal offending, there was a pretty spirited critique at the Education and Workforce Committee by the Law Society and others. I'm looking forward to questioning the Minister about the argument that was made by submitters that, yes, this will allow decisions about deportation to be made by the immigration system and not by a court giving someone a discharge without conviction. But it does I think, have the effect of undermining an important discretion that we give our courts to make decisions like that. So that'll be a debate I'll look forward to having.
The cancellation of residence class visas for people who are judged to be a security risk: the work on this was started by our Labour Government. It followed what's become known as the Samsudeen case—the guy who wielded a knife in the LynnMall supermarket. The Government was put in a very difficult situation where someone who had protected person status; they could not be deported back to their country of origin. They were deemed to be a risk. They had residence. The Government had next to no leverage over that person and could do nothing but actually keep them under surveillance. This is an attempt, I think, to give a Government some leverage. It doesn't give much leverage in a very, very difficult situation. We're in principle supportive of this provision. I look forward to getting down into the detail on this in the committee stage.
Out of hours warrants: so the Dawn Raids apology; I think it's something that across this House there is a lot of feeling for what was, you know, a period of our country's modern history where the State behaved appallingly to particularly Pacific Island migrants in New Zealand. It was really a stain on our modern history. It has left a legacy. The provisions here, which would require immigration officials to get a warrant from a District Court judge before they could carry out an out of hours compliance visit. There are a number of safeguards around that. We support that. We see it as an important and a departure from more punitive approaches to immigration control. It's one of the aspects of this bill, I think, which ensures that our immigration system remains consistent with both domestic constitutional norms and our international human rights obligations.
The next provision I want to talk about is the one that makes it an offence for someone, an employer or an agent, to knowingly seek or receive a premium in respect of the employment or potential employment in New Zealand of a migrant worker. I'm sure we all agree that the incidence of the exploitation of migrant workers is appalling. We have to work hard to try to eliminate that exploitation. This is one of the aspects of it that is most galling. It's not uncommon for workers in India, China, Philippines, and elsewhere to pay anything from $20,000 to $40,000 or more New Zealand dollars to some dodgy agent in order to get that job as part of getting the visa to come to New Zealand. The current defence that's on the books, really, for a number of reasons, which we'll get into later, doesn't do the job. This attempts to make it to be much more effective at dealing with that problem. We support that.
The next thing is warrants of commitment for asylum seekers. The Minister in her contribution talked about the report that Victoria Casey KC did. I was the Associate Minister of Immigration when Amnesty International and the Asylum Seekers Support Trust did their report, which exposed that New Zealand was jailing asylum seekers—not huge numbers, but over a period of about 15 years, some 100 people or more were jailed, many of them in Mount Eden. The conditions that the Amnesty report exposed were truly shocking and it was a clear breach of our international human rights obligations. The work that's gone into this provision to put in place judicial oversight in the system of warrants before people can be asylum seekers, can be detained, is the critical final step in fully implementing the Casey reforms. There is much to be debated in this part about whether or not the protections and the safeguards are adequate.
Next, electronic monitoring: this is going to give Immigration New Zealand the ability to go to a judge—this is not just in relation to asylum seekers; this is right across the immigration system. A person who is subject to deportation or turnaround, they can seek a judicial warrant to have this person wear an ankle bracelet or electronic monitoring. I was one of the people at select committee that I think the Minister was referring to who expressed grave misgivings about whether or not this would become a default soft detention measure, as it has in many, many other countries internationally where electronic monitoring is very, very widespread. By the way, in New Zealand's criminal justice system, we are one of the world's biggest users of electronic monitoring. So I think they're fair questions to ask and I look forward to getting into them.
The bill also expands the definition of mass arrivals by changing the definition to allow instead of a group of mass arrivals coming on a single ship, that it could be a group of aircraft in terms of commercial services. That's something that we'll discuss more. We, in principle, are willing to support that.
Finally, immigration levies: it's a massive, massive cash grab by this National Government, who tax anything that moves. I look forward to debating that more in the committee stage.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s important to put this bill in the broader context, which the previous speaker, the Hon Phil Twyford, did note, where we are seeing countries like the United Kingdom—under a Labour Government, no less—absolutely scapegoating migrant communities, refugees, and asylum seekers. It’s absolutely shameful that we are seeing a growing scapegoating of communities, many who have escaped some of the most harrowing conditions imaginable to people. This bill comes off the back of the previous bill that created, effectively, a legal definition for mass arrivals that was completely critiqued and, I would say, slammed by all, not most, human rights groups, in this country. Most of them were asking the question: why? Why the choice of introducing the mass arrivals regime when Governments hadn’t been able to substantiate that this bill was an actual imminent risk to the country of mass arrivals?
Now, in this bill, what we are seeing is an expansion of that very same definition to, effectively, after the effective hysteria that we were about to receive mass arrivals by boat, now we were told by the Government that we need to taint this definition to include people arriving by planes or cruise ships—literal moral panic.
The thing is that when we compare ourselves to other jurisdictions, we as a country receive a very, very, very small amount of asylum seekers compared to others: literally 1 percent every 10 days. In 2024-25, that amounted to 37 claims at the border, which, for example, compared to Canada, which received 41,350 claims, or, for example, we’ve got in the United States or the United Kingdom, where we’ve also had a much greater amount of asylum seekers arriving.
That, then, poses the question: what is the problem that the Government is trying to fix? Certainly, it is not a large amount of asylum-seeking claims. That is not currently happening in the country.
Grant McCallum: It’s about being prepared.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Being prepared for what, exactly? There we go. Here’s the moral panic: being prepared. We’re a country on the other side of the world where people are not arriving by boat nor by planes nor by cruise ship, and this bill is not just about expanding the definition of mass arrivals without actually justifying the reasons for it. This bill includes other measures which make deportation a lot easier. And we did hear the previous speaker, the Hon Phil Twyford, talk about the concerns that lawyers, experts in this field, expressed when it came to those very same provisions. Currently, for example, it would be the courts who would decide whether someone would be liable for deportation by nature of having been convicted for a crime. Now, we’re expanding that to basically add that someone is liable for deportation should they plead guilty or be found guilty, not necessarily being convicted of a crime, which, effectively, makes Immigration New Zealand the one who gets to decide that—effectively, broadening the groups of people that could, for example, be subjected to deportation liability, and, effectively, putting more pressure on our Immigration and Protection Tribunal, on advocates on the ground, including MPs and their constituents, who will receive a far greater number of case work demands of people seeking justice and an ability to remain in the country.
I’ve fought against unjust deportation cases under Labour and National Governments just in these two terms. In fact, I remember that I had to invite, multiple times, the previous speaker, one Christmas, to stop a Filipino man being deported, because this person, under hardship, had taken food vouchers that he shouldn’t have and he admitted that it was wrong, but most people would have understood that during COVID times, people did things that they regretted, including this Filipino man. Fortunately, in his case, we were able to prevent his deportation, but we do see many migrants who, while experiencing huge amounts of stress, isolation, and just duress, end up doing things that they regret.
It is simply yet another case of moral panic, to use one single tragedy and then justify a lot of the provisions under this bill. I think our communities are served far better than this. Our communities deserve a judiciary that is able to process asylum seeking claims in a prompt manner. Our communities deserve an immigration system that is adequately resourced, not an immigration system that is currently seeing cuts to Crown funding under this Government, and then being sort of topped up by a levy which is not even going to be exclusively used to fund the immigration system, which also poses another issue—which is that we have a levy being put in place here, rather than being charged to a group of people, through a system that is then being used to cover other costs that the Government may be experiencing, rather than utilising and fixing the tax system that we have to have decent quality healthcare and quality infrastructure.
For a Government that talks about the pressures that employers face and yet a Government that also recognises that migrant workers will continue to play a huge role within our workforce, they seem to be quite happy to load additional costs on employers and migrants within this levy. So the Green Party opposes the idea of using a levy through the immigration system to fund infrastructure and other parts of our system that we all use, because at the end of the day, that is what the tax system is for, and we’ve got to recognise that this comes off the back of the Government massively hiking immigration visa fees, which have resulted in migrants having to put themselves into debt in order to apply for these visas.
When it comes to other provisions of this bill, I recognise that the Government and the Minister—and we share this concern that premiums being paid overseas for fake jobs are a genuine issue. I think most political parties here agree that this is quite a serious issue. Most constituency-based MPs, and I include list MPs here who care about immigration, deal with issues of migrants who have, basically, been offered fake jobs and have paid premiums just to come here onshore and find themselves with no job whatsoever. I have worked with many of these cases and the sad thing about people finding themselves in those situations and having been scammed is that there’s often not adequate support available for them.
Adding a criminal charge, effectively, for this is a step in the right direction, but the Government needs to go further and needs to do more to support victims of the scams, instead of, for example, gutting the length of the migration exploitation protection visa, which leaves those very same victims of these now new crimes that we’re going to be adding more vulnerable to precarity and to future exploitation. So we’ve got to work at all levels of the system to ensure that migrant workers are adequately protected.
The other component of this bill where we think the Government did not go further is in the out of hour visits by Immigration New Zealand. I look forward to the discussion at the committee of the whole House stage, where we’re hoping to put forward some amendments that will tighten this component of this bill, because out of hour immigration rates should only be used in situation involving public safety or matters of national security. In other types of situations, we acknowledge submitters, and the Children’s Commissioner, for example, who talked about the intergenerational impacts for children and households that are subjected to out of hour rates. We know this because this is not a new issue. We’ve heard from families who’ve experienced the Dawn Raids many decades ago, which the previous Government apologised for, about how these out of hour visits caused humongous amounts of intergenerational trauma and harm to families in the communities.
One of the key issues that we have with this bill is that the Minister is trying to claim that it is about the so-called integrity of the immigration system. But it’s trying to find a problem as opposed to going to the core of the issue, which is that it’s not that migrants are inherently criminals, it’s not that we’ve got an immigration system where we have huge amounts of asylum seeking claims; it’s that we have successive Governments that have ignored the need to adequately resource the judiciary and our immigration systems to aid the process of asylum seeking claims in a humane and prompt manner, as well as ensuring that there’s adequate support for exploited migrants and decent enough support available for migrants who, for example, may be experiencing ill mental health—and I include residency visa holders in that—so that they do not cause harm to others as a result of the ill mental health that they may be experiencing. This is where the focus of the Government should be rather than trying to pretend that this bill is about better protecting refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, when, actually, they’re simply creating more tools for them to be able to deport members of the community who actually have put roots down here and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity as opposed to being subjected to moral panic.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. As a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, I would like to start by thanking all 70-plus submitters who submitted on this bill. I also want to thank those who appeared before the select committee and presented their submissions and were also willing to answer the questions that we asked about their submissions.
I must say, it is because of the work that we all did after hearing submissions that we have been able to report this bill back in an improved form. Several changes have been made in this bill, and I won’t list all those changes that have been made, but I would say that immigration is a field where we have to really balance the national interest and also the interest of the individuals—those who use our immigration system. As the name of the bill says, it’s about fiscal sustainability, so we want to make sure that, fiscally, the system is sustainable, and we are not putting all the burden just on applicants. We want to distribute that burden to other people as well—those who are benefitting from our immigration system.
The second part in the name is “system integrity”. Several provisions in this bill are to ensure that we are safeguarding our immigration system to ensure that it’s not open for exploitation. Very quickly, to the Green member who just resumed his seat—he talked about mass arrival groups and also talked about the asylum seekers—this bill is not about the numbers of asylum seekers coming to New Zealand or increasing or decreasing that number. It’s about defining what “mass arrival group” means, and that definition was tightened in the select committee process to ensure that we know what kind of timeline we are talking about when people enter into our country through any commercial routes as well.
A final point I want to make is about exploitation, which the member was emphasising a lot. What I’m really happy to see in this bill is that when people charge a premium in that situation, this bill will extend that as an offence when it happens outside of New Zealand as well. There are a lot of good things in this bill. This bill is about ensuring our immigration system works for all, and I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. I appreciate the member who just resumed their seat for bringing some logic and common sense back into this debate. This is a relatively complex bill because of the number of components that it is seeking to address, but it is a very important piece of legislation, and I think that is the component about building an immigration system and continuing to strengthen it. There is a lot of moving parts that happen in the immigration process, and, therefore, we have to be vigilant and aware of all of the things that we need to deliver to ensure our immigration system is effective.
It is about recognising greater securities and safeties for those that are in the system and potentially able to be exploited. It astounds me that we are, yet again, being challenged about the idea that we prepare and have a system in place for a mass arrival, should it occur. I mean it is the common sense of fail to plan and you plan to fail. This is exactly what this piece of legislation is doing. There is a naivety in suggesting that if we just close our eyes and pretend it isn’t happening, it won’t happen. Then, when you do have this—
Ricardo Menéndez March: It’s not happening. Look at the facts.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Yes. That’s the logic that we’re faced with—“Because it’s not happening, we, therefore, don’t have to worry about it.” Then, when it occurs, we have no systems in place to provide the protections—which we know occurs. We know and absolutely understand the vulnerabilities of children that get trafficked through a process of mass arrivals. We know that we need to have a process by which we can protect and contain people while we provide health assessments, where we can provide health assessments and interventions, where we can do the logical practical things that people who know how to run a system, run a business, and run a process, and not those that like to virtue signal and sloganeer.
This is exactly the point why this piece of legislation is so important. When others campaigned and sloganeered, I spent my working life investigating exploitation and prosecuting offenders. I actually did the work that needed to be done—whereas we have politicians in this House that like to just create slogans and disrupt and be negative. I absolutely commend this bill to the House. I commend the Minister for the hard work that they’ve done to produce this piece of legislation and the select committee for bringing the legislation forward in a practical and logical process that will ensure we have good legislation at the end.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Five minutes—Teanau Tuiono.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the call by my colleague and friend Ricardo Menéndez March on this, the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. We did have a few responses from the other side of the House about preparing, and I think Mr Menéndez March made some good points about mass arrivals. I would invite the House to not buy into the right-wing hysteria that has engulfed other parts of the world where they scapegoat refugees, scapegoat migrants, and scapegoat people that are different than them.
If we want to talk about being prepared, I have some suggestions for that side, and that is: to make sure that our public services are well funded; to make sure that we have quality health services, education services, and mental health services. We just heard them talk about making sure that we prepare—how can you prepare when the public services have been ransacked by this Government? Thousands and thousands of people have lost their jobs, and thousands more are getting on the plane and going to Australia to greener and better pastures because of the economic carnage of that side of the House.
So if we want to prepare we have to do those things. You have to provide the foundations—the foundations to make sure that when people put deep roots into this country, into their communities, that they’re well supported, that their kids are well supported, particularly if they come here as refugees, particularly if they come here as asylum seekers; as opposed to finding new ways to punish them. Yes, there are issues, but those issues can be solved if we look for solutions that take care of people and if we look for solutions that make sure that your provide the fundamentals. I hope that that message resonates with the House tonight.
This bill has a number of changes. It expands the charging of immigration levies, expands the definition of “mass arrivals”—I just talked about that—provides more powers for ministerial direction, and strengthens protections for out-of-hour raids and detained asylum seekers.
I was here in the last Parliament when we apologised for the Dawn Raids. We apologised for the Dawn Raids that were horrendous and a stain on New Zealand’s history, our Pasifika people were targeted. We were invited to this country during the economic boom to do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to do, and then, when the economics turned, they wanted to deport us and kick us out. That was the time of the Dawn Raids. After we had the apology, what I heard—and I know a number of members around this House heard as well—is that there were still Pacific Island families and others who were still getting knocks on the door at dawn—at dawn—when their children were home, when their families were preparing their breakfast, while they were preparing to go to work, as well, people that have put deep roots into this society. So I do note that the select committee did do some work around what to do about the out-of-hours compliance component of this.
I would invite the House to really consider an Amendment Paper by my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March, which is to make changes to clause 26. It’s an amendment which focuses on the limit of out-of-hours immigration to situations involving public safety or matters of national security, so it’s not a free-for-all, so you have a particular focus. This was one of the options recommended by the Heron KC report, to address the distressing impacts of out-of-hours compliance activity, which, of course, underpinned what happened with the Dawn Raids. So I would really encourage the House to do that as well.
Probably my other reflection—because I wasn’t on the select committee, as well, and I see that there were a number of changes in the select committee report, and that is the work of the select committee: to take some bills, make some recommendations and make them stronger, and I hope that made some improvements and I hope that has happened. But I couldn’t help but notice that there is a 46-page Amendment Paper form the Minister herself, and we are going into the committee of the whole House after this. This is a big Amendment Paper. A lot more work needs to be done on this bill.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. It was my pleasure to chair the select committee through this process, and it’s great to see the work that has been recognised by the collegial approach we had across parties to ensure we made amendments to the bill as it was guided through that process, to present it to the House for consideration this evening. I commend it to the House.
Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mālō e lelei. I rise this evening, even though it’s 11.30 p.m. at night and we are here in urgency. This is a really important bill, the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. My colleague the Hon Phil Twyford, who is our immigration spokesperson, has already talked about one of the many reasons why we are supporting this particular legislation. I do want to commend the Minister of Immigration for all of the hard work and diligence that she and her ministry have put to ensuring that we have this law before us this evening, because there are many longstanding issues that need to be addressed to strengthen the immigration system in Aotearoa New Zealand. I would like to discuss at least two of those in a bit more detail to what our immigration spokesperson has spoken about earlier on.
I’d like to first of all talk about the lessons that we should learn from the 1970s Dawn Raids, which remain seared into the collective memory of Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and, can I say, particularly for people like myself—Tongans. Because it was, when we look at the statistics of who were the ones who were the most chased by the police dogs, who were the people who were deported the most during the Dawn Raids, who are the people who are still suffering from the trauma of the Dawn Raids the most, I would say it would be people from Tonga.
I remember it as a memorable day: the day that the Government gave the apology—the official apology—for the Dawn Raids at the Auckland Town Hall. As we were walking into the town hall—and I remember because, at that time, I was actually wearing traditional mourning clothes. I was mourning because one of my father’s sisters had just passed away. But it felt for me like I was also mourning on behalf of the Tongans that were affected. As we were walking through the town hall, they played video clips from those days in the 1970s of dogs barking in the early morning of dawn, as Tongans were being raided in their homes. We heard young children crying, because what would you do when strangers are storming through your house in the middle of your sleeping, and that is what you’re woken to? As a child, you’re woken to all of these noises—all of these dogs barking and people stomping their feet to come through and to arrest you.
I want us to learn from our history. This bill has an out-of-hours warrant requirement. I want to be clear: this is not an abstract policy change. It is the direct response to one of the darkest chapters in New Zealand’s immigration history. Because in the 1970s, during the economic recession that followed Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, the New Zealand Government at that time made a deliberate choice to scapegoat a particular group of people: Pacific Island workers, Tongans, Samoans, other people from the Pacific who were actively recruited by New Zealand to come to this country to fill the labour shortages of jobs that New Zealanders at the time did not want to do. They were the boom years. But the Pacific Island folks suddenly became the targets for blame. Yes, I see you saying that I should narrow it, but the out-of-hours warrant requirement is actually in this bill. It is one of the nine amendments that this bill is addressing, which is why I’m focusing on it.
What followed the Dawn Raids on the Pacific Island homes, which is what I just described earlier on with the dogs and all that—but I want to talk about the statistics, because it tells a damning story. During the mid-1970s, Pacific Islanders comprised roughly one-third of the overstayers, and yet they represented 86 percent of the prosecutions. Americans, British, and Europeans also roughly they actually had one-third of the overstayers, and yet they only represented 5 percent of the prosecutions. This was not just immigration enforcement; this was racial targeting. This disparity was not accidental; it was the direct result of deliberate Government policy at that time. For many decades from that day up until now, the trauma of the families that were affected still lives on.
During the apology, I’d like to quote the Pacific person—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Ms Salesa, we’ve had nearly six minutes. Could we now go to the bill. I know you’ve spoken to one of these, but now we are talking about the bill, please.
Hon JENNY SALESA: OK. So the bill actually has a new section. The new section is 293B(4). This subsection of the legislation is, basically, about the judicial warrants that out-of-hours compliance visits must have. This is, actually, because we do not want to see, in our present and into the future, a repeat of the Dawn Raids.
But, Mr Speaker, if you would just indulge me to quote from the person who actually was speaking on behalf of all of those who were affected. Her name was Her Royal Highness Princess Mele Siuʻilikutapu from Tonga, who has now passed away. May she rest in peace. I quote, “I’m very grateful for your Government for making the right decision to apologise. The right to the extreme, inhumane, unjust treatment specifically against my community in the Dawn Raids era.” She also issued a warning, which is vital to the debate and to the bill that we’re about to pass. I quote: “The trauma and impact of the dawn raids has been intergenerational.” And it has haunted my community for years and it will be for years to come if we are not going to do the right thing. That is, essentially, the question that I would like us to answer tonight. The question for this Parliament is simple: are we going to do the right thing?
Fortunately, the section that I just quoted before, new section 293B(4), is the response to that. Because even after that apology was given, dawn raids were not supposed to happen again. Teanau Tuiono spoke about it earlier on. There were still dawn raids happening in my electorate of Tongans, which is why the Michael Heron KC review examined Immigration New Zealand’s out-of-hours compliance practices and found, to the shock of many, that many of these early morning raids—echoes of the Dawn Raids—were still occurring, even in 2024.
Now, this bill changes that, because, from now on, any immigration officer who wishes to conduct an out-of-hours residential compliance visit must obtain a judicial warrant. A District Court judge will examine whether the visit is (a) reasonable in all the circumstance, (b) proportionate to the risk, (c) in the public interest, and (d) a last resort after all reasonable alternatives have been considered. This is not red tape; this is the rule of law.
The other change that this bill is going to affect is charging of premiums. As our ethnic spokesperson and as many of us who are electorate MPs know, there is so much migrant exploitation that actually happens in Aotearoa New Zealand right now. We know that agents both here in our country and overseas are charging thousands and thousands of dollars to people to come here to work. Some of these people, when they arrive—whether they arrive from, for instance, the Philippines, India; and I’m just giving you cases that have come through my office—they come here after paying thousands and some of them over $50,000 New Zealand dollars and there is no job. No job in New Zealand. Then they’re stuck in this country. They don’t want to go back. First of all, they don’t have the money to pay for the ticket to go back. But also because they’ve taken a loan of up to $50,000 New Zealand dollars—they don’t want to go back without actually having the money to go and pay back that loan. I am glad that this bill actually takes the right step of addressing migrant exploitation.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to make a short contribution in this debate on this Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. The reasons for this have been very well traversed, and I couldn’t say it more eloquently than the previous speaker, and, therefore, I commend the bill to the House.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Listening to the debates, it is clear that there is a difference in opinion, I think, across the House about whether this is responding with a knee-jerk reaction to some form of moral panic or whether this is a way of enhancing civil liberties and human rights by making sure that we have a regime that is prepared to accept the unfortunate reality of asylum seeking that is happening globally.
If I look at the statistics, since 2012 there have been more than 20 million people who have sought asylum globally. Many, many of those have occurred during mass arrivals, and many of them on the high seas. New Zealand has been relatively lucky, through the tyranny—or the fortune—of distance, to be able to avoid the very difficult situation of accepting asylum seekers who have come without a legal process or without an application process. And we have not had to face grappling with the issue of how do we manaaki these people yet also follow our own immigration laws and what is the regime that covers them.
I think my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa was right to refer to the Dawn Raids as being one of the terrible examples where we came close to what we see over in Australia, for example, with detention centres where people have lived for years or on Christmas Island and in other places. Equally, we had the Tampa ship that came under the Helen Clark Government and was a really vexing question for New Zealand as to how to deal with asylum seekers.
It is very much the view of Labour that preparation is the best way to uphold the human rights of these people and also to uphold the national security interests and other interests of New Zealand. Because if we have a plan and we have a system that is fair and that is agnostic, that cannot be corrupted, and that takes into account the same principles no matter who is arriving, then that is the most that we can do in what is this unfortunate reality. So I do have to take issue with the Greens for taking what they would perceive as a moral high ground, when in fact the unintended consequence of trying to bury our heads in the sand and to say this is not a possibility—or a real possibility, in fact—could be really damaging for the people involved and for New Zealand.
I note just on Radio New Zealand tonight, there is a story about submarine shells—three of them—being found near the Solomon Islands to do with drug cartels, probably from South America. Now, if submarines are being used to carry drugs trans-nationally, it’s not too long before we see submarines carrying people as well. Suddenly, that advantage of distance that New Zealand has been able to enjoy will no longer be available to us.
The question, then, is if we’re going to have this regime, how do we make sure that it is fair, equitable, upholds human rights, has processes that safeguard our national security and our immigration rules, but also safeguards human rights? It is a really difficult balancing act, and the bill that we see before us actually started under Labour and involved many discussions about those competing rights. So this, for those people who think that there can’t be cross-party collaboration, is probably a good example of legislation that has have been stewarded via successive Governments and involved a lot of conversation.
Nevertheless, the devil will be in the detail and I note, as did our Green colleague Teanau Tuiono, that there is a really large Amendment Paper on the Table to do with electronic monitoring. That is going to take a lot of scrutiny tomorrow. We’ve also got arrest powers, we have search and seizure powers—quite a substantial bill. And with all of these bills, the wording is so incredibly important when it comes to statutory interpretation so that there aren’t unintended consequences and so that we know, for example, that we are not casting the net too widely and maybe penalising people who may not have had a choice about coming here—for example, who may have been trafficked.
These are the many questions that we will be asking tomorrow, particularly with the large new amendment that has been dropped on the floor tonight.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill improves the integrity of the immigration system as well as the fiscal sustainability of it. The changes are sensible and serve New Zealand’s national interests while still respecting individual rights. I commend it to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s good to be able to take a call on what is actually quite a complex piece of legislation. I wasn’t on the Education and Workforce Committee when this was considered, but I can see from the comprehensive work that has gone into it that it was well-considered at select committee.
These types of bills are never easy, and this particular bill, it appears to me, has gone through a number of issues and potential issues in the immigration system and made some pragmatic responses to that. I think the success of this bill will really be, I suppose, in the spirit in which it is enforced. There are a few issues here that have been highlighted by my colleague Phil Twyford that I think the Labour Party will be very interested in looking at at the committee of the whole House stage and also once things are in practice. We’ve already seen in this bill that there is a change to a relatively recent immigration change that was brought in in relation to mass arrivals. So this is something that does need to be updated as time goes on, so I’ll just use my time to go through probably the most significant changes that have been brought in in this bill.
The first one is in relation to the new ministerial powers. Often in immigration cases, visas are only provided when an application is made—to Immigration New Zealand, in this instance. As we do deal with quite tumultuous times around the world—when we do deal with conflict; when we do deal with issues of human rights abuses; when we do deal with international instability—there is a need for flexibility in relation to the immigration system. This particular set of amendments is something that I think most would support in terms of the Minister being able to—in particular instances where there is a particularly compelling case—proactively offer visas to a group of people. I know that this isn’t being unanimously supported throughout the House, but I think that that particular change is one that probably most people would support, so that is good.
There is obviously a lot of ministerial discretion associated with this bill. Immigration is an area where there is a lot of ministerial discretion—it’s something that is quite unique in terms of the way that Ministers deal with applications. We’ll all know, as MPs, that we often get contacted by people about particular issues, and this is one instance where there is ministerial discretion. Whether that is the best way, personally—this isn’t Labour Party policy—I have some questions around that. I know there’s a lot of pressure on Ministers to deal with very, very difficult personal situations. It is, I imagine, extremely tough to be in that situation and to be making decisions in what are sometimes—
Hon Phil Twyford: It’s a good system, Camilla.
CAMILLA BELICH: —life and death situations. Phil’s telling me it’s a very good system, so I take that back—it’s a perfect system. I’m just empathising with—I know there are a few people in the House who have personally had to deal with this, and I do think it is a particularly complex job—one with great rewards but also great responsibility, and it is unique in that instance. I just want to acknowledge that—and there will be even more responsibility for those Ministers after this bill is passed, so hopefully they will make the right decisions.
In terms of the rest of the main changes that I just wanted to touch on: the change around criminal offending is probably a slightly more contentious one. At the moment, there is a way that the courts can avoid the quite dire, in some situations, consequences of a criminal conviction through convicting someone but not entering a conviction—a conviction without discharge? What is the correct—is that right?
Hon Phil Twyford: Yep.
CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah. This bill takes that away, and it’s probably more punitive. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out, because that’s one of the possibly more controversial particular provisions. When those particular scenarios get put forward, we’ll be able to see whether, in fact, it is achieving its aims. I can see the policy logic behind that, but I’m interested to see how that plays out, and I’m sure that colleagues will have questions in the committee of the whole House stage about how that will actually not result in what will be more a more unfair situation. Anyway, it’s giving power back to Parliament, and that is, in the end, where our laws are made.
In terms of the cancellation of visas, we did have a particular situation in the past, and I won’t go through all the reasons for that, where individuals who we know are a threat to security—in this particular instance, in Auckland in September 2021—are not New Zealand citizens. There was a lot of anxiety and a lot of, in the end, harm caused by that person, so this is addressing that particular situation. Should it arise again, there are more powers associated with that. It’s very tricky—that is a very tricky situation to determine, especially because perceived harm and risk is always very, very difficult. As I understand it, from what is publicly available information, there was quite a degree of concern around that particular person. We have to have faith that the people who are making decisions around this will make those assessments—and we do, because we’re agreeing to pass this law.
My colleague Jenny Salesa did talk a bit about the out-of-hours warrants. This is directly related to conduct that was occurring even after the Dawn Raids apology. I also attended that apology; it was extremely moving and very, very sad, so I think that it was a very appropriate thing to make sure that there are more checks and balances in place to ensure that that doesn’t happen. Additionally, I think something that is very, very positive in this bill is the move to address the charging of premiums. We know that this is something that happens regularly in New Zealand. We know that there are sometimes instances where migrant workers are charged very, very large amounts of money, which they shouldn’t be, in order to come to New Zealand. Sometimes they are misled, and sometimes they are exploited, and it is absolutely unacceptable. We should be doing as much as we can to ensure that the migrant workers who come to New Zealand—who we desperately need to do jobs in New Zealand that benefit everyone—are respected and not exploited and not put into debt as soon as they start their life in a new country.
Arena Williams: That’s right—do more about modern slavery.
CAMILLA BELICH: Yes—and I actually have that noted down here, Arena Williams, that we do need to do more in relation to modern slavery. This is a very important area that I think we can all agree we need to do more work on to ensure that the exploitation that people are facing in New Zealand, which is very, very important, is also addressed. So that is very important.
Electronic monitoring is something, as I think my colleague Phil Twyford mentioned, that we would be concerned about if it was to become the default measure in dealing with people who are perhaps not in detention—which is good, and that shouldn’t be the default either. There’s also something a little bit icky about electronic monitoring, and we don’t want it to be used to dehumanise people or used in a way that is inappropriate.
The last thing I wanted to mention was just about the definition of mass arrivals. This is a very tricky issue. In the end, we did come down on the side of being prepared for this potential context. We know that we are country of people who arrived here by waka—be that a boat or an aeroplane, we came here from other places. We know that this is a real possibility. We know that we want those people, when they do arrive in a mass arrival, to be treated with the dignity, respect, and humanity that we would expect from the very, very strong cultural concept, between Pākehā and Māori, of manaakitanga to people who visit our country. That is an extremely important thing, and we will be watching to make sure that that happens. This is a complex bill; I commend the Ministers from both this Government and the past for bringing it to the House.
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s been a long day which will continue into tomorrow. I just think that sense actually was spoken from the last speaker who made the good point about being prepared for mass arrivals, which, yes, we all hope will never happen, but they just might. It’s really important to be prepared, and it’s one of the main reasons I commend the bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is—
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Mr Speaker?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): I had started to take the call. The question is that the motion be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage first thing in the morning. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill at 9 a.m. in the morning. The time has come for me to leave the House.
Sitting suspended from 11.59 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Friday)
TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2025
(continued on Friday, 21 November 2025)
Bills
Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill
In Committee
Part 1
Amendments relating to system integrity
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Good morning, members. Members, the House is in committee on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. We first come to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 54, “Amendments relating to system integrity”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for inviting me to open the discussions about the bill. I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk with the Chamber today about the proposed changes and how they fit with the Government’s objectives and how they fit into our objectives around ensuring regulatory systems work well in committing to action against migrant exploitation.
We have introduced this amendment bill. It represents a significant step forward in ensuring our immigration system is fit for purpose. The reforms have been shaped by extensive consultation with legal professionals, employers, and immigration experts. More importantly, this bill responds to a couple of very important reviews, the Casey KC review and Michael Herron KC review that were commissioned under the previous Government.
In fact, there are a number of things in this bill that were started under the previous Government. Work was done; it was good, sensible work that we’ve carried on with and has resulted in this bill, which is why I think there is broad support across the Chamber for many of the parts. I look forward to debating the number of points that were raised in second reading speeches yesterday.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Chair, and great to see colleagues here all so bright eyed and bushy tailed, at 9 o’clock on Friday morning. We look forward to a very productive committee stage.
As I said last night in the second reading, Labour is supporting this bill for two main reasons. We think it does two important things which are significant at this time. That is, it makes an effort in a number of areas to sort of strengthen and put in place some useful reforms in the immigration system that we think will make the immigration system more effective in dealing with the various challenges that it has. But also, it's important at this point, I think, in time in maintaining public confidence in the system, giving New Zealanders the assurance that through the democratic process they control our borders, and that the system is fair and reasonable and in tune with public expectations.
Secondly, it strengthens, in a number of key areas, our adherence to human rights standards through introducing judicial oversight, and particularly in relation to the detention of asylum seekers and in the introduction of electronic monitoring, which, in the immigration space, is a new thing.
There are nine discrete initiatives in this bill and it's our intention to address all of them. And we want to have a good exchange on all nine of those. They are all discrete policy initiatives, and they all demand proper scrutiny through this committee stage process. So it's our intention to work through sequentially each of those nine initiatives and have a good debate and a good exchange on all of them.
I wanted to start with the question about the definition of mass arrivals in clause 5. So clause 5(1A) “A group of people arriving on board a group of aircraft are a mass arrival group under subsection (1)(c) if the aircraft arrive within the same 24-hour time period.” So this is one of the key elements of this bill, expanding this initiative. And the Minister and officials told the committee that it was in response to some changing international occurrences where there have been cases of people smugglers, effectively, purchasing seats on commercial aircraft. I don't think we need to kind of rehash the whole mass arrivals legislation that we have now, but it's designed to expand that definition which hitherto has basically been based on the idea that people would come on a ship or a boat.
So we had quite a bit of discussion about that at the select committee and the committee recommended that to clarify that people arriving by air on separate services would need to arrive within a period of 24 hours in order to be captured by the definition. And that was really to avoid a wide grouping of different disparate aircraft arriving and somehow that being interpreted to mean a mass arrival.
It is worth, I think, digging in a little bit on this question around the definition of a group of aircraft and I'd be interested to hear from the Minister about how she interprets that and perhaps the officials’ view. Does that mean a group of aircraft have come from the same point of embarkation, same country? Does it mean a group of aircraft where the same people smuggler has booked seats on different aircraft? What precisely does it mean to say a group of aircraft, or is it a group of aircraft that happen to have come just by definition within this 24-hour time period? So I think that's worth exploring and I'd invite the Minister to respond on that.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. We, too, want to spend a little time on the committee of the whole House stage for this bill because this is quite a technical bill and there are a lot of different parts to it. I want to start with clause 4. I want to first start with the definition of “first available craft”. Now, it is good to see that the Education and Workforce Committee has included a consideration in there for those who have applied for either judicial review or a tribunal determination. I think submitters are right to point out that the previous version, of the person having no further rights—which is paragraph (b)—is problematic, particularly if someone does have those life applications going through, which will be inconsistent with section 27(2) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA).
What I'm interested to know from the Minister is that in this part, the person has “applied for leave to bring judicial review proceedings within 28 days after being notified”. But if you look at the website, particularly the Ministry of Justice website, it allows for not only the person being notified but also a representative of the person being notified, because, for example, when you apply for judicial review, particularly in these cases, often, it won't be just simply the person. They could be a representative of the person, a lawyer, an immigration adviser, etc., etc. So I'm curious to know why, despite what is on the Ministry of Justice website, the bill itself doesn't allow for a representative being notified.
I do want to ask the Minister to consider my amendment, which also includes that a representative of the person also be allowed to be notified, unless the Minister is able to confirm that in clause 4(1)(aa)(i), the phrase “after being notified” also implies a representative of the person—in which case, everything is covered, and that's fine.
I want to now speak to my second amendment—and second point—which is still under the definition of “first available craft”. Now, we're looking at under paragraph (d), which is “the deportation or turnaround of the person from New Zealand will not contravene section 164” of the principal Act. Section 164, essentially, talks about limitations on deportation. I want to check with the Minister: if section 164 is mentioned, then why is section 166 not mentioned, which also has limitations on deportation? In this case, section 166 is a limitation on deportation for diplomats. Does that mean that section 166, for example, will never be, in any instance, captured by this bill or by this definition? Again, if the Minister could clarify, that will help, but I do have an amendment in on that, if the Minister wouldn't mind considering.
Finally, I now want to discuss the definition of “irregular entry into New Zealand”, and I have another tabled amendment on this. This is paragraph (f), which is “the person has been assisted to enter by smugglers”. Now, I'm hoping that the term “assisted” implies that the person would have been, I guess, smuggled voluntarily, as in they agreed or have agreed to be assisted by the smuggler. But that wording is vague and, potentially, could be arguable; so it's just a very simple amendment, which is that “the person has been assisted to enter by smugglers willingly”, as in it is not involuntary smuggling or human trafficking.
Again, I ask if the Minister is able to clarify that. There is an amendment, but if the Minister is able to clarify that it is satisfactory, then we can leave that amendment—but those are my three questions to start with.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. In the House last night, we had quite a good debate and I think it’s very clear that all sides of the House want to uphold the human rights and liberties of the unfortunate—well, you know, the people who, unfortunately, find themselves as asylum seekers. There was a bit of a divide. Interestingly, National and Labour agreed that this legislation is useful to uphold that, and I think the Greens thought it was a bit of a response to a moral panic situation. But what is very clear is we all want to uphold these human rights. As the previous speaker, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, has said, much of the devil will be in how this is interpreted in the courts, because this is, essentially, a system that is put in place to enable, hopefully, quite a streamlined judicial process so that there is fairness and certainty for the people involved. That is why it’s really, really important that we get the wording right and we don’t have unintended consequences.
I think this debate may be longer than the Government might anticipate, not because we don’t agree, but also because there is a 44-page amendment on the Table regarding electronic monitoring. Now, that is a good thing and I’m really pleased to see that the Minister has responded to the select committee, but that will take some analysis because when we’re talking about electronic monitoring or any other form of warrant or detention or judicial review, we’ve got to get the wording right.
I, too, will now turn to Part 1 and raise some other issues that have not been raised. One of them is in terms of section 4(aa)(i), inserted by clause 4(1), where it talks about judicial review. The reading of subparagraphs (i), (ii), and (iii) don’t quite make sense when read altogether. I have not got an amendment on the Table, but I’m wondering whether the Minister would be minded to simply strike out subsection to leave out “(ii) applied for leave to bring judicial review proceedings after the prescribed time;”. It does not seem to add anything and it actually adds confusion to that paragraph.
In terms of the evidence for leave to bring judicial review proceedings, it would be good to know what level of proof is required for that. In section 4(aa)(i) when it says, “or within any further time allowed by the High Court”, that looks like a drafting constraint on the ability to take a judicial review, and I find that concerning. I wonder if the Minister could comment on that. Does she see that as a restriction of the rights available to those who would be affected by this clause? Would she be minded to take that out if it meant there was more certainty for that?
When we look to the next part, section 4(a), the question I have is around the words, “the identity of the person is unknown”. There are questions about whether that is a judiciable and objective test. The reason is it’s not very clear. We don’t know if that’s somebody who’s unable to get documents. What is the threshold of the identity of the person being unknown? Is it an absence of documents? Is it an inconsistency of documents? Is it a failure to be able to get the documents verified by a recognised New Zealand institution such as a District Court judge? How do the words interact with the refugee convention, especially Article 31?
So my suggestion—I haven’t had time to do amendments, but I wonder if we could extrapolate that out to something like instead of saying the identity is unknown, just to suggest that there are three elements to that, that there are no documents and/or inconsistent documents, and/or those documents are unable to be verified. It is important because I have had constituents that I’ve dealt with who have been seeking asylum in New Zealand, coming from places like Syria, where there is a real question mark over the veracity of documents. We know that they are authentically seeking asylum, but the documents take a while to catch up. So some clarity around that would be really important.
I’d like to ask the Minister about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) and how any work that she has done—I assume a BORA report was done, but what are her views around how this all interacts with section 27 of the BORA regarding their rights to natural justice? Also, the processes for enabling access to courts and legal counsel, because if there isn’t access to justice then potentially, even though on the face of it this bill might look like it is upholding the BORA rights, it would be restrictive in terms of liberty rights under section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and limiting rights on arrest or detention for those seeking asylum under section 23.
I’ll go to questions now, but there are supplementary questions to ones that are raised by the Hon Phil Twyford and that is the meaning of “mass arrival”. It’s a good intention and it is tricky. One of the questions is a legal question about whether individuals can have their right to be treated individually under the rule of law observed if they are deemed to be in a mass arrival. That raises issues of legal procedural fairness, such as whether they can get individual legal advice, independent advice, and interpreter services when necessary. So what are the safeguards around that?
I do wonder if an easy and elegant way out of that—again, I don’t have an amendment; I’d be prepared to write one—is to simply add a bit of a mens rea element into new section 9A(1A), inserted by clause 5, so that there is a common purpose. If a common purpose is attributed into that clause, I think, then, we don’t have to get into the granular kind of input evaluation of which flights they were on and when they caught them and so on. The very fact that there is a common purpose would capture the mens rea and would enable our officials to be able to do their job for the intended purposes of this bill.
When we’re looking at a group arriving on an aircraft, it would avoid making assumptions about things like mixed airlines, mixed routes, connecting flights, whether it’s from the time they boarded the aircraft, whether it’s the time that the aircraft took off, what happens if there are delays—all of those are really prescriptive and tricky. It would just be much better to have a deemed mens rea element in there. There could be a reasonable element or whatever; I’m sure the drafters would know the best way to do that.
The other thing I question is just the fairness about whether planes or boats—they’re going to be treated differently, and, if so, how does that then interact with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in section 19, the non-discrimination of asylum seekers? Because we are now making a discriminatory reference of those who arrive by air versus those who arrive by boat. Has there been some analysis done to make sure that that is in accordance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act?
There are some operational things, I think, too—I’m nearly done, Madam Chair—which are just around families being separated. We’ve got this magic number of 31, and I wonder what unintended consequences there might be if families are trying to separate themselves across different means of transport in order to circumvent the law, if that would be something that we would want to disincentivise because they’re already in a traumatic situation. The idea of children and parents coming in separately worries me. I also worry whether it will discourage people from seeking asylum.
Finally, just questions about the operational capacity at our airports. Has any work been done? It’s all very well having the legislation here—and I do think it’s a good piece of legislation. Do we have confidence that our airports and our staff at airports and our systems at airports will be able to deal with a large number of people coming in? We haven’t had to do that before in the circumstances, as far as I’m aware. We had the Tongan case, but I think that those people had already been processed and then were not able to leave, so that’s quite different. What impact would there be on airports? Those are my questions just for those first clauses, clauses 4 and 5.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): I'm just going to take a couple of those. Some of the amendments have only just been handed to me and have only just been printed, so I'll deal with those later. But in relation to the definition of a group of flights—and it's pretty clear in the bill that it's just flights arriving within a 24-hour period—there's really no other definition that you need. “Have they arrived in the last 24 hours?” is the definition in the bill—it doesn’t matter where they came from—and “Are there 31 people?”
In relation to Ingrid Leary’s questions, some of them are a little bit out of scope. The definition of a mass arrival is not part of this bill—the overall definition. But the only change is “arriving on a flight”, and the question about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and whether it is discriminatory with them coming on a flight, rather than on a vessel or a boat, is an odd question. It doesn't matter how they arrive. I don't think it's got anything to do with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which way they arrive.
Just in relation to the identity threshold: essentially, if we don't know who they are, then we don't know who they are, and it doesn't matter if it is because the documents are fake or because they don't have documents, or for any other reason. Once you start prescribing those things in the legislation, the unintended consequences are that it is too descriptive and we get ourselves all caught up. If we don't know who they are, that is the definition of it that we're using, and I don't think it's a good idea to start defining in law the types of conditions around whether or not we believe their documents or that they don't have documents, or anything else. There'll be unintended consequences around that.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Acknowledging that this is my first call and, as the immigration spokesperson for the Green Party, I just wanted to first note that one of the things that this bill does is that it does broaden who is liable for deportation, right? That’s also really important to make—even so, there are some components that we can, critically, get behind. It's important to note that this bill isn't about manaaki-ing people who are fleeing horrible conditions, but it also contains some contested components.
But I wanted to focus on clause 4, on the definition of “first available craft”, which has a new point that hasn't been addressed yet. Now, if I look at the principal Act, we do have a definition for “craft”, and that is “any form of aircraft, ship, or other vehicle or vessel capable of being or intended to be used to transport any person to or from New Zealand from or to any country outside New Zealand”. Now, the reason why this definition is important, in the context of clause 4, is because, effectively, it creates a set of conditions for when the person is liable for deportation, that they are able to be put on that first available craft.
Now, because “craft” captures such a broad range of vehicles, I did want to ask the Minister as to why she didn't choose to use the language “aircraft”; and that is because we've heard a lot of the terms of preparation under this bill. Is the Minister preparing to use other types of vehicles? Currently, for all the constituents that I have dealt with, aircrafts are the primary vehicle in which people end up being deported by; but the language that is used here—“first available craft”—captures boats, for example. Is the Minister intending to prepare to utilise other forms of vehicles to, effectively, deport people; if so, what work is she doing to prepare for that? Or does the system already have capacity to deport people in other forms of crafts other than aircrafts?
Because, you know, I recognise that when it comes to the definition of “mass arrivals” in clause 5, like, we have captured aircrafts as a form of arrival. I know that in the other debates we have had in relationship to the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Act, basically, we did mostly assume that people will be arriving by boat. But we haven't really interrogated whether the Government has any resources to deport people in any form of craft that is not an aircraft, or whether that is even the intention of the Minister, because we have used a lot of language in relationship to preparation.
I do have some questions more broadly on clause 8, and then one of my colleagues will want to unpack some stuff in clause 5 as well, and potentially clause 6. But in the interest of being able to scrutinise the bill adequately on clause 8—this is the amendments to section 52, and I look at subclause (4A): “The Minister may, by special direction in relation to a class or classes of persons holding temporary entry class visas,—(a) impose further conditions on the visas,”. Now, I know that there's a set of requirements that the Minister may need to consider when making those decisions around imposing further conditions. Would the Minister be able to elucidate for the House as to in what incidents would she see the need to impose additional conditions—potentially restrictions—on a group of people? Right. Because we have been told this is about preparation, but I don't think we've received clarity as to the scenarios in which you would need to impose additional conditions on a group of people.
I think that would be particularly important for the Minister to clarify, because I know that for other components of the bill, which will scrutinise later, the Minister and other members of Parliament have referenced the horrific attack that happened in New Lynn as a justification for some provisions in other parts of the bill. But I don't think a specific example has been used to justify the potential need to impose further conditions on visas for a group of people, and so I am interested to hear the Minister's justification for that specific clause—that's clause 8, specifically subclause (4A).
I'm not so much seeking debate on the sort of set of criteria the Minister needs to consider, but more about the potential scenarios in which that specific clause would be utilised, and whether there's precedent in which the Minister would have liked to have a provision that allowed her to impose further conditions on visas and a group of people that created the need to build in this specific clause.
To recap, I'm interested to know about whether the Minister has other types of vehicles and—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We don’t need the recap. The Hon Phil Twyford—oh, sorry, we’ll come back to you.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): I just want to get these out of the way, if I can—one by one, if I’m able to. In terms of the previous speaker’s questions around “craft”, there’s a long-held definition in the Immigration Act, and—
Hon Phil Twyford: Minister, could you speak up a bit?
Hon ERICA STANFORD: Sorry. There’s a long-held definition in the Immigration Act of “craft”. Of course, we usually put people on the most direct, humane, fastest, and first available craft, which is usually an aircraft. But you could imagine that if somebody lived on a Pacific Island who needed an airline and then a boat, we would want to do that, and so it allows those options. It’s relatively well-used terminology that allows us to do the thing that we need to do to get the person home.
In terms of his second question, there are a couple of things that the member was mixing up, I believe, but, essentially, the ability for the Minister to be able to grant either visas or conditions on visas is around special circumstances. I’ll note that when the powers were available under COVID, it was used about 50 times, and since then, we’ve had situations arise like when Vanuatu airlines got into trouble. We had recognised seasonal employer workers who were stranded here, and we had to individually go and either grant or change conditions on people’s visas. Look, if something similar like that happened in the future and we wanted to be able to allow people to stay here, we might have to change the conditions of their visa to allow them to work or to study.
It has to be for their benefit, which is the main part of this bill, which is very important. It limits the powers of the Minister. It has to be in the favour, or not to the detriment of the group of people, but allowing conditions to be altered means that we are able to allow people to do things like go and work if something overseas has happened and they can’t get home.
The other issue I think he might have been potentially mixing up was the actual person like Samsudeen. What this bill is talking about is that there is a condition where with those people, we can cancel their residence class visa when they are a threat to national security. So those two things are separate. I’m not sure if that’s something the member was getting confused about or not, but the important part of this section around the protections and the limited power of the Minister is always to make sure that whatever are the changes made, conditions imposed, or visas granted, they are in the favour of the people who are being affected.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Madam Chair, thank you. I do want to ask some questions about Subpart 2, but before I do, I just wanted to go back to clause 5, amended section 9A on the definition of mass arrivals. I want to just be absolutely clear or try to get absolutely clear that a group of aircraft—group, in this context, if I heard the Minister right—means only that this is more than one aircraft to arrive within the 24-hour period.
Hon Erica Stanford: Yes.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: So they don’t need to have any other connection in terms of the people-smugglers that might have booked the tickets or the place where they came from? It simply means aircraft that arrived within the 24-hour period.
Hon Erica Stanford: Yes.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The Minister’s nodding that that’s the case. OK. As a lay person, I would say that is pretty confusing drafting to refer to them as a group of aircraft. They are simply aircraft that arrived within the time period. But, anyway, we’ll leave that to the courts once this becomes law.
So I wanted to just really comment and ask some questions around these new flexible powers that arose out of the COVID experience. Labour supports these provisions and it’s clear that a lot of thought’s been put into putting some protections and some guardrails around the use of them: the reporting back to Parliament transparency provisions, the requirement that they must only benefit and not disadvantage the people they apply to, and so on. I’m interested in, though—this is a significant power to be conferred on the Minister and the Government. So one of the most important guardrails is the definition of the circumstances in which these powers might be used. The use of the word “unusual” in clause 7, amended section 50(4B)(a).
Now, it’s kind of a paradox, because if you make it really broad, then you’ve got maximum flexibility. The more you define what unusual might mean, the more you limit the potential application of these and therefore defeat the intent. But I would say that in clause 7, amended section 50(4D)(a)(iii), this becomes almost comical. Where one of the circumstances where these special directions could apply is “any circumstance that is outside the Department’s control:”. Now, the department is very powerful and controls many things, but to say “any circumstance that is outside the Department’s control:” pretty much means any circumstance that the universe might offer up. So the effect of that is that there is no limit on this circumstances under which these powers could be used.
So I would invite the Minister to share with the committee the kinds of—we know some of the historical examples where these powers were used, but what future kinds of situations does the Minister anticipate these powers would be used under and how does she interpret the words “any unusual circumstance” in clause 7, amended section 50(4B)(a) and (4D)(a)?
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Thank you, Madam Chair. I really appreciate the call, and I wanted to follow on from the Hon Phil Twyford in terms of Subpart 2 and the amendments. The reason why I ask the questions of the Minister of Immigration is to really understand the whole component around human rights, and also the applications that I have seen come through not just in my office but in the Auckland region, where there are many Pacific communities.
So, Minister, following on from the Hon Phil Twyford, I really wanted to understand, firstly, the advice that you have received from officials with regards to your flexible powers. One of the reasons I ask, Minister, is because, in my office in Māngere, which has a high population of Pacific, we have a range of families and communities who come and talk about their immigration circumstances. What I wanted to understand, Minister, was around the word “exceptions”, the test that will be used or the advice that you have received particularly around safeguards. Sometimes there have been scenarios where there have been specific events beyond New Zealand’s control, we have had individuals, like with the volcanic eruption in Tonga, but also some of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers. Then we have had a scenario where Pacific families have been through the immigration system and they have been successful getting visas but the temporary visa time has run out, and, in some scenarios, there is no person back in that Pacific country. They’ve gone to Immigration New Zealand to get the tests and what is required to satisfy and justify the request.
So I am asking in terms of the advice that the department has given you, because sometimes when my office or I have sought advice from immigration officials or the department—it’s not that it’s conflicting, but it’s different and varying. For people who may not have a background in tertiary study, for the terms that are used by immigration officials, sometimes there’s different understandings. So it would be really helpful, Minister, if you could explain that. Thank you.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Right, those questions are all very similar around the types of situations that we expect to happen. Let me run through some examples that were given to me in the advice that I was given: situations where New Zealanders overseas wish to repatriate their families quickly in response to a conflict, like in Ukraine; the collapse of Air Vanuatu, which we’ve already talked about, which stranded Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers here; education institutes folding; a large labour-hire firm going into receivership with serious implications for migrant workers; and, of course, the volcanic eruption in Tonga.
I think the member made a great point in her previous question around the fact that it is very difficult when we have to individually deal with people who then have to go and get information and put visa applications together, especially if they’re running out quite quickly. We don’t want people to be here not on a valid visa. The ability for us—like the previous Government did under COVID—to be able to quickly and swiftly deal with those situations to make sure that those people have valid visas, whether or not we have to extend conditions, change conditions, or grant new visas is what this bill is asking this House to approve.
Now, there are a number of safeguards, and that was the other question asked by both members. As I’ve already said, it has to be to the benefit of the people who we are dealing with, but the use of powers would be subject to many safeguards including the overarching safeguard that they can only be used to their benefit, or at least not to their disadvantage.
With regard to the class of special directions, the Minister would be required to certify that they consider that it’s reasonably necessary to exercise the relevant power or powers, and that they have consulted appropriately. The class of special directions are time limited, they must be published, they can be challenged by the Regulations Review Committee, and their use must be reported to Parliament each year in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment annual report.
There will be a report back to Cabinet no more than three years after the powers come into effect to identify whether or not there have been any unintended consequences, and, if so, what further legislative adjustments should be made. There are a number of safeguards in this to limit the power of the Minister. But, as you can see, there are a number of—as the member rightly pointed out—situations where we need to act swiftly to the benefit of those people to make sure that they are here on valid visas or conditions that are suitable for them.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I just wanted to follow up on an answer that that Minister of Immigration gave me, and I appreciate the engagement on that specific question in relation to “craft”. She used a very specific example of using a plane and then a boat, but then the boat wouldn’t be the first craft; it would be the second craft.
I genuinely ask this because the first available craft would be so broad that I generally just want to ask: have there been cases in which the first available craft has been anything else other than an aircraft—as in, the first vehicle that people are being put in?
My colleague and I worked on an amendment that we’ve just tabled, too, and this is why I wanted to just go back to it, because we just wanted to put an amendment to make sure that the first available craft—so if people need to be put in a boat or a vehicle afterwards, kei te pai—isn’t anything other than an aircraft. Because, I think, to me, that is really important to clarify in legislation so that if the Minister genuinely intends to say the most humane craft available, that it is an aircraft and not, say, a boat that may not adequately protect the wellbeing of people or may not contain humane conditions.
Now, going back to—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Could I just ask the member to clarify the reason for that question, because—
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Because we just tabled an amendment to strengthen that.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): —there could be a wide range of circumstances. So could you just flesh that out a little bit as to why?
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Why aircraft? Because as far as I’m aware—and this is why I’m seeking the Minister’s elucidation—that is currently the only form of vehicle that is currently being used. If the Minister is able to provide examples in which the first point of leaving is being made by anything other than an aircraft, that would be useful. We’re happy to rescind our amendment if the Minister can explain why the first point of exit could be made or has been made in the recent past by anything else other than an aircraft.
Anyway, going back to clause 8, amended section 52(4D)(b)(ii). So this is in relationship to the one that says “(b) the Minister considers that the exercise of the power to make the special direction in the particular situation will (ii) not disadvantage the class or classes of persons to whom it applies;”. Now, I know that the Minister said that the intent isn’t to disadvantage groups of peoples when these now new powers are being made. I know that the Minister used the example of the Recognised Seasonal Scheme workers during COVID-19, but can I just confirm with the Minister, in relationship to how this is drafted, the language so far says “considers”, but you could, in theory, just consider it and then, none the less, move ahead with it.
What safeguards are put in place so that it’s not just a matter of thinking about it, considering it, as opposed to requiring, but it does not disadvantage the class or classes of persons to whom it applies? Because I could see that perhaps not this current Minister but a future Minister could use the language as written to say, “Well, I have considered it. I have taken that into consideration and, none the less, I’m varying the conditions of a group of people or visas to potentially limit, for example, who they can work for, where they can live, how many times they can come back and forth into the country.” So I wanted to ask about the specificity of the language of consider versus, for example, that those powers must not be used to disadvantage someone. Because that’s quite a different line of consideration that the Minister would then have to make.
So why did the Minister go ahead with “consider”, as opposed to “these powers must not disadvantage the class or classes of persons to whom it applies”? Because, again, as much as I want to believe in good faith that the intent isn’t to, can the Minister just clarify how will a future Minister who would seek to restrict or disadvantage groups of migrants can’t simply just consider it and then go ahead with it and use those powers anyway, since this doesn’t necessarily bind the Minister to not disadvantage a group of migrants?
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Look, in relation to that last part, the member is really grasping at straws. It’s very clear it has to be to the benefit of the group of migrants. I’ve been very clear that there are a number of checks and balances. There is a disallowable instrument. In fact, it has to go through the Regulations Review Committee and can be struck out if there’s anything that is not according to the regulations. So I don’t think there’s anything more to say on that.
Going back to the issue of a craft—again, very minor point. We’ve not been able to think of any time—that’s not to say there isn’t, but my officials can’t ever remember a time—that the first available craft was not a plane. Especially out of New Zealand, because we can’t put people on a train out of New Zealand or anything. But we don’t want to limit ourselves in the case of something that we can’t think of right now, but there’s some kind of emergency where we need to use a helicopter, for example. We don’t want to limit ourselves. But as far as we can see, the first available craft has always been an aircraft. But it would be very limiting if we were to use just the aircraft, and then if some other situation came up and we needed to humanely get someone on a craft and that craft was not an aircraft, then that would be very limiting.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to check—unless I haven’t heard it—the Minister of Immigration hasn’t responded to my earlier questions regarding my amendments, particularly for the definition of “first available craft”. But I’m going to move on and just—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The number of the amendment?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh, sorry the definition is the part which says “apply—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, the number on your amendment.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh, the number of my amendment?
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yes.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: OK. It is—let me just check—the amendment that was tabled at 8.40.03.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Yeah. Thank you. Apologies, Madam Chair. I just want to clarify with you clause 7,8,9, and 10 pertains to four different types of visa circumstances, but the drafting itself is largely comparable, so I will be drawing from different clauses from each one because I have an amendment for each of those clauses. So, for example, to start with, I want to talk to my amendment which is around clause 7, inserting new section 50(4E); clause 8, inserting new section 52(4E); clause 9, inserting new section 43(4E); and clause 10, inserting new section 57(6), because for all of those four clauses, the drafting is identical, so my amendment is the same but they are four different visa classes, if that makes sense.
So bear with me. For all four, it talks about the type of special direction. Now, I want to just check with the Minister because I do think that the issue my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March raised is a good one, because, for example, in new subsection(4D) in any of those clauses 7,8, and 9, you would see that the Minister “must” certify, not that the Minister certifies. Therefore, if you look at new subsection (4D)(b) that my colleague mentioned where the Minister “considers”, it doesn’t have the requirement of “must”, so it doesn’t have that totality.
But moving on to my amendment, one of the issues that was brought up is with clause 7, inserting new inserting new section 50(4E); clause 8, inserting new section 52(4E); clause 9, inserting new section 43(4E); and clause 10, inserting new section 57(6)—
Hon Erica Stanford: Which amendment number, sorry?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh, OK. Let me—oh, sorry, this is going to take a little while. It’s the amendments tabled at 8.40.09; 8.40.15; 8.40.21; and 8.40.26, yeah. In here, the recommendation is, because any decision to issue a special direction under the proposed amendment would be at the absolute discretion of the Minister and would lack the degree of transparency that’s normally expected of legislation that will affect a large number of individuals—but also the proposed power, effectively, to allow the Minister to vary otherwise applicable provisions of the Immigration Act, itself—my amendments for these four sections, essentially, has a commencement date of no less than 28 days after the direction is made. Now, rather than saying that commence in accordance with section 378(3), which is, in fact, immediately, if it's not published. I think a default 28-day intro period would ensure there’s adequate notice of any special direction given.
I do agree with the Minister that there’s a lot of really good safeguards in here, but I just wanted to add a little bit more because of the fact that with the regulatory-making power the Minister has under this bill for these two separate visa classes can be quite substantial and affects a substantial number of people.
Now, the second thing I want to mention is my tabled amendments tabled at 8.40.10; 8.40.16; 8.40.22; and 8.40.27. So these are also for clause 7, inserting new section 50(4E)(c); clause 8, inserting new section 52(4E)(c); clause 9, inserting new section 53(4E)(c); and clause 10, inserting new section 57(6)(c). The reason I put in this amendment is that I understand when, with (b), you can commence—I will finish this call; sorry, Madam Chair—even if it’s not yet published; however, (c) says it must be published together with an explanation of the effect of this special direction. But what isn’t there is when that needs to be published. So, for example, in any of these, like clause 7, inserting new section 50(4E)(d), it says “must specify—(i)its duration, which can be no longer than 6 months”. I did like the fact that there is a sunset clause; I think that’s a really good safeguard. But, for example, does that mean without a specific timing for publication, that the Minister could, in fact, publish after the duration or after the special direction is no longer in effect?
So my amendments for these four clauses is just to ensure that while the Minister may consider commencing immediately and delay the publication, the publication should still take place within 14 days. So those two are my two groups of amendments—so I have eight in total.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Right—I’ll speak to two of Lawrence’s amendments just to say we won’t be supporting them. The amendment at 8:40:03 a.m. we will not be supporting because it’s inherent that “the person” includes their agent or their representative, and that is clear in the legislation. In terms of the amendment at 8:40:05 a.m., you talked about the difference between the diplomatic pathway and not. You can imagine that taking steps to deport diplomats is a very complicated process with lots of concerns, so we have to deal with those separately, and we won’t be supporting that one either.
Going back to Ingrid Leary’s comments from earlier about whether airports would have the capacity to manage a mass arrival: mass arrival group provisions are explicitly to enable people to have access to interpreters and lawyers, and the framework is to ensure the system can manage—that’s the whole point of the mass arrivals legislation. If we didn’t have that, then we wouldn’t be able to cope, and officials have operational planning in place to respond to a mass arrival by air or by sea. Ingrid Leary asked, what is irregular entry? This language is used in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) guidelines on detention of asylum seekers and is—
Ingrid Leary: Point of order, Madam Chair.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: —and is really clear—
Ingrid Leary: Point of order, Madam chair. I’m really appreciating that the Minister is answering the questions, but it’s really difficult because of the speed and quietness. For a back and forth, I want to be able to digest what she’s saying, but it’s so fast and so quiet. Could we just have it a little bit slower, please? It may bring more into the debate—I’m not sure—but this is an appreciation that she is answering the questions, and we need to be able to hear the answers.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: OK, so “irregular entry” is language used in the UNHCR guidelines on the detention of asylum seekers, so it’s very clear. She asked: is the bill consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? Yes—the Ministry of Justice gave a clean vet to the bill, and, as I’ve already said, it’s not a prohibited form of discrimination to distinguish between modes of transport. I already made that clear, but officials have confirmed that as well.
RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thanks, Madam Chair. Now, I do just want to jump forward a little bit in the bill. Just recognising that there are probably clauses that I’ll be skipping past that other colleagues are going to want to interrogate, but this is a particular piece I’m quite interested in asking the Minister about. So that’s clause 13, which inserts new section 75A, which is the cancellation of a residence class visa of a person threatening security. So what I note is that this bill does create a power for the Minister to cancel the residence class visas of individuals who pose a threat or risk to security but who cannot currently be deported. So, for example, there could be substantial grounds for believing that that person would be at risk of persecution, and it then requires the Minister to grant them a temporary visa. This provision arose out of work that was done by the Labour Government after the terror attack in a West Auckland supermarket, which happened in September 2021. That was Ahamed Samsudeen. He had refugee status and residence, but he had been identified as an extremist and a risk and he couldn’t be deported because of his protected refugee status. What it did is it exposed the lack of tools that a Government has in dealing with somebody who is a risk but also can’t be deported because of their protected status under international law.
So I have some questions for the Minister on the basis of this, because it does call into question a few, I think, technical challenges, and challenges around how this operates in practice. So the first is that it is a significant new power being given to the Minister. So my question is why are there not some more accountabilities around it? For example, an appeal right for that person. The affected individual also has no meaningful opportunity to test this information or to appeal against that decision on the basis of the facts or on humanitarian grounds. So there’s also a question around, given the seriousness of this, whether it might be wiser to have a judicial warrant, as opposed to a decision by the Minister.
There’s also the situations where someone may be deemed a risk to national security but also has children. So they have their residence visa cancelled, but they have children. This presents challenges when Government really should also be considering what is in the best rights of the children and other family members. So has the Minister considered the best interests of the child in terms of this particular decision?
One of the questions I’ve got, though, which I think is a really interesting one for the Minister, is that the time frame on this—could a person, essentially, end up in a state where they were having a continued rollover of a temporary visa and what rights does that grant them? And then what does the Government actually do about the security risk component? So you could envisage a scenario where somebody has their residence class visa cancelled, they continue for the remainder of their life to have a risk of persecution which means they’re not able to be returned to their original country. So that could be 20, 30, 40, 50 years of a person having a continued rollover of a temporary visa, but then there’s also the challenges to New Zealand’s security, which are genuine, because we now have somebody on a temporary visa who doesn’t have the rights of a resident to potentially access things like healthcare support that might actually be the type of intervention that’s needed to support this person to no longer be a security risk.
So I can absolutely appreciate, and we can appreciate as the Labour Party, when somebody—and this particular scenario was an example where real harm was caused and further harm could have been caused. So we’re not denying that there is a risk posed by this person that they’ve been deemed to be a security risk, but likewise there’s a genuine situation for that person’s ability to not be persecuted and potentially killed on return to their home country. So it puts a real conundrum around the situation. So those are my questions for the Minister.
Just recapping them: why is there no appeal right? Why not consider a judicial warrant, given the significant legal things to consider? What is the scenario when someone has children? What is the scenario when someone has a temporary visa continually rolled over? And then what does that mean for both monitoring that person, and provision of support so that they can actually have some potential behavioural change? Thank you.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Look, in relation to those questions, there is the ability of the person to have a judicial review and that is the process.
In terms of where I will get a judicial warrant to do this, that is not the case with Immigration New Zealand at all. It always is the executive power of the Minister in all of these cases. This is not an unusual situation to have people rolling over on visas. The Hon Phil Twyford will remember, probably, as his time as the Minister, signing off many rolling visas of people that are protected people that we can’t return that we will not give residence to. It’s sort of a parallel example, but we do that relatively regularly with people that we don’t want to give residence to but we can’t return home because they’re protected people.
This is slightly different in that we are revoking their residence and putting them on rolling visas, but the point is that unless the situation changes in their home country, they will be here with their children and with their family on rolling visas. It is not an unusual situation for us to be doing this. Immigration Ministers have been doing it for a long time in that very unenviable situation where we have somebody that has either committed a crime in New Zealand that we do not want to give residence to but we can’t return home, or in this new instance where we are revoking someone’s residence because they are a threat to security but keeping them rolling over on visas. That has always been the power of the executive and the Minister and it’s not been considered to be required to get a judicial warrant. That would be outside of anything that we’ve ever done in any similar situations and we won’t be doing that.
Just going back to Lawrence’s questions around the Minister’s powers to grant visas or to change conditions of visas. As secondary legislation, there’s already publication requirements in the Legislation (Publication) Regulations. So that already exists. Also section 378 of the Immigration Act enables the Minister to revoke any special direction if it’s no longer needed. Given this is to the benefit of the people who are affected, it will be known to them and we will be publishing it—we have to; it’s a statutory requirement.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Chair. Further to the Minister’s responses to the questions from my colleague Rachel Boyack, there are three points I wanted to touch on further with this.
Under the provisions of this bill, having revoked the resident visa of someone who is deemed to be a threat to national security, the Minister is required then to issue a temporary visa. Now, if the Minister was, in that circumstance, to issue a visitor visa, the person in question would not have access to paid employment or the kind of income support that they otherwise would be able to get from the State if they were on a work visa—or at least not to the same level. The reason I raise this is that I think that if the Minister were to do that—to deny the person the potential to have a livelihood and to feed themselves and their family—we would be in serious breach of our international human rights obligations, and yet that scenario, I believe, is open to the Minister under these provisions. So I would ask the Minister to comment on that. What sort of guard rails are there if the Minister does issue a temporary visa, and what obligation is there on the Minister to ensure that the person in question can sustain a livelihood while they’re in New Zealand?
Secondly, I wanted to say something about the point that Rachel Boyack raised about how this is a sweeping executive power. Giving the Minister the right—I think it’s under section 163 of the Immigration Act—to certify that someone is a threat to national security: if you go and look at section 163, you’ll see it’s is a very broad provision. I’m not questioning that it’s inappropriate, because I think New Zealanders would expect a Minister, in this case, and the Government of the day to be vigilant in protecting the national security of New Zealanders. From my perspective, that’s accepted—that’s a given—but it is important that in exercising this sweeping power, there are some safeguards and controls.
I wanted to ask the Minister whether she got advice and whether she considered—well, I know she told Rachel Boyack that she didn’t accept or consider the need for a judicial process. The reason that I think that is worth considering—and my intention is to table an amendment on that in the course of this debate, requiring a judicial process—is because I asked the House to cast its minds back to the Ahmed Zaoui case. Ahmed Zaoui had his immigration status revoked; he ended up languishing in a New Zealand prison for a considerable length of time on the basis of advice from our police and security agencies that was, for a long time, not tested in court. He was not given the opportunity to address and respond to the evidence that was used as the basis of the Government’s intervention—
Arena Williams: Which is now widely discredited.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: That evidence was subsequently discredited. I think that the Ahmed Zaoui case is a pretty powerful story of why we should think very carefully about enshrining this sweeping power for the Minister of the day to simply certify—through secondary legislation—that a person is deemed to be a risk to our national security.
I have a third point that I wanted to make that may take a little bit of time, Madam Chair. This goes to the heart of what this provision is trying to achieve. Everyone, I think, can see that when someone is assessed as a threat to national security, they’re a protected person under international law, so they cannot be deported. If they weren’t protected, and they were a threat to national security or they had committed a crime, they would be deported. In this case, it puts the Government of the day in a very difficult situation, as the Samsudeen—[End of five-minute call]
Hon Members: Madam Chair?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Madam Chair? I haven’t finished, Madam Chair; I’m in the middle of my point.
Hon Members: Madam Chair?
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Calm down—calm down! Hon Phil Twyford. You did give me notice that you were going to run out of time, so I was prepared to roll this over.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you. The effect of this bill is that it gives the Minister the opportunity to strip someone of their resident status. The question is, is that intended to be punitive and some kind of deterrent so that it will deter the person in question from staying in New Zealand, for example, because it’s harder for them to live because they don’t have access to social services and so on? If they then face the possibility that if conditions in their country improve, say—like Syria has, for example—does it mean that they could face being returned to their country of origin, and that acts as a deterrent? Does the Minister see this as essentially punitive, and has the Minister considered whether or not this is a way of the Government of the day having some leverage to sit down with the person in question and work out some sort of deal?
The reason I raise this, and I wanted to share an experience that I had as the Associate Minister of Immigration when immigration officials came to me one day and said, “There’s a person here who is about to be released from prison. They have protected person status, they cannot be deported, they have mental health and addiction issues, they have been in prison for several years, and they were in prison because they committed some pretty serious violent offences against their family members.” This was a really difficult conundrum. This person is about to be released into the community—there was no way to keep them incarcerated—and so we had to consider what to do.
After some head-scratching and working together, we were able to put together, effectively, a deal where this person got a temporary visa that enabled them to access income support and social support in return for residential reporting requirements. They had to check in with their local police station regularly; they had to enrol for rehabilitation services and English language training and deal with their mental health issues. It was a pretty concerted effort to try to get this person to rehabilitate themselves.
Now, that was a very unusual sort of situation, and I’m glad to report that a year later, that person turned up at my electorate office to tell me that they had rehabilitated and reconciled with their family members. I know from subsequent contact that that person has done remarkably well and is living happily in the community with their family and is in paid employment and and is now speaking English quite well. The reason I raise that is that I’m interested to know whether or not the Minister and her officials see that sort of facilitated community engagement strategy as a possibility, or do they simply see this provision as being punitive and designed to deter someone who’s seen as a threat to national security and encourage them to leave the country as soon as possible.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): I think it’s just worth remembering the types of people that we’re talking about. The case that kicked off, under the previous Government, the work they did was the Samsudeen, where there was a threat to national security—the person was under 24/7 surveillance because of the serious threats of harm to New Zealanders. It places us in a very difficult position when people are protected and we can’t return them home. But what we can do, and I think what the Opposition agrees with, is that we can revoke their residency status. The point of that is so that if things change and their situation changes in their home country and at some point they can be returned, we can then deport them. We would obviously have to go through a system where we would need to remove their protected person status, but remember these people are a threat to national security. Let’s remember what happened in the Samsudeen case. There is always the option for a judicial review, but this is a practical and pragmatic thing that we can do so if things change, we are able to remove people from this country.
Now, the previous Minister also talked about the Ahmed Zaoui case. I just want to make very clear, that was very, very separate. It was dealt with at the time. There were a raft of changes that were made to the Immigration Act at the time around that case to put guardrails in place—special provisions around the use of classified information. That is out of the scope of this bill, but that was dealt with then, so those things are not relevant to this case. This is simply about making sure that someone who is a risk to national security—someone like Samsudeen—if the situation in their home country is to change, then we have the ability to remove them from New Zealand.
CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): I move, That debate on this question now close.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Not quite there yet.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to be very specific in my contribution. I want to speak to, I think, 11 of my amendments. I want to start by first going to the amendment that is tabled—let me just find it again—8.40.13 and 8.40.19. Now, the reason I raise these two—and this is clause 8, amended section 52(4A)(a) and clause 9, amended section 53(4A)(a)—is that these impose further conditions. I’m recommending that if the Minister wouldn’t mind considering from “impose further conditions” to “vary conditions”. The reason I say that is the Minister has rightfully before said that a Minister will consider the exercise of power that benefit a class and not disadvantage. But I can’t think of an instance where imposing further conditions will actually benefit.
Hon Erica Stanford: I can give you one.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh. In that case, I will stop there and the Minister may be able to respond to that.
My next group of amendments is amendment tabled 8.40.12, 8.40.13, 8.40.17, 8.40.18, 8.40.23, 8.40.24, 8.40.28, and 8.40.29. Now, these are groups. Again, the Minister would, no doubt, be aware that I have a special interest when it comes to regulatory-making powers and potentially some of the checks and balances that are involved when it comes to regulatory-making powers. For both of these two clusters is, essentially, two main recommendations I want the Minister to consider. I want to thank the Minister as well for clarifying in terms of the publication requirements—that’s very helpful.
So what my proposal is: the first one is around that section 378 of the Immigration Act is not applicable to the special direction under various subsections (4)(a) and also (3) of section 57, amended by clause 10. Now, the reason for that is because the absolute discretion that is granted in section 378(8) of the principal Act should not be applied to these special directions. This will actually help the transparency and accountability of the decisions made using these new powers and enable those decisions to be more easily reviewed.
The second one is to put in a review clause with any regulatory-making power. Again, I understand there’s a sunset clause, which is fantastic, but I’m seeking the Minister’s support on new subsections for each of these: a new subsection (4)(f) and subsection (7) of section 57, amended by clause 10. This, basically, is just making sure the Minister may review the effectiveness of the special directions under clause 10, amended section 57(4)(a), at any time and must review it no later than three years after commencement date.
Now, the reason for that is any decisions to issue special direction under the proposed amendment would be at the absolute discretion and, also, like the transparency, the proposed power also allows the Minister to vary otherwise applicable provisions. But having this provision in place would just mean that we’re able to have some review on that. I’m noting—I note this is a different section—that later on we do see in the new section 399AC, inserted by clause 56, that there is a review clause on secondary legislation under regulatory-making power. So even within this one amendment bill, we have seen my amendment being adopted.
I want to move on now to clause 18—
Ricardo Menéndez March: Which we haven’t touched on.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: —which we haven’t touched on. This is a really significant section, because clause 18, amended section 161(1AA)(1), is something that many submitters, including legal experts, have raised to be a serious concern. This is where we’re now changing the wording from “convicted” to “are convicted or found guilty of, or plead guilty to”. Now, this broadens the scope of this particular bill, especially for those who have pleaded guilty but not been convicted—i.e., those who have pleaded guilty or even been found guilty but are acquitted by a judge are now going to be considered under this clause, which is really, really broad. So I just seek a tiny bit more time from you, Madam Chair, just for me to finish this one.
So we don’t really agree that maintaining the status quo undermines the integrity of the immigration system. The court already has the ability to consider—Madam Chair, I’ll just finish this amendment—whether deportation liability should be an appropriate consequence of the offending. And the current framework has, to date, struck an appropriate balance between the interests of the affected person, the public interest, and the integrity of the immigration system by enabling the court to address low-level criminal offending, where appropriate under a well-established sentencing structure. But also noting that if a person is acquitted under this, they’re still considered found guilty, which means they’re captured under this new clause. The safeguard is provided under the section 206 test of the Immigration Act. A person who is in that situation would be unlikely to meet the section 206 test of the Immigration Act.
So my proposal and my amendment here—that is amendment tabled 8.40.30—is making a recommendation that we keep the status quo of keeping it to “convicted”, and delete the mentioning of “found guilty or plead guilty”, just so we don’t get ourselves into a situation where there is a gap between section 206 of the Immigration Act and what we already allow people by their right under the Sentencing Act of acquittal.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): OK. There’s a few things there. Firstly, imposing conditions—you asked for an example. If you had a group of people here who are here on visitor visas, and their flight or their airline collapsed or something happened in their home country like a volcanic eruption, we would impose a condition that they would be able to work. So we’ve been over this a number of times now and I’ve already made that clear, but one more time I’ll make it clear.
There is already a review period, as I’ve already mentioned, built into this. There will be a report back to Cabinet no more than three years after the powers come into effect, to identify whether there have been any unintended consequences, and, if so, whether we need to make further legislative adjustments. So something is already built in to make sure that we are—again, I’ve mentioned that already.
I want to talk, though, about this next part of the bill that the member raised around ensuring that the decisions around deportation stay with Immigration. We have a process in Immigration, whereby if you do something that makes you liable for deportation, there is a process that you go through. It goes to a delegated decision-maker, it may end up with the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, but there is a process. Circumnavigating that process is what’s happening at the moment, where judges will discharge without conviction to avoid people having to potentially be deported—not actually deported. Just because someone is liable for deportation doesn’t necessarily mean they are deported, and, in many cases—
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: But that’s the discretion of the judiciary.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: —just have a listen—they are not deported, because of the process. So, many times, if it is a first offence and it is minor and they are liable for deportation, it will go to a delegated decision-maker at Immigration New Zealand and they make the decision, on many occasion, not to deport. But if they do make the decision to allow deportation to happen, then there are still other avenues for those people to go down, including the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and, of course, the Minister. So there is an established system that already exists.
But what we are finding that is happening in the courts is that—and there’s an argument being made that “Oh, well, look, this poor person may be deported, not actually will be, but might be.”, and now that process is being circumnavigated. Now, the first thing is that that is not something that is open to a Kiwi. So if a Kiwi was to go before the courts, they don’t have the same ability to say “I need a discharge without conviction because I might be deported.”—so not available to a New Zealander.
Secondly, I just want to give the member—and I mentioned this in the select committee: the types of cases that we are seeing are things like, and I’ll give you an example of one, the person had two counts of assault on a person in a family relationship, he punched his pregnant wife in the stomach, the outcome was that the convictions and the sentence of 220 hours community service was set aside, discharged without conviction. Now, there is already an established process to work out whether or not someone should be liable for deportation. It sits under the Immigration Act, it always has, it’s being circumnavigated, it should sit there. We are being very clear in this instance that if you are guilty or found guilty or you plead guilty, then the deportation liability still exists. So what it does is put that process back where it belongs, which is in the established process in Immigration, through a delegated decision-maker, through the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, or through the Minister.
But it’s in our view, in the Government’s view, which is why we brought this amendment, it should run through that process and it should not be circumnavigated by a judge who is discharging without conviction in these cases, to avoid the process—not necessarily, and let’s be really clear about that, deportation. Deportation may not happen, and the judges are circumnavigating, effectively that, and we want to make sure that it runs through the same process: the fair and established process that already exists.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Before I take the next call, I’d just like to note, members, please, the scenarios are consuming a huge amount of time. The committee of the whole House is to see and have issues and questions addressed relating to the bill. So can we just bring it back a little bit tighter to relative questions on the parts in the bill.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I just wanted to clarify to the Chair, one of the reasons, in particularly for clause 13, why some case studies have been brought forward is that, for example, in clause 13 we have seen one case study being used—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): You are doing it already, Mr Ricardo.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: No, just noting. Because what I’m seeking clarification from the Minister is how many people have been deemed to be a threat to security that the Minister would have not been able to strip away residency from that now she will be able to strip residency from as a result of clause 13. So I’m seeking, actually, clarification on how many people would this clause actually seek to capture.
The other question I have was I would like to seek clarification in the language, because people asking questions and giving answers use the term “national security”. Now, in this clause and in the principal Act, the language of “national security” is not used; it’s just “security”. It’s “threat to security”, not “threat to national security”. Those are actually quite different things. So can the Minister explain what she would mean by “threat to security”? Because I do think it’s dangerous to use the term “national security” when that is a term that’s used for quite serious things, as opposed to “threat to security”.
Now, my other question in relationship to clause 13 that has not been canvased is why did the Minister not choose to include a requirement for her to consider whether the person had received, for example, adequate support? For example, mental health support, access to counselling, etc. Because, at the end of the day, we know, from the examples that the Minister herself has referenced, that in those cases there was a lack of access to mental health services. So I’m interested to know why that wasn’t built into clause 13.
Now, on clause 18, I have also a question in relationship to how many people the Minister currently would be deeming to capture. I’m sure and I hope that she received advice around, for example, how many people on temporary visas would have been found to be guilty or pleaded but not convicted over, say, the past 10 years. Because I think, to me, this is important for the Minister to clarify to the public what group or population are we talking about.
I hate it when the Minister or anyone uses the term “those people”. Who do we mean by “those people”? I hear from the Chair that she doesn’t want us to bring examples, but the Minister did just that when, in her contributions, she used one quite extreme example of somebody punching a pregnant person as a justification for this bill. So that is why I’m asking on clause 18 how many people in the past, for example, 10 years, five years, even in the past year have been found to have been guilty or pleaded guilty but not convicted, and therefore not liable for deportation that she now would like to seek to capture?
And what nationalities are more likely, if we take a sample over the past decade, to be captured as a result of clause 18? Because, again, it’s simply not good enough for the Minister to use terms like “those people” without telling us exactly the range and the scope of people that would be captured. Surely, when designing clause 18, she would have said, “This is a systemic issue.” Not an issue of one specific example that would have not been dealt with.
The second question on clause 18 that I have—because the New Zealand Law Society rightly pointed out that the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (IPT) process can often be insurmountable for people. So can the Minister give us assurances that she may be exploring additional resourcing to, for example, entities or advocating for resourcing for entities like community law to make sure that the potential increase in IPTs being lodged as a result of clause 18 will be able to be dealt with in a way that doesn’t just become this supposed process that people can follow but, actually, in practice, is completely insurmountable for people to lodge an IPT to be able to challenge the liability of deportation.
So I just really want to encourage the Minister to stop using the term “those people” and give us the numbers of how many people she wishes to capture in clauses 13 and 18 specifically, so that we’re not just actually further marginalising communities. Because Ibrahim Omer, a former Labour MP, rightly pointed out, when the attacks in New Lynn happened, that he did not want to see asylum seekers and/or other groups prejudiced by what happened there. Yet we are seeing exactly the same thing under this piece of legislation.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Just in the spirit of speaking more slowly—which I am trying to do—if that member could also just slow it down a bit. Take further calls. It’s just really hard to keep up—especially when you are merging and mixing two different issues, it is hard. I’m just asking for you to slow down a wee bit and be really clear about the different things you’re speaking about, because there are two different things that were merged in here. The first thing was around the case where we have a protected person that we would like to strip of residency because they are a national threat. You asked about the numbers. Now, at this point in time, I’m advised that there isn’t anyone that we would have on our books. However, this is future focused. The Samsudeen case was huge, it was distressing, and it was difficult for people in New Zealand to fathom that there was, at the point in time, nothing that we could do.
Now, the previous Government, to their credit, worked on this. It was very difficult and very tough in the case of a protected person. This is something that we can do and I think we both agree that we should do, but it is future focused. We don’t want this sort of case to happen again, where we sit there and go, “Oh, well, there’s nothing we can do.” There has to be something. This is something that we can do. But I can confirm with the member at this point we’re not aware of anybody.
In terms of—and this is the second that was mixed in slightly, and this is around the numbers of the people who are being discharged without conviction on the grounds that they may be deported. Look, we don’t have exact numbers, but what is being reported to us, especially down south and in Queenstown and in the southern area of New Zealand, is that it is happening more and more. The case numbers are huge and so this is why it is something that’s been brought forward because it is being circumnavigated.
I just want to draw the member’s attention to the definition of a security threat. It’s defined in section 4 of the Act: terrorism, espionage, foreign interference. So it’s very clearly defined in the Act.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Madam Chair, thank you. I do note that colleagues on the Government benches are getting a bit antsy and taking closure motions. I just wanted to say that there are nine discreet and substantive parts to this bill. So far we’ve covered off the cancellation of residence class visas, we’ve covered off the new flexible powers of the Minister to benefit classes of persons, and we’ve dealt with the definition of mass arrivals. But can I just draw the Chair’s attention to the other substantive parts that we haven’t got to yet. We’re currently talking about deportation and criminal offending—Subpart 5. We haven’t yet got to Subpart 7, on out-of-hours warrants. We haven’t yet dealt with charging of premiums—clause 47. We haven’t yet dealt with very important Subpart 8 on the warrants of commitment for asylum seekers, nor clause 41 on electronic monitoring.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): This is your chance.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yeah. And I’m just wanting to say to the Chair, who’s only recently joined the session, these are very—
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Have been watching since 9 a.m.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: OK. These are very substantive parts. If I may say, there’s been very little repetition, and we’re having, I think, some pretty good dialogue. So I just wanted to say that.
In relation to Subpart 5 on amendments relating to deportation, I do think this is an important issue. I wanted to ask the Minister—really in response to concerns that were raised by a number of submitters at select committee, including the Law Society of New Zealand. Concerns that the change undermines legal certainty and fairness, and it erodes judicial oversight and due process protections. I wanted to ask the Minister whether she’d considered whether this change would undermine the current potential advantage from an early guilty plea that it risks incentivising more defended trials, with flow-on effects on the justice system?
The regulatory impact statement (RIS) notes that there is no data to support this change. I wonder whether or not the Minister can, subsequent to the RIS, offer us any data that supports this change. The RIS also frames the amendment as enhancing public confidence in the immigration system. I wondered whether or not, again, there’s any evidence to support that suggestion. The amendment would, effectively, nullify the deliberately conferred discretion vested in sentencing judges under sections 106 and 107 of the Sentencing Act, which allows judges to consider the broader context, mitigating factors, and the personal consequences of a conviction. In light of all that, did the Minister seek advice from the Ministry of Justice on this matter?
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): There is still the discretion of the judge to discharge without conviction if he so wishes. But, essentially, the process that is being eroded is the process that already exists under Immigration New Zealand—the established process where delegated decision makers and the Immigration and Protection Tribunal have absolute full information about a case of a person who is liable for deportation. That is not the same when you have that situation with a judge and it is circumnavigating another process at Immigration New Zealand where all of the relevant information around someone’s deportation liability is considered. It’s a long-held established process that sits under the delegation of the immigration process. It is being circumnavigated in far greater numbers than it ever has been without that full information. The amendments that have been put forward on this will not be accepted.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Minister, for your response previously. I want to move on to a new clause. I’m looking at clause 32, new section 317AA. I’m specifically looking at new section 317AA(4), which is around threat or risk to public order. I want to refer the Minister to my amendments at 8.40.31, which is to delete this section. So for the definition of threat or risk to public order, delete that says, “failing to comply with this Act.”. Now, the reason I’m bringing this amendment to the Minister’s attention is that I think neither the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) guidelines on the applicable criteria and standards relating to the detention of asylum seekers and the alternatives to detention or Victoria Casey KC’s report on restriction of movement of asylum seekers identified failing to comply with the Act as a factor which justifies detention, because there’s a specific section on that. So both publications say that a short-term detention may be justified where there are threats to national security or security or public safety or there are genuine real risks of absconding. Absconding, I agree, is an important part, but failing to comply with the Act isn’t. So that’s my amendment to the Minister if she would consider removing that particular part.
The next part I want to talk about is actually in her Amendment Paper—so Amendment Paper 445—which has just been tabled yesterday. Part of that is to introduce new clause 40A and new clause 40B. And my tabled amendments to the Minister’s amendments are tabled at 8.40.32 and 8.40.34. Now, the reason I tabled these two is mainly just to note that there is, I guess, potentially a gap or oversight, unless the Minister is able to clarify, that when you are looking at new section 324B(3), which is where you’re making an application for release on condition, for both non-claimant and claimant, what’s missing there is consultation or input from the person through the application process. Because the application, according to new section 324B(2) and new section 324C(2) is an immigration officer may apply. So my two amendments, basically, are addressing the fact that there’s nothing that actually says the person themselves should be involved. So my amendment is just to insert new subsections, which are (3)(bb) to the Minister’s clause 40A, amended section 324B(3)(ba) and clause 40B, amended section 324C(3)(ba), which must include input from the person during an application process, such as why they believe they should be released on condition or whether, for example, they believe certain conditions, such as electronic monitoring, which the previous speaker has spoken about, should not apply to their release. This is a suggestion by the Law Society as well, so it just ensures that natural justice principles are upheld.
I think that is my three amendments that I want to engage with the Minister on at this stage. Thank you.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Yeah, we’ve had two of those—I’m just waiting on the third one. But in terms of 8.40.34, the person will have legal representation so they’ll be able to present the views of the person to the judge. So there’s no reason for that amendment.
You asked in your amendment, amendment 8.40.31, around why we need the part around—you want to remove the bit about failing to comply with the Act. For an example, failing to comply with the Act might be failing to comply with the terms of the RRRA—the residence and reporting requirements agreement. That is very important and that is one of the things that would be failing to comply with the Act, which is why we won’t be accepting that amendment either.
I’m just waiting on 33.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to speak to Subpart 7, the provisions that require immigration officers to obtain a judicial warrant prior to conducting out-of-hours residential compliance visits, otherwise known as dawn raids.
So the purpose of these provisions are to ensure that immigration compliance powers, when they’re exercised outside of normal hours, are reasonable, proportionate, and in the public interest. Labour strongly supports these changes. They arose out of the Heron review that our Government initiated in response to the revelation—around the same time as our Government made the Dawn Raids historic apology, in fact, these visits were still going on. So it signals, as I said earlier, a departure from more punitive models of immigration control and we appreciate that.
I wanted to ask some questions of the Minister about whether or not specific provisions were considered to ensure that out-of-hours visits are a measure of last resort. The bill doesn’t do that, so I wonder what consideration has been given to ensuring that the way that these powers are implemented through procedures and policies and operations will ensure that that is in fact the practice.
I also wanted to refer to some tabled amendments from Vanushi Walters, my colleague, who has moved the following proposed amendments in clause 43 to add the following words in new section 324J(3)(d), if given prior notice, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so.
Hon Erica Stanford: Is there a number on the top of that?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: 10.46.00. So that wording, I believe, would have the effect of ensuring the obligation is on putting it in primary legislation to put the obligation in a much clearer and starker way, that this is to be only carried out when all other avenues have been exhausted.
Also, Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendments 10.46.01, in clause 26, to include a new section that reads “include an assessment of whether the proposed entry and search is compliant with international and domestic standards”. And, third, another amendment by Vanushi Walters, clause 26. The amendment is time stamped 10.46.02. This would insert a new clause that would add disabled persons and pregnant persons, new section 293B(3) and (4), inserted by clause 26—so consider the potential impact of the proposed entry and search on anyone else who may be present in the dwelling or marae, including children, elderly persons, disabled persons, pregnant persons.
So this is really about ensuring that the way that these powers are exercised would be consistent with our human rights obligations, and I hope that everybody in this House is highly sensitive to the history of the Dawn Raids and the importance of these powers being exercised in a way that is sensitive to the legacy of trauma that was from the aftermath of the Dawn Raids. Yeah, I’ll leave that there. Looking forward to the Minister’s response.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): OK, going through those one by one, the first thing the member was asking about was the process and the safeguards in doing an-out-of-hours compliance visit. As the member knows, in this bill the warrant has to be signed off by a judge. The judge needs to make sure that the actions are proportionate, that all other avenues or possibilities have been exhausted, and they do need to take into effect whether or not there are vulnerable people or children or situations in the household. So there are plenty of protections in the issuing of that warrant.
Going through the amendments one by one—time stamped 10.46.00 from Vanushi Walters. The intent of this amendment has already been met through the Government’s Amendment Paper requiring reasonable notice to be given in writing.
The amendment at 10.46.01—the amendment’s not necessary as the domestic standards expressed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act reflect international standards.
And at 10.46.02, and this is around the disabled or vulnerable persons. These are included within the wording “other vulnerable persons” and do not need to be listed separately.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): As long as we are moving along, I’ll call Ricardo Menéndez March.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to speak to my amendment 23.20.07. This is in relationship to clause 42, in relationship to “release on conditions”. I know we’ve started talking a little bit about the provisions on electronic monitoring. I wanted to seek clarification and then, potentially, support for my amendment. Because the way that I see the legislation being written in clause 42 in relationship to release on conditions and, basically, amended section 324F(1)(da) “a condition requiring the person to submit to electronic monitoring”, I wonder whether, for the avoidance of doubt, she would want to make sure that the language specifies that it is an adult? The intent of this is to not have children being subjected to electronic monitoring. So I did want to just ask whether she thinks that the language in clause 42 was adequate to just capture it as “person”, or whether it is her intention to subject under-age people to electronic monitoring, per the provisions in that clause? Clarification around that would be particularly useful.
So if she’s able to both clarify that she does not intend to subject children to electronic monitoring, and, if so, just for the avoidance of doubt, change the language to “the adult” as opposed to “the person” would be really, really useful. I think this is particularly important because we’ve seen that there are other provisions and other clauses that enable immigration officers, for example, to get equipment and therefore there will be those interactions between immigration officials and the people subjected to electronic monitoring. I cannot see a particular benefit of—well, it would be good to understand if the Minister thinks there is, if any, a benefit of having an under-age person being subjected to electronic monitoring, and, if so, what are those? So, again, seeking support for my amendment 23.20.07 and clarification of under-age people subjected to electronic monitoring.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to speak to Subpart 8, which, to my mind, is one of the most important parts of the bill, because it implements the, I think, more or less sort of final stages of the implementation of Victoria Casey’s—Casey KC, as the Minister has been saying—long list of recommendations that she made. I have a particular identification and strong attachment to this work. I was the Associate Minister when the report was done by Amnesty International and the Asylum Support Seekers Trust. With the support of Kris Faafoi, the Minister at the time, we asked Immigration New Zealand to commission Victoria Casey. I will note, for the record, that in discussions with officials, Immigration New Zealand, stoutly defended their track record and said that there was nothing to see here and that Immigration New Zealand’s practise in this area was entirely consistent with New Zealand’s international obligations. Victoria Casey found the opposite to be true. That was an interesting moment.
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): And your question is?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, the question is, really, that Victoria Casey delivered a pretty solid reform agenda. I think there is good cross-party support for all of this implementation. But the Minister, with this bill, hasn’t implemented all of her recommendations. So, in relation to clause 27, irregular arrival is excluded as the sole basis of detention, but the bill doesn’t expressly rule out things like administrative convenience or immigration compliance objectives; why not?
Victoria Casey also recommended, in line with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) guidelines, that detention be reviewed within 48 hours and that maximum time limits be established. The bill retains the four-day initial detention period before judicial oversight; why is that?
Third, why doesn’t the bill prohibit the detention of asylum seekers in corrections facilities? This was one of the strongest recommendations by Victora Casey. The Amnesty International investigation showed how traumatic and dangerous it was for asylum seekers to be locked up in the Mount Eden remand facility. There were many examples of trauma and violence and abuse that asylum seekers were subjected to. Given how the Government set up managed isolation and quarantine facilities during COVID, which could be guarded by security guards in a way that was secure, surely there is no need to retain, as this bill does, prisons as a detention facility of last resort for asylum seekers.
Further, UNHCR told the select committee that child refugees should never be detained for immigration related purposes and that families with children should never be separated from their families in detention. I’ll ask the Minister: why did she not support that advice?
So, in light of all that, I wanted to speak to my tabled amendment to clause 27, which makes a number of proposals. It proposes to insert in amended section 310(1) a new paragraph (f) “any use of the powers of arrest and detention may only be exercised as a last resort, acknowledging that liberty is the default position”.
Hon Erica Stanford: What number? Sorry, Phil.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I’m sorry, I don’t have the timestamp on that particular one.
Next, a new paragraph (g) “the powers of arrest and detention may not be used for purposes not expressly permitted by the Act”. Further, new paragraph (h) “any use of the powers of arrest and detention must receive judicial review within 24 to 48 hours of the initial detention”. That would bring us in line, I believe, with UNHCR guidelines. New paragraph (i) “any continuous detention must be reviewed independently at intervals of no longer than seven days, with the burden of proof on the Crown to justify both initial and continued detention”. New paragraph (j) “no detention is permitted for longer than 28 days, during which time, detained refugees and asylum seekers must be guaranteed the right to information in a language they understand, prompt and confidential access to a lawyer, and to bring judicial proceedings challenging the lawfulness of their detention”. New paragraph (k) “no detention is permitted of a person or persons under the age of 18, nor of families with children, nor any detention that separates parents from children”. Finally, new paragraph (l) “prisons and correctional facilities may not be used for detention purposes”.
Now, I believe the effect of this amendment would be to ensure that this bill fully reflects the recommendations made by Victora Casey KC, and I urge the Minister to give it serious consideration.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would also like to speak on a new part of the bill under Subpart 8 that we haven’t covered yet as well as one of my amendments. That is clause 40 inserting new section 324F(3)(d)—this is on page 31 line 11 of the bill—where it says, “a condition that the released person take a specified action for the purpose of facilitating the person’s deportation or departure from New Zealand:”. The issue that has been raised in this specific clause is while it is comparable or has parallels to the previous paragraph (c), the released person in this case, because it’s about facilitating the person’s deportation, needs to specify that that released person is a non-claimant.
The concern would be it would not be appropriate where a refugee claimant’s claim that has not been finally determined for someone who is, for example, going through—and the deportation departure risks breaching Aotearoa New Zealand’s non-refoulement obligations under the refugee convention. So this particular amendment is just to ensure that we are not going to capture those instances where claimants are also going to be factored into this particular part. So that’s a very small and discrete amendment—sorry, the amendment is 8.40.32.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Thanks, Madam Chair, I really appreciate the opportunity. I just want to seek clarification from the Minister of Immigration, who has already covered this, but in her reply, I would just like to revisit and just quickly go back to clause 25, which amends section 286 in the principal Act, “Powers of entry and search relating to deportation”. The Hon Phil Twyford asked some questions to do with the Dawn Raids, and what I want to get assurance from the Minister on, who replied to the Hon Phil Twyford’s question, is just around the out-of-hours warrant and new section 293B(2), that the application is made to the District Court judge and that it is to take into account, when the judge is doing the warrant and approving it, proportionate and vulnerable protections.
Minister, what I want to ask you is that (a) do the officials, because I appreciate that it’s operational and that you would get reporting from time to time as would expect—do you have officials who give the breakdown of those out of hours warrants? Also, is there any other information that’s provided to you with respect to the fear and the trauma that it leaves with, particularly, New Zealand citizen families? I don’t support that they’re harbouring sometimes, but they’re really complete situations. The reason why I ask for clarity around that, Minister, whether you get some of that other information, is because in electorate offices like mine, it is the family members who are legal citizens who come to the office seeking any other way to help their people, or family members, who have been arrested or removed in out of hours. From time to time, these family members are coming to MPs of different parties and expressing their strong views around that, so I just wanted to request and ask: is any of that official information passed on to you, Minister? Thank you.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): This is a section we’ve been over, but, to repeat myself, any out-of-hours activity needs to be signed off with a judicial warrant, and the judge will have to take into account many factors: is it the last resort, has everything else been discounted, are there vulnerable people in the house, are there any other things that would mean that this was not the appropriate action to take? And those safeguards are baked in.
I just want to go through some of Phil Twyford’s questions. The question was proposing to include provisions guaranteeing the right to information in a language they understand and legal representation. This is already provided for in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have a question around proposed amendment to ban the detention of children. It’s, again, very unlikely this would happen. A judge is unlikely to consider this as proportionate, reasonable, or the least restrictive measurement necessary. So those things are already built in.
More broadly, on amendment 6.20.01, these changes would make substantive changes to the detention regime and require significant working of Part 9 of the Act, and operational changes like purpose-built detention centres would need to be considered, given the member’s requirement that prisons and correctional facilities may not be used for detention purposes. So this is not something that we will be considering.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to speak to my amendment 23.20.03 in relation to clause 26. Apologies, sorry, it’s 23.20.04—my bad, they were just next to each other. So this is in relation to also clause 26, though. The question I had for the Minister was, we’ve talked about the Heron KC report throughout the questions, and it’s been mentioned in the answers. But one of the recommendations there and one of the options that was given was to limit out-of-hours immigration rates to situations involving public safety or matters of national security.
So can I ask the Minister, why not just follow that recommendation, and rather than leaving it at the discretion of basically a judge, just make it extremely clear that we’re narrowing it down to two specific criteria as to then prevent loading the judiciary with additional work to be able to determine as to when out-of-hours visits are appropriate or otherwise? And to just then create two very specific situations noted by the Heron KC report.
I also note this because what we’ve noted throughout the debate in terms of the role of the judiciary when it comes to decision making of the different provisions of the bill, is that there seems to be a bit of a contradiction—not contradiction, but I guess a different application of how the Minister chooses to trust the judgment of a judge—for example, when it comes to liability of deportations where that’s being passed on to Immigration New Zealand. But it seems like she is quite happy to then leave that to a judge when it comes to out-of-hours visits. I think in some ways by being able to restrict the two criteria to just public safety and matters of national security, I think we could just better strengthen the rights of people who could be subjected to out-of-hours visits and genuinely honour these recommendations and the apology that happened in relation to the Dawn Raids.
One of the other areas that I wanted to go back to is to more this—and in one of her contributions and I did appreciate her engagement around the definition of security. During the debate, I went back to the principal Act and noted that the way that security is defined is not just to, you know, provisions of terrorism that she noted; it also includes provisions around affecting our reputation, for example, which is actually quite broad. So I think, you know, it’s a little red herring, maybe, or just a very extreme example to just point out to the terrorism components of the definition of security but not recognise that, actually, we have quite a broad definition when it comes to reputation. How does the Minister see the definition of reputation impacting the ability for the Minister to, effectively, make someone liable for deportation should they—sorry to strip someone’s residency and put them on a temporary visa, should they be deemed as a risk to our reputation? Because I know she used the example of terrorism. But like, I think we’ve got to be like intellectually honest with ourselves. And I’m not, sorry, accusing the Minister of otherwise, but it’s just like, let’s be clear about what actually the definition of security is.
So the questions were simply just: would she support my amendment to narrow the scope that out-of-hours visits can happen? And can she please clarify how she would apply the provisions in the principal Act on security when it comes to reputation for the purposes of stripping someone’s residency away should they be deemed a threat to our security, not just the most extreme examples when it comes to terrorism? I would appreciate the engagement and particularly her commitment to the options given in the Heron KC report.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Dealing with those two in reverse order, the definition of “national security” is not in scope of this bill; it is a previously determined definition and we won’t be entertaining any changes, as it’s not in scope.
Look, in terms of the tabled amendment 23.20.03, in the name of the member, essentially, this is deleting—
Ricardo Menéndez March: I meant 04, sorry—04—23.20.04.
Hon ERICA STANFORD: OK. Well, let’s deal with them both, since we’re here. Because 23.20.03, essentially, is deleting clause 26, which is just removing the ability to do an out-of-hours compliance visit, and of course we will not be supporting this. It is really important that there is an option of absolute last resort that has plenty of safeguards and guardrails around it in terms of the fact that we need to go to the judge to get a judicial warrant in order to undertake this activity. As I’ve already mentioned on two or three occasions now, all those safeguards exist there. But the point is that there are always people who use this as a loophole because they know that if they are in a certain place at a certain time, compliance activity can not be undertaken, and it makes it very, very difficult for Immigration New Zealand to make sure that people are abiding by the terms of their visa and, if it is time for them to leave the country, that we are able to undertake that activity. But, as already mentioned, we have looked at the recommendations of the Casey report and made sure that we’ve put all those safeguards in place.
Just also, while I’m here, it reminded me of a question that Phil Twyford asked earlier about the recommendations of the Casey review. I think there’s only one more that we need to put in place, and that’s coming in the next bill that we’ll be introducing. I’ll get to 23.20.04 in a second.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): I move, That debate on this question now close.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’ve been watching for the last hour, and I was here for the hour before this, and I’ve just observed that the spokesperson for Labour has a couple more burning questions. But I’m indicating that now—and the Minister has been very engaging—so, the Hon Phil Twyford, I’ll take a couple of questions from you. Thank you.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Chair. We haven’t yet dealt with electronic monitoring, clause 42; or clause 47, charging of premiums—two very important parts of the bill. But I wanted to speak to my amendments around clause 32. Now, this is important. We’ve dealt with a similar issue in principle, but not in relation to clause 32. It’s really about the precise wording that would justify, in this instance, detention of an asylum seeker. So clause 32 inserts new section 317AA, which sets out the options available to a District Court judge when considering an application for a warrant of commitment. The Law Society at select committee expressed concerns about the phrase “threat or risk to public order” in new section 317AA(4)(a). So this is the core of the justification for a warrant of commitment.
Now, neither the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees guidelines nor the Casey report identify failing to comply with the Immigration Act as a factor which justifies detention. Both of them say—both the guidelines and the Casey report—that short-term detention may be justified where there are threats to national security or public safety or genuine and real risks of absconding. I agree with the Law Society on this case that detention outside of those limited circumstances is not justified. So my amendment to clause 32 in new section 317AA(2)(b) “after the word ‘risk’, insert ‘of absconding’ ”. Because, at the moment, risk, just on its own, is extremely broad. Risk of what? So I think it would be better if we insert the words “of absconding” after the word “risk”. Also, in the second tabled amendment to clause 32, new section 317AA(2)(b). So in subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) of new section 317AA, let’s tighten up “risk” by inserting the words “of absconding”.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): We’ve dealt with this one before. This is not the first time that this has come up—the deletion of this, that they have to comply with the Act. I already made this point that not complying with the Act might be something like not abiding by your RRRA—residence and reporting requirements—or something like you were not where you were supposed to be and you weren’t reporting in, for example; or something that might be against the Act will be failure to turn up to an interview. So there are a number of things that are really important around retaining that part that Mr Twyford wants to get rid of in that amendment. But I’ve dealt with that before in someone else’s; that’s not the first time that’s come up.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 445 amending new clause 40A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 445 amending new clause 40B be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ingrid Leary’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 445 deleting new clauses 40A and 40B be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 445 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to the amendments be agreed to.
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 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Amendments to the amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1), amending the definition of “first available craft” to insert “or after a representative of the person being notified”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kangi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1), amending the definition of “first available craft” to insert “unless in exceptional circumstances”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4, Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1), amending the definition of “first available craft” to insert “and section 166”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1), amending the definition of “first available craft”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1), amending the definition of “irregular entry into New Zealand” to insert “willingly”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 4(1) inserting new paragraph (c) is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.
The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to delete clause 5(2) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 50(4D), inserting new paragraph (aa), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 50(4D)(b), inserting new subparagraph (iii), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 50(4D)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 50(4E)(b), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 50(4E)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, section 50, inserting new subsection (4F) relating to ministerial discretion, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 7, section 50, inserting new subsection (4F) to review the effectiveness of a special direction, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52(4A), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52(4D), to insert new paragraph (aa), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52(4E)(b), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52(4E)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52, inserting new subsection (4F) relating to ministerial discretion, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 8, new section 52, inserting new subsection (4F) to review the effectiveness of a special direction, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53(4A)(a), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53(4B), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53(4D), inserting new paragraph (aa), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53(4E)(b), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53(4E)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53, inserting new subsection (4F) relating to ministerial discretion, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 9, new section 53, inserting new subsection (4F) to review the effectiveness of a special direction, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 10, new section 57(6), inserting new paragraph (aa), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 10, new section 57(7)(b), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 10, new section 57(7)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 54
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 10, new section 57, inserting new subsection (8) relating to ministerial discretion, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 10, new section 57, inserting new subsection (8) to review the effectiveness of a special direction, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 11, new section 61B(3), inserting new paragraph (e) relating to the Genocide Convention, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 11, new section 61(3), inserting new paragraph (e) relating to Human Rights or humanitarian issues, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendments deleting clauses 12 to 14 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 13, replacing section 75A(1), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment deleting Subpart 5 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 18, deleting subclauses (1AA) and (1), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment deleting clause 26 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment to clause 26, new section 293B(3), amending paragraph (e) and inserting new paragraph (f), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 26, new section 293B(3)(c), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 26, inserting paragraph (f) into new section 293B(3), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 27, inserting new subclauses (3) to (10), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 32, new section 317AA(2)(b)(i)(A), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 32, new section 317AA(2)(b)(i)(B), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 32, new section 317AA(4), deleting paragraph (b) of the definition of “threat or risk to public order”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 40, new section 324F, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment deleting clauses 42 and 43 is ruled out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment deleting clauses 52 and 54, and subclause (4) of clause 36, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment to clause 42(1), inserting “no more than 1 month” in new paragraph (da) of section 324F, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment to clause 42(1), inserting “, if an adult” in new paragraph (da) of section 324F, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
: The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s amendment to clause 42(1), new paragraphs (db) and (dc), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor)
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’s tabled amendment to clause 43, new section 324J(3)(d), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 47, new section 351A(1), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 48, to insert new subsection (8), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 1 as amended agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments relating to fiscal sustainability
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to Part 2, the debate on clauses 55 and 56, which are amendments relating to fiscal sustainability. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. To start with, Part 2 is equally important to Part 1 because it’s actually half of the title of this bill, which is “fiscal sustainability”.
My first question to the Minister of Immigration is regarding the advice, in a broader picture, from the Regulations Review Committee, particularly when it comes to the levy-setting component of this. Now, as you know, in terms of how we look at levies and the difference between levies, fees, and tax, there are very specific criteria. Broadly speaking, considering some of the things that are going to be touched on in this bill, I wondered if the Minister would consider my amendment, which doesn’t actually change much but simply calls this section for what it is—that it’s not actually a levy, but a bill.
Hon Erica Stanford: What number?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Ah, yes—very good question, thank you Minister. It is 8.40.35.
The reason I want to raise it as a broader thing—and then we can get into the details of it—is that levies are usually used specifically for the operations of a particular agency in order for them to ensure that there are checks and balances and all ends meet. What we are seeing in this section, and I want to draw attention—and other people will be able to speak to some of the specifics, but, for example, I want to draw the committee’s attention to new paragraph 399AB(2)(a), which is for “the operation of, the public health and education systems”.
The other reason I’m asking the Minister’s support on this clarification between a levy and a tax is that levies are usually also within the general responsibility of the Minister in charge, which usually extends to a particular agency, but not so much in terms of what is being asked here. The Minister, for example, as far as I’m aware, and the Minister may correct us—the Minister of Immigration, who oversees the levy and the immigration levy and Immigration New Zealand, is not the Minister who is in charge of the “infrastructure required for, or operation of, the public health and education systems”. It’s a technical aspect. It’s based on a definition, but it’s a very important definition in the general process, and this is something that if you seek advice from the Controller and Auditor-General, you will find similar advice between levy, fee, and tax.
So the first thing I want to ask the Minister is whether the Minister will support my amendment to change “immigration levies” to “immigration taxes”.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Chair. I know my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford will have some questions regarding what this levy does specifically. We do support it, in terms of sharing the burden, but my very different question is: what is not in Part 2, relating to the levy, based on the amendment that the Minister dropped today? Because while we accept the changes around electronic monitoring, there are going to be additional costs to the immigration system, and as Lawrence Xu-Nan has said, levies, by definition, have to relate specifically to the purpose that they are created for. It’s very clear in this bill that they are to fund education and health and to operationalise those. That’s very explicit, and it seems like this is quite a separate kind of immigration matter to what we’ve previously been speaking about. Yet we have had changes now—good changes—made to the system regarding mass arrivals, where electronic monitoring, which is a fairly cost-effective way of dealing with people, will be limited. But we haven’t heard anything from the Minister about what the risk mitigation will be for that, and what the funding arrangements will be.
When we’re looking at the costings, the question I have for the Minister is whether she has conducted a cost-benefit impact assessment on the changes, including costs to immigration, now that she has tabled that amendment? Because that’s something that we have not had time to consider, and it wouldn’t have been at select committee—that’s particularly with the restrictions to electronic monitoring, and considering, also, the additional costs to policing and other things that are going to happen as a result. They are very broad. They are definitely not the subject of what we would expect a levy for. But my question is: if we’re going to look at the totality of the immigration system with these changes, is this the right vehicle? Should there be something in this bill, which includes mass arrivals, to indicate how the Minister is planning to pay for the fiscals on that and, also, the affordability and the sources of revenue for the alternative methodologies, now that we know that electronic monitoring won’t be available?
Just for those who are watching at home, we know that levies need to be certain, they need to be simple, they need to be neutral, and they need to be flexible. Certainly, we can see that, and I know that my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford will have some questions around how they apply to the employment situation. But my broader question, if you like, is: what is missing from this? Because the part itself does say “Amendments relating to fiscal sustainability”, and I read that as meaning fiscal sustainability of the whole system. How are we going to pay for the mass-arrivals changes previously, if not by a levy? Are we going to apply the tyranny of silos and put policing and other costs elsewhere, or is there going to be a proper costing done that looks at the totality? Then how are we going to pay for those additional measures?
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): The member Ingrid Leary kind of answered her own question in her speech. Essentially, as she rightly points out, we are broadening the levy base in immigration, because, at the moment, we only are able to levy the people who are applying for a visa. We are unable to apply levies to employers, for example, who are other people who get direct benefits from the immigration system but who aren’t contributing towards it. So this is exactly what this part does. It broadens it out so that if things like the mass arrivals or the electronic monitoring or any other running of the immigration system which is a defined cost and is set out is able to be contributed to by a much broader base of people and not just the migrants themselves. That’s in answer to that question.
And responding to Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, the levy sets out a finite set of purposes that the levy can be charged for to specific groups. This makes it not aligned with a tax, which is very broad. The provision is carefully drafted so that it is not a broad tax but a very clear levy set out for a finite set of purposes.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much, Mr Chair. I do have an amendment 23.20.09. This is in relationship to tightening what these levies can be used for so that it is only for the immigration system, and I wanted to understand if the Minister would be in support of it. I had some questions in relationship to clause 56, new section 399AB on page 40 and on subsection (2)(a), which is the intent of the wording in relationship to this. And to note that we don’t support this, but at least it’s good that the Minister has clarified that it’s public health and education systems—so “public”. But the language around infrastructure does not specify that it’s public infrastructure, right? So can I just get the clarification of the intent—whether the Minister could foresee these levies being used to fund public-private partnerships, for example, and to contribute to the costs of those. That is important because, effectively, by not clarifying the types of infrastructure more broadly, it leaves a bit of a lack of clarity in the language of it. I’m just concerned around the scope of just kind of keeping it so broad when it comes to the language of infrastructure. So clarification around that would be useful.
The other question I had was, in clause 56, new section 399AB(2)(a)(i) in relationship to that, which is in the specification of funding specialist teachers, school property, teacher training, or learning support. This makes an assumption that all migrants use the education system, but can I just ask whether, for example, if you’ve got a single adult coming here who may not be coming on a student visa, may just be choosing to work, may not be pursuing education at any point in their life, as to whether they should also be required to pay a levy to contribute to the education system? Or is it only the intent to then target specific visa holders that may be deemed to be using the education system more broadly?
So I would also be keen—my third question is in relationship to clause 56, new section 399AB(2)(b) in relationship to employers. Now, what work has the Minister done or sought reassurances from industry bodies of employers that there may not be a level of, I guess, lowering of wage growth as a result of the provisions in here? Because I’ve seen that the Minister has obviously tweaked around some of the wage requirements for visa holders coming here and not all, actually, visa holders have conditions on their visa that require them to be in jobs that they earn a specific amount of wage. Now, what reassurances can the Minister give us that employers may not use these provisions on clause 56, new section 399AB(2)(b) and as a result of them contributing levies to justify paying lower wages to migrant workers and, therefore, suppressing wages for migrant workers and locals more broadly as a result of those additional costs? If she’s able to provide us some reassurances from industry bodies that this will not happen, that will be useful.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): It is a requirement that employers are paying a wage that is commiserate with industry standards for the skill of the person who is being employed—our immigration officers are always checking that. I would also note that we’ve just had a fee review, where we’ve raised fees and have not seen any evidence of the fact that employers are reducing wages to somehow make up for a small fee increase. But built into the immigration system is that when we are looking at an application for someone coming into the country who is, for example, going to be a painter and has a certain amount of experience and skill, we are always looking to make sure that they are being paid at a rate that is commiserate with their skill and experience. So there is something built into the system there, but we’ve not seen any evidence, when we’ve done our fee reviews recently, of an increasing fees to employers of, for example, job checks—or when we’re asking employers to be accredited, we’ve not seen any evidence, or I’ve not been provided with any evidence, that wages have gone down as a result of that.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think it’s fair to say that Labour was intrigued by these provisions, and we remain so—somewhat agnostic about them but willing to go along, really in support of the principle that is if costs can be spread more fairly, then all to the better.
I wanted to just ask for the Minister of Immigration’s response to a number of submitters—I remember the Employers and Manufacturers Association particularly—pointing out that the kinds of levies that one would anticipate from these provisions would very likely create the perception of double dipping by the Government—seeking cost recovery through these new levies for things that are fully funded by tax revenue, including the taxes paid by existing migrants, without necessarily any expansion of services.
They also asked, I remember—well, they expressed the view that they would feel penalised for going to the cost and bother of recruiting someone on a temporary work visa from overseas, because the education system that is funded by our taxes here in New Zealand is not producing the kind of skilled workers that they need.
So I ask the Minister to respond to that. I think the implication of that question or that concern was that these levies, if not implemented in the right way, could really negatively affect the social licence and public support for the immigration programme.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Dealing with those two things: look, there are considerable costs that are worn by the system that are potentially not accounted for. Remember, setting up the ability to have additional levies on different people, like employers, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be done, and it means there will have to be a process of a fee and levy review in regulations.
I want to make the point that there are significant costs that fall on our system. If you think about education—I’m putting my other hat on for a moment—we have significant costs, for example, in learning support for migrants who have children who have additional learning support needs. The amount of tax payable in, say, the three to five years that the person is here and potentially using services like teacher aides or speech language therapists or educational psychologists and the like is something that we want to be able to consider accounting for in levies. These clauses are just giving us the ability to be able to consider that.
I think Mr Twyford probably answered his own question in the second part when he talked about the fact that the education system was potentially not providing the skilled workers that these employers were asking for. Part of this bill is actually saying that we would like to be able to set or pay for, or have employers levied to directly pay for, the upskilling of Kiwis into roles so that they don’t have to employ migrants from overseas. Currently, they are enjoying the benefit of the skilled person from overseas, and the question here is whether or not we should be levying to make sure that we are able to fund education services to upskill New Zealanders into those roles.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to continue. So I want to be getting into some of the specific clauses of Part 2. I want to start with replacement section 399(1), inserted by clause 55, and specifically around replacement section 399(1)(c), “education providers that are signatory providers within the meaning of section 10”.
Now, I want to check with the Minister of Immigration in terms of a couple of things. Number one, what is the revenue that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is currently getting from the export education levy (EEL) already? Because, as the Minister would know, under the relevant regulations, those who are registered are already being charged 0.8 percent of the levy for a tuition fee for a student and those who are unregistered are being charged at 0.5 percent. I used to work at an international school where I had to pay export education levies every year all the time. Under this new requirement, in terms of the immigration levy, would then institutes who accept international students be double levied, so the new immigration levy plus the EEL? That’s my first question on that. I think that’s an important clarification, particularly for schools that accept international students and private training establishments that accept international students, as well as tertiary institutes.
In terms of the other thing that the Minister has said, and one of the things that we are noticing as well is schools—and the Minister may have an idea as well that schools often do bring in international students in order to supplement their operational fund and be able to do more things for the schools and for all of their students. If they’re being levied and then the levy is being used as part of the education system, would the school have any guarantee that some of the levies that are put towards it will also come back to them, or will it be something that is more evenly distributed to other ones?
My third question to the Minister is around what the Minister said before in terms of how you’re going to have people here who potentially are on a work visa with children who have additional needs who may be using learning access or a variety of forms of learning access. But I just want to check with the Minister, surely if you’re here and you’re working, you’re paying taxes anyway, and people who are paying taxes as PAYE are already contributing towards the kind of core facilities and infrastructure that a taxpaying person would be eligible for. Therefore, their child, regardless of whether they have paid an additional levy or not, should be able to access the same thing as anyone else who pays the same amount of tax. Because it’s not like people who are on a work visa are paying lower tax than people who are permanent residents, etc.
So I just want to check what the Minister means when the Minister has just referred to those additional things, or if the Minister can give examples of people who are here who are not paying taxes that contribute towards the public health and education systems.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much, Mr Chair. So I just wanted to move on to subsection (6) within clause 56, new section 399AB. This is the one that allows the Minister to, by special direction, “(a) exempt any person or class of persons from the obligation to pay all or part of the levy; or (b) refund all or part of a levy paid.” Now, can the Minister please reassure us that her intention is not to include applicants of the migrant exploitation protection visa when it comes to this levy or people who are applying for the family violence visa as well as part of this levy?
Now, there are some visas that people have to access as a result of, well, tragedy and hardship that people experience. I think the powers that this levy grants the Minister are pretty broad. I don’t remember her giving us explicit clarification and reassurances that for some of those visas that are for people who are finding themselves in particularly vulnerable situations that they will be exempt from having to contribute to those. Because I noted that this is a line that could allow the Minister to, basically, exempt people—part of these powers. I think it would be good for the Minister right now to give us that reassurance in relationship to the powers that the Minister is given.
Now, one of the subsequent questions, following up on my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, is also, as part of the signing of this part, whether she sought advice to allow her to have a picture as to whether migrants in the medium term’s contributions through tax towards education and health are greater than the resources they utilise. I have seen some documents showing that migrants are actually net contributors to the tax base due to the fact that they can’t access things like welfare and things like other public services while they are working. So the reason why I ask this is that it is concerning to be building this narrative that somehow migrants, compared to the general population, utilise or extract more resources from the public system, as opposed to what we have seen in some papers in relationship to migrants actually contributing to a greater degree to the tax base than they take as a result of the utilisation of public services. Because, then, to me, that puts into question the justification and this narrative that we have heard that somehow migrants need to contribute an additional level of resourcing for these systems.
So whether she sought any advice or analysis on the kind of contribution versus intake of public services from migrants. And the second question which I referred to earlier is: which groups of visas has she already pre-emptively chosen to exclude? For example, migrant exploitation protection visa or people who are experiencing family violence.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): Just running through that, currently exempt from levies are people who are applying for domestic violence visas, refugees, and migrant exploitation visas. These exemptions already exist currently for levies. As we work through the fee and levy review and go through the regulations, then further exemptions would be considered at that time, and that’s what the bill sets up the ability to do.
I just want to make it really clear that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment doesn’t receive any of the export education levy, it is for a completely different purpose under a different Act, and is, as I think the member knows, for quite a different, separate purpose, not for helping to contribute to the costs and broadening the base—contributing to the costs of running the immigration system.
The second part of this, the levy that we are considering and putting the vehicle into this bill, if we were to levy for different purposes outside of what we do now—like health or education, for example—a levy must fund specific purposes, like specialist teachers, teacher training, or learning support, for example. Just to the previous member’s point, we already, under the Immigration Act and under the levy, have the ability to levy for things like English as a second language funding, so we already do that because we acknowledge that it is a direct cost mostly borne out by migrants. But what we’re acknowledging in this bill is that there are more costs that should be directly payable, to a proportion, through a levy by migrants. That is because they are here for a shorter period of time, and as I’ve already mentioned, they must be for specific purposes that are directly linked to those people. That’s why it’s very clearly set out that there has to be a relationship there.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Chair, and really appreciating the Minister of Immigration’s engagement with these quite important questions. I have to put it on the record that I was approached by the international students at Otago University about a year and a half ago, who are really concerned at the jump in fees for them to be able to study at Otago. So while we cautiously support this idea of spreading the fee load, I’m concerned that we might end up with a two-tier system where we have employers who are able to afford and support students, or if students are in a particularly advantaged situation because it is clear that somehow their fees will be more affordable, whereas other students will not be able to do that. So just seeking an assurance, really, that we’re not going to be creating subclasses of migrants who are really feeling the pinch from these fees and levies.
Well, they’re levies and they pay university fees, but I do take the Minister’s point that there are costs involved with manaaki-ing and people into New Zealand. The Minister herself brought into the debate and talked about the fact that the wider costings borne by the immigration system are not captured within this. We do have the wording in Part 2, “fiscal sustainability”. What we haven’t seen or heard from the Minister is what the fiscals are for the new mass arrivals regime. I am sure, given the duration of time that this has been considered across Parliament, including by Ministers under the previous Labour Government, that setting up what a mass arrivals scheme would look like and the impact of that on immigration, on airport operational capacity, on the cultural training and safety that might be needed for enforcement officers, for the ability to use information and data to track the 24-hour time frame to see whether there is something that qualifies as a mass arrival. Then also there are processes needed to be able to efficiently deal with people if there were, I think, 30-something people coming in at one time.
There must be costings on that, and I’d really like to know from the Minister, since she did raise herself that this is a broader systems cost that is not contained in the levy—it would be good to know what the cost to the taxpayer is. I really appreciate the fact that it’s not going to be pushed into this levy and that we’re not suddenly seeing an expansion of powers that extend it from operationalising health and education and then going to mass arrivals. But she has talked about broadening it further. We don’t really know what that broadening means. The Minister has talked about particular educational things that might be included, but there must be some specificity, I think. I know the Minister draws on education because she has that portfolio and knowledge, and also immigration, but I’m really curious to know—and for the Hansard—what does she foresee as the benefit of broadening those powers?
Then, secondly, where are the fiscals, or can she share with this committee the costs of the mass arrivals? I’m assuming that the cost of doing this well is going to be, ultimately, a huge cost savings for taxpayers. But I will remind you that the Minister did mention that herself, and that’s why I’m asking, because under Part 2, when we’re talking about sustainability, we’ve got this wedged into two very different parts of an immigration question. We want to take a systems approach and it would be good to understand the fiscals for both of them.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): It’s a very nice try from the member, but she raised mass arrivals, not me. I’ve made the broad point that in order to run the immigration system we need to levy. There will be costs that fall. In the fee and levy review and in regulations that we set, those will be taken into account. It’s actually irrelevant to Part 2.
Also, if the member wants to know the direct benefits of the proposed levy, I suggest she looks at clause 56 inserting new section 399AB “Extended immigration levy”, because it’s laid out in subsection (2) quite clearly.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): I move, That debate on this question now close.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I had a question in relationship to the provisions in new section399AC, inserted by clause 56, which we haven’t touched on yet. This is in relationship to: “Before recommending the making of regulations for the purposes of section 399AB, the Minister must consult any persons and organisations the Minister considers appropriate,”. Now, I understand that obviously this is left broad enough for any Minister of any Government to do this consultation, but has the Minister already set out, or sought advice on, who she foresees will be the organisations and the people that she intends to consult with? Would she be able to give some clarity on, and put on the record, the range of bodies that she will look to consult—for example, will unions be part of that; which industry bodies will she be prioritising; and when it comes to persons, is it going to be sort of like immigration lawyers, experts, etc.? I think some clarity over that would be useful.
I think, particularly, in the context of the public trust being tested, in relationship to who Governments choose to consult with in relationship to policy design, it would be good to put it on the record. If she hasn’t done any work in relationship to the provisions of new section 399AC or hasn’t lined up any organisations or people, I can accept that, and it would be good to have that clarified as well.
I wanted to ask whether—or why—there aren’t any, by the looks of it, reporting requirements—and I know that we could potentially get them through Official Information Act request—but who she is consulting with and, kind of, a bit of an explanation as to why she may have included some organisations and bodies compared to others. I’m just keen to also get the Minister’s clarification on this.
I wanted to follow up on the previous engagement, and I thank the Minister around her engagement on the exclusion of some of the visa categories that are specifically for vulnerable people. She did not necessarily give a commitment that some of these visas would be excluded; it’s just something that would be looked into—which takes me to my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment 8.40.36, which specifies victims of family violence resident visa, refugee family support resident visa, dependent child resident visa, trafficking victim resident visa, and any other refugee, vulnerable person, or protective person visa categories.
Now, I know that the Minister already talked about the interaction with some of the other regulation-making powers that exist in the current legislation that we have. But without giving us an explicit reassurance that some of these visas will be excluded right now, it’s hard for us to have faith that some of these won’t be captured. We’re happy to rescind that amendment if the Minister is able to give us that reassurance that those visas won’t be captured, as opposed to just letting us know that she’ll look at it at some point. Because I don’t think that gives certainty to people who often are in extremely precarious situations that they may not be burdened by additional costs.
I particularly raise this because for people on the migrant exploitation protection work visa, even just the cost of applying for those visas can be a bit of a barrier, and additional costs, through this levy, could end up becoming a disincentive for people to report exploitation, if they know that they could be burdened with additional costs.
Finally, my other question is in relationship to how the Minister would foresee decisions on how the funding that is acquired through the levy would be distributed between infrastructure, public health, and education? Particularly, I wanted to seek guidance and clarification from the Minister as to whether she would see the distribution of those funds between those three entities that are noted as part of a budget process, or whether she’s got any sort of clarification as to how she foresees those three bodies that are being named, in terms of decision making, when it comes to the distribution of those three. I would appreciate the Minister’s engagement. But, particularly, the one I care the most about is the one on new section 399AC, which we haven’t touched on.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): I move, That debate on this question now close.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just a very question from me and it’s a new point which is really around section 399AC, in clause 56, where we can see in subsection (2), “At intervals of no more than 5 years following the commencement of this section, the Department must review the amount and method of calculation of any extended immigration levy.”
I’m keen to understand why it’s five years. I know that’s quite an ordinary drafting time frame, but it’s a pretty fluid situation at the moment with the cost of living. We have seen big rises in immigration fees, a I mentioned, for international students who are really concerned.
Would it be fairer to reduce that amount and make it annual or perhaps every two years, especially taking into account the impact of the levy on those who are applying for visas? We don’t see any weighting in the way the bill is currently drafted that really prioritises them, and therefore there is a real risk that in terms of these levies, along with the increasing cost of living, the rules just roll over and they’re not fit for purpose for the context.
Would it be useful for the Minister to consider a shorter time frame? Did she actually consider other time frames or was this just put into the bill because it happens to reflect something that already existed in the previous bill?
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): In relation to that last part, it’s not in scope of the bill, so it wasn’t something that we considered.
Can I just answer the questions relating to the previous speaker. Firstly, in terms of what the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and spends in terms of those levies, it will be reported on exactly what is collected and then how the money is distributed. So there is accountability in the system. I just will make the point that the migrant exploitation visa is free. There are no costs for it. So while the member is concerned that it might increase by a certain percentage, it’s a free visa. But I’ve already made the point that any extensions to the levy base will be considered through regulations and the fee and levy review. But all of those things are currently exempted.
Now, in terms of clause 56, new section 399AC that the member talked about, essentially, the people who we are going to consult, as you would expect, are the people who are affected. It will be made public by Immigration New Zealand, who has been consulted with.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I actually have a really short question. And if the Minister of Immigration will just nod, that is sufficient for me. Thank you for the Minister for responding to the question around export education levies, but one of the things we didn’t hear from the Minister is: does that mean that education providers will be double levied—one for education export levy and one for this? That’s all.
Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Immigration): They’re two completely different levies. One is in a completely different Act and is for a completely different purpose. It is, essentially, an insurance scheme for when an education provider falls over. To protect our reputation, we pay back the fees of the impacted students. It is a completely separate thing in a completely different Act. The member shouldn’t conflate the two. This is a completely different proposal to broaden the levy base to people who are benefiting from the immigration system, like export education providers, and like employers who currently might pay a fee, like an employer, but do not pay a levy.
Now, if we want to broaden this and have a more fair system, and in answer to previous question maybe reduce the levies that we currently levy on migrants, then we need to have a broader base. It is fair and reasonable to expect that people who are benefiting from the immigration system should be equally charged a levy so that they can, essentially, pay for the benefits that they are currently getting but are not contributing towards.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment deleting clause 55 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 55 and 56 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 56, new section 399AA, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendments to clause 56, amending the heading and deleting new section 399AB and 399AC, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s tabled amendment to clause 56, new section 399AB(2)(a), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 56, new section 399AB, inserting new subsection (4A), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 56, new section 399AB(8), inserting new paragraphs (c) and (d), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the Hon Phil Twyford’s tabled amendment to clause 56, new section 399AB, to insert new subsection (10), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11 New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 2 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the lunch break. The committee will resume at 2 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 12.57 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Part 2A Amendment relating to repeals, transitional provisions, saving provisions, and related matters
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the committee is resumed on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. When we were last debating the bill before the lunch break, we had just concluded the debate on Part 2. We now come to Part 2A. Part 2A is the debate on clause 56A: “Amendment relating to repeals, transitional provisions, saving provisions, and related matters”. The question is that Part 2A stand part.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. As you have rightly said, this is around amending the deportation liability of residence class visa holders and it amends section 431 of the principal Act. It is really good to see that care has been taken to cross-reference and make sure that where there has been an imposing of conditions and limiting of rights, that the Minister and officials have taken care to ensure that there are, equally, the exemptions that correspond.
So if we go to the principal Act, section 431 talks about the deportation liability of residence class visa holders convicted of a criminal offence. In subsections 431(1)(a), (b), and (c), it has various carve-outs for people who would be exempt under that principal Act. And what we see from the original amendment—not the amendment of the amendment that was dropped today—is that suddenly we have got people who have been found guilty captured by some of those provisions.
So what this quite rightly does is it includes ensuring that those who are found guilty are also able to access those exemptions. I guess the question is why go to all that trouble to unpick something when it would have been easier just to not add “found guilty” into the original deportation provisions. We haven’t asked or heard from the Minister whether she has received Ministry of Justice advice on the rights and impacts of that, and those provisions are in replacement sections 156, 158, 161, and 18C, so I would like to know why we have got this convoluted kind of carve-out rather than not simply extending them in the first place. Did the Minister receive advice about that?
Also, if we think about proportionality, which has been impacted here, and particularly when we’re talking about people who are guilty, there are people who are convicted for things overseas, for very petty things including political things where they could be found guilty overseas, and now they are able to access this exemption but they’re still captured by the extension of guilt to the conviction list in the original Act. I know that’s a bit confusing, but it is a very convoluted process and we haven’t heard the advice that the Minister received on why those powers have been extended. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to not have to do this and we would do away with clause 2A and simply not have that extension?
On that basis, my colleague Vanushi Walters actually does have a tabled amendment. She is much more across the legalities of this than me and I would really like her to have the opportunity to speak to that.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought I would rise and speak to my amendment filed at 12.05, which reads, “In Part 2A, clause 56A, insert in section 431, in the heading to section 431, the words “unless subject to a discharge without conviction” after the words “or guilty”. As my colleague Ingrid Leary has said, this responds to that concern that was raised by the Law Society in their submission, where they pointed out that the automatic triggering of deportation liability in such cases would really place, or could really place, a person in jeopardy of severe immigration consequences, even where the courts have themselves determined that—applying a proportionality test in section 107 of the Sentencing Act, which is a test that can and should be applied because we expect judges to be turning their minds to the specific consequences of the case—the consequences of a conviction would be out of proportion to the gravity of the offending. So this isn’t something that’s used all the time by judges, but, certainly, as the decision makers closest to the individual concerned and the context of the issues, the concept is there, it’s a familiar one in law, that the judge can determine whether the circumstances are such that a discharge should be granted.
I think the flip side of that, as well, is that judges will be aware of this legislation coming through the pipeline, so you can imagine that a discharge wouldn’t be granted if it wasn’t in the interest to do so or if there were security risks in place. So, just once again, I’m really urging the Minister of Immigration to consider whether that is an aspect of this bill that can be changed. Ideally, my sense is we wouldn’t just be doing it in this part, of course, we would be doing it in both the substantive heading as well as the substantive provision. However, this is an opportunity to fix what seems to me to clearly be an issue, and an issue that sits starkly against judicial powers to assess situations and determine whether liability should attach, whether convictions should attach, or not.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following on from the previous two speakers, I want to focus on the fact that this one says “convicted” and “or guilty”. But, again, I’m going to mention a reference, a previous section, but not actually talk about the previous section, which is that in a previous section we specifically talked about two types of being guilty: being found guilty and being pleaded guilty. But over here, the title is, rather than saying, like the previous section, “convicted”, “found guilty”, or “pleaded guilty”, it is just “convicted”, “or guilty”.
I want to check with the Minister of Immigration that in this case the inserted words “or guilty” covers both types—“found” and also “pleaded”. If it does cover both types—for example, not just simply those who are found guilty—I wondered if the Minister could in advice or advise the committee on when you’re looking at deportation or deportation liabilities, has there been any work that’s been done looking at how this would potentially affect people’s intention to plead guilty in the first place, because whether they are pleading guilty or found guilty or don’t have a conviction, is acquitted, or is convicted, the outcome is all going to be the same to them in terms of deportation liability of resident visa class.
So I just want to check those two questions with the Minister—if guilty covers both types and whether there’s any sort of research or any sort of advice being given around the impact this will have on people who may no longer then wish to plead guilty because they’re going to be deported regardless; they might as well try their luck and go through the court process.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): OK, so we don’t potentially have any answers to those questions. I’m sure, Lawrence, you can ask another question. I’m just going to get some advice. This is not a reflection on the Minister in the chair.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Absolutely not, and I really appreciate you, Madam Chair. We understand that the Minister in the chair is not the same Minister we had previously, but also that there are officials involved. I just want to seek clarification from you, Chair. If the Minister should receive some advice on this, it’s something that a Minister could speak to at a later part and just quickly reference this section on some of the questions we may have. That’s all.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m just taking some advice. Thank you. So the advice is, unless you have some more questions, we will take this part to a vote. So we’ll do that now.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 56A be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 51
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2A be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 17
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Part 2A agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Part 2A be agreed to.
Part 3 Consequential amendments
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we come now to Part 3. Part 3 is the debate on clauses 57 and 58, “Consequential amendments”, and Schedules 1 and 2. The question is that Part 3 stand part.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you. We’ve just got a couple of questions—
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Oh, sorry. The question is that Part 3 stand part.
INGRID LEARY: Thank you, Madam Chair. The consequential amendment in clause 57 Schedule 1AA amended basically inserts the part set out in Schedule 1 and makes all the necessary consequential amendments, which includes creating a new Part 4. We just have questions around what the impact of that is from a rule of law perspective regarding the new ministerial powers that might come into effect, because the people could be out in the community on conditions under the original Immigration Act or other Acts.
Then new powers have been conferred by new section 324F inserted by clause 40. I don’t think there has been a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) vet, but I do understand that there has been section 7 advice. So we’re trying to understand what would happen if a new condition was imposed on somebody under those circumstances.
It could be an oversight, and my question is a kind of policy question, I guess. Is that an intentional oversight to extend powers to Ministers? Does the Minister accept that it’s a BORA issue and would she want to have a look at it and maybe close it up if it is, or is it something that happened unintentionally? I think it would be important to have some more legal questions on that.
I’m just laying out what the substance of the policy question is, which is about the impact of this section and schedule on situations where existing conditions have been imposed on people and are now swapped out and there are broader powers for conditions to be made.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. And perhaps just to add some detail to the issue that Ingrid Leary is raising, I wanted to compare the two separate powers—so the existing power to impose conditions, versus what’s being proposed here to impose conditions—because they are different. So the current power is under section 320(1). The language there is that “the conditions imposed on release may be any conditions that the Judge thinks fit to impose in the circumstances, including all or any of the following:”. It then lists three quite specific potential conditions that can be imposed. So applying the rules of statutory interpretation, ejusdem generis says that the general word shall not extend in its effect beyond the subjects that are listed. In this case, again, while it appears to be broad power, it’s actually listing three very specific circumstances.
The new power, which, again, Part 4 is referencing for these people who already have conditions imposed on them under section 320, is new section 324F, inserted by clause 40. Now, in that new power, it feels like much more of what I would call a God grant. So the power’s very broad. It says in subsection (3) “may impose any other condition that the Judge thinks fit to impose in the circumstances, including,”—and then it uses the words—“without limitation”. Those are the key words here, because it says to me that the powers to grant conditions are much broader than those foreseen in the current legislation, where the three specific instances, if you like, are listed quite explicitly.
Then you go from there to the section 7 advice to the Attorney-General, which does examine whether this is a reasonable limitation on freedom of movement and association generally. It concludes that they are. So, again, no section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. However, it doesn’t consider the circumstances where you could have someone who had been detained, partially because of criminal offending, had conditions imposed on them under current section 320, and once this bill passes into law, would have new conditions put on them on the basis of their past offending. Now, that would potentially rub up against section 26(2) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which says, “No one who has been finally acquitted or convicted of, or pardoned for, an offence shall be tried or punished for it again.” So the courts have taken quite a broad view in terms of what constitutes being punished. So certainly the imposition of further conditions could fall within the scope of the what the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is considering here. It just strikes me that it’s not something that legal advisers turn their minds to and it’s not articulated as an issue in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
So at this committee of the whole House stage, I’m just wanting to hear from the Minister whether she had turned her mind to these circumstances. And if someone had been convicted or acquitted or pardoned of something, whether that occurrence, if you like, could be considered as part of justifying the imposition of new conditions under this new section, under the new Act that would not have been possible under current section 320.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Immigration): I just think it’s important to clarify that this part that we’re talking about relates to the civil detention components, so criminal convictions and all of that stuff has nothing to do with this part. This is about the continuation of existing conditions and, therefore, variations of conditions that would occur under this, so it’s a very different component.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one question for Associate Minister of Immigration Costello on Schedule 2, so this is clause 58, “Consequential amendment”, of Part 3. In Schedule 2, it makes an amendment to the Search and Surveillance Act, particularly the item relating to section 293B, we’re looking at “may apply for and execute warrant to enter a dwelling or marae and search for a person”. I want to check with the Minister in terms of the scenario—for example, because it says “dwelling or marae”.
I want to check if “ dwelling” is based on the definition, if any, in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, or are we looking at the definition of “dwelling” that we have just seen in a previous part of this bill, which is clause 25, new subsection 286(3)? In that particular definition “dwelling”, it does specify that “ ‘dwelling’ means any building or part of a building that is used for residential accommodation of any kind, and includes a garage or shed associated with a building or part of the building”. However, in both that definition of “dwelling” as well as marae, you’re looking at a fixed construct essentially, but not necessarily the grounds. So, for example, hypothetically speaking, that a person is in a tent either on the grounds of a property or within a precinct of a marae, does that mean that an immigration officer could not search that because it’s neither a dwelling nor a marae?
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got a specific question in relation to Schedule 2. One of the grey areas in relation to immigration officers’ ability to enter different premises is in relation to faith-based institutions. I raise that because, quite a few years ago now—this would have been under the previous National Government—we did have, for example, some Indian students who were facing deportation. They were in the Unitary Church because that was one of the institutions that are often deemed to be out of touch for immigration officials
Simon Court: If you’re here illegally—
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: What I’m seeking clarification for is—
Simon Court: —you should be sent home.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —whether it’s by convention—pardon?
Simon Court: If you’re here illegally, it shouldn’t matter where you’re hiding.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Well—interesting. The member may wish to seek a contribution if he wants to challenge my question.
The question here is about whether the current definition of “dwelling” would include faith-based institutions. That is important because—not just in New Zealand but, actually, across different jurisdictions—faith-based institutions have been one of those areas that are seen as sort of safe havens for people who may be trying to, for example, resolve an appeal or even have a current appeal in front of a Minister or the Immigration and Protection Tribunal while they may be liable for deportation. I do want to understand how those institutions may be captured or otherwise under Schedule 2.
I think clarification on that would be useful, because we do have a history of faith-based institutions being safe havens for migrants who may be appealing to the Minister, for example—which is their right, despite what the heckles from the ACT Party might otherwise try to assume.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to make a brief contribution to clarify my earlier question to the Minister. I do understand that it’s a civil regime, but my question was more in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provision 26(2), which is about a second punishment, and that punishment could be a civil punishment. A second punishment, even if it’s a civil punishment, then touches on paragraph 26(2) if the decision maker is bearing in mind a prior conviction or a prior acquittal or a prior pardon as part of their decision making to impose the civil punishment. In this case, the civil punishment would be the imposition of those further conditions.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Minister’s just taking some advice so I’ll just see if the Minister wants to take a call first before I take a motion.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Immigration): Yeah, I think we’re getting back again—it’s not a civil punishment. This is a detention process that is being managed in the immigration process that we’re talking about. This is not a punishment; it’s a detention process.
SIMON COURT (ACT): 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 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Motion agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Part 3 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 2 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clauses 1 to 3
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, we now come to our final debate—clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to start with some questions regarding the commencement, because what we see in the Amendment Paper today is that clause 2(3) refers to a number of sections which will not come into effect until the first anniversary of Royal assent, and the rest of the Act comes into effect upon Royal assent. When I look at those sections, they relate specifically to the electronic monitoring system. We are really happy with the changes in the Amendment Paper around safeguarding people so that electronic monitoring is not used as a form of detention and that it has been narrowed, and it is on that basis and from the Education and Workforce Committee work and the understanding that electronic monitoring was one of the biggest issues for us that we have supported this bill.
I just want to seek clarification from the Minister and I apologise that I’m asking for some context here, but it is an Amendment Paper that we saw today. Does this mean that there will be a transitional period of about a year where the limiting of the electronic monitoring provisions will not be in effect, and what does that mean if there were to be a mass arrival in that time?
I would like to remind the committee that the reason Labour is not fixated but very concerned about electronic monitoring is because of the international conventions and legal principles, which include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They all basically say that deprivation of liberty should only be used as a last resort, if at all, and that electronic monitoring should not be seen as arbitrary, that it shouldn’t be a digital shackle. It talks about privacy concerns, vulnerability, and the issue that the Minister has mentioned herself in some ways when she talked about immigration detention being different from criminalisation and from civil punishment, and yet there is this blurring around the edges. The overwhelming message in international law and best practice is that the goal should be to manage individuals in the community through less intrusive means wherever possible.
Now, because this Amendment Paper is quite new, it may not have the effect that I think it has, and in that case, I’d like to know what effect it does have, but it just feels like there is now a separation of when everything will come into effect. So you’ve got the original amendment from Royal assent and then you’ve got the subsequent amendments that have come in that limit the intrusion into people’s rights that are going to take longer, if I am reading that correctly.
That might explain, then, why my Amendment Paper on sections 40A and 40B were declined, but in the absence of that, what is the situation in that transition period? And even if I am not interpreting that correctly, it still does cause some confusion, clearly for me as a parliamentarian, but probably more so for people trying to work out what the arrangement is around electronic monitoring and the different time frames. A subsequent question which is similar, and I won’t dwell on it, is the other period of time which talks about some of the sections—I won’t read them all out—coming into force three months after Royal assent. What is the rationale for that and what is the advice around—clearly there’s been some advice, I would assume, to have these different milestones coming in. Hopefully they are to support the human rights of people. They may well be to make sure that the regime is set up adequately to be able to cope with an influx of people. My concern is that if there isn’t a system and process in place that assures the limiting of the electronic monitoring provisions that we are so keen on in Labour, and which is part of why we are supporting the bill as it’s currently being drafted up to the amendment, then we’d like to hear from the Minister exactly what that looks like, for clarity. Thank you.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Immigration): Yeah, I think, just for clarification, the delays in the commencement of the electronic monitoring relates purely as you sort of suggest in your outline. It’s about establishing the systems and processes to ensure that all of that system is place—it is a complex system—to ensure it’s done right. So it’s that 12-month period to ensure all of the contracting and the system is set up in place.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Subsequent to that, then, is it correct to understand that the electronic monitoring may still take place but with the much broader incursion into the rights of people who might be detained under the mass arrivals provision, or will there be no electronic system in place?
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two questions, one on the title, which is: considering that the bill actually increases the number of people who would be liable for deportation, does she think that the title accurately describes the bill to a layperson watching this debate? Because otherwise, who is the system supposed to keep the integrity for? This term of “system integrity” is used as a catch-all phrase. I think it’s interesting because I remember the Minister of Customs herself in the second reading criticised, I think, our party for talking about slogans. But I think system integrity is actually a relatively broad term that I think can be weaponised. So I’m curious to know as to whether the reality that the actual provisions from this bill—and this bill actually has quite a few different moving parts—whether the title actually, genuinely describes what the bill does.
Now, on the commencement, I did want to ask also on the provisions which will come into the first anniversary of Royal assent in relationship to electronic monitoring. Has the Minister received any advice around, for example, the procuring of the devices that would be needed to be able to adequately implement this bill and whether part of the one-year period would be to also, for example, procure those devices? Has she already started work or to receive advice in that regard; if so, what is it? Because I kind of can see that the one-year gap could be also to sort out some of these devices that would be needed. If that is the case, how many devices is the Government looking at procuring in order to be able to make sure that once we reach the first anniversary of Royal assent, should there be this mass arrival that we’ve been told that we need to prepare for—despite kind of no substantiation of evidence that it is coming—that we’ll actually be ready; if so, will a year be sufficient to adequately prepare and procure the necessary devices?
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Immigration): Just in terms of the previous question, the electronic monitoring wouldn’t come into effect until 12 years, so there wouldn’t be any interim electronic monitoring system in place.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Ingrid Leary had previously stood up to make a call, so I’ll take a call from Ingrid Leary.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you. It’s just around the title as well. As I previously noted, there’s a kind of strange twinning of the “mass arrivals” part of this bill and also the “fiscal sustainability and system integrity” part. What we heard from the previous Minister in the chair was that the fiscal sustainability part actually relates, in a very narrow way, to levies that respond to visa applications, essentially, and the funding of health and education and making that a little bit fairer but also being able to extend the powers of it. The system integrity part probably relates to both, including the mass arrivals part. I just wondered if it would be clearer if the title should read “Immigration (Visa, Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill”, just to get the word “visa” in there so that, when we’re looking at those sections about the levies and all of that, we’re not going to get confused and think that that relates to mass arrivals.
In some ways, it probably should have been in a separate bill. If we could add that into the title, then it’s very clear to us that, under Part 2, which talks about fiscal sustainability, that levy section is very narrowly focused. We would expect, if we want to look at the affordability of what is being proposed—and I do think it will be value for money because, ultimately, it’s going to save money down the track, but we’re not going to be looking into this bill for that affordability. It’s been made clear to us that things like policing, the airports being stepped up to be able to cope with this kind of system, and the training that’s required would come from general taxation and not from here. That’s not very clear from the title at the moment. Thank you.
CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): 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 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 445 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 amending subclause (1) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2 inserting new subclause (2AA) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 as amended be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Clause 2 as amended agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Clause 3 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I will report this bill with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Immigration: I move, That the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
This bill is an important step forward for New Zealand’s immigration system, and supports the Government’s broader priorities of driving economic growth and attracting the skills New Zealand needs to thrive. A strong, fair, and responsive immigration system is essential to delivering on our ongoing going for growth plan, supporting businesses, and ensuring New Zealand remains an attractive destination for talent and for investment. Immigration is vital to our economic and social prosperity, and this legislation helps to strengthen the foundations of a system that New Zealanders can have confidence in. It ensures that our settings continue to be fair, transparent, and fit for purpose in a changing world.
This bill is important to ensure that compliance and detention settings are more balanced and transparent to better align our provisions with the recommendations of Casey KC and Heron KC reviews, strengthen both immigration risk settings and the protection of migrants from exploitation, enable the immigration system to respond to challenges with greater flexibility, and allow the cost of the immigration system to be recovered more fairly.
The bill delivers on these objectives through a series of targeted, sensible reforms. It introduces stronger safeguards for vulnerable people, including a higher threshold for the detention of asylum seekers and judicial oversight of out-of-hours compliance activity. These changes respond directly to the recommendations of Victoria Casey KC and Michael Heron KC, made in their independent reviews, and they reflect our commitment to transparency and accountability. It also addresses migrant exploitation by creating a new offence for charging premiums for employment offers. Charging for job offers is already illegal under New Zealand law, but it only applies when the victim is an employee here; it does not cover people who are extorted but who never arrive, or who arrive to find that the job offer has evaporated. This awful practice is causing real harm and is undermining trust in our immigration system. By closing these legislative gaps, we can prosecute more cases and send a clear message that exploitation is not tolerated in New Zealand.
The bill strengthens immigration risk settings by clarifying deportation liability for residence class visa holders who commit serious offences, and by enabling the cancellation of resident status in those very rare cases where a person poses a significant security risk but cannot be deported immediately. These measures protect the integrity of our system while respecting our human rights obligations.
Flexibility is another key feature of this bill. It allows the Minister to respond quickly and fairly to unusual events, such as airline disruptions or natural disasters, where large groups of people are stranded in New Zealand. This ensures that our system can adapt to real-world challenges without unnecessary bureaucracy or costs.
I know there have been concerns expressed about the potential for overuse of those powers, but I’m very confident about the scrutiny and transparency provisions in the bill. The Education and Workforce Committee further slightly raised the bar regarding ministerial consideration. The Minister will have to certify that an exercise of the power is reasonably necessary to address the situation, and that it is a very appropriate addition.
Finally, the bill futureproofs immigration funding by creating options to share costs more fairly and sustainably across those who benefit from, or create risks for, the immigration system, or—with appropriate safeguards, including consultation—those who benefit from services in the wider community. Amendment Paper 445, passed by the House, made minor and technical changes that will ensure the workability of the electronic monitoring provisions. I look forward to those provisions being available. Electronic monitoring, where it is practicable, will be a very positive alternative for people who would otherwise have to be held in corrections remand facilities. There is a lot of work for both the Minister’s officials and corrections officials to operationalise electronic monitoring, which is why those aspects of this amendment bill will not come into effect until a year after Royal assent.
I would like to acknowledge the many submitters who engaged in the select committee process, their insights have strengthened the legislation. Also, on behalf of the Minister, the Minister is very grateful to the Education and Workforce Committee, which undertook a thorough and thoughtful review, ensuring the bill reflects robust policy and serves the public interest. She also thanks her parliamentary colleagues for their constructive debate and careful consideration throughout all stages of this bill.
This is a balanced, forward-looking package of reforms that will help New Zealand manage risk, protect migrants, and maintain confidence in the integrity of our immigration system. I’m proud to commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill is not perfect. The Labour Party would have preferred to see stronger safeguards. That is, clearer limits expressed in the legislation and stronger judicial oversight on the new powers that allow the Minister of the day to cancel a residence visa of someone who is categorised as threat to national security; on the use of electronic monitoring; on the conduct of out-of-hours compliance visits, otherwise known as dawn raids; and, perhaps most importantly, on the detention of asylum seekers.
But on balance, we took the view that the positives in this bill: judicial oversight on the detention of asylum seekers, a new bespoke regime that recognises the particular vulnerability of asylum seekers; the out-of-hours compliance regime, which requires a warrant of commitment; and a much stronger and clearer offence in law for people who seek or receive a premium for a job in order to get a visa as one of the ways of combating the exploitation of migrant workers.
On the other elements in the bill: the extended levy-making powers; the ability to cancel the visa of someone who’s classed as a threat to national security; the flexible powers, that is the ability for the Minister to make a special direction for a whole class of people; and the provision around deportation and criminal offending. On all of those, Labour took the view that they, on balance, are probably useful and helpful additions to the system.
Why is this bill important? Well, around the world right now, immigration policy is a political dumpster fire. Right-wing populist parties in so many countries, but including in the United States and across Europe, have campaigned against and demonised refugees and migrants. Sadly, they have succeeded in so many places. Political parties who were once committed to the 1951 Refugee Convention are now engaged in a race to the bottom. It distresses me to see the UK Labour Party, and other European social democratic parties engaging in that race.
New Zealand needs immigration. The demographic modelling is very clear; we can’t survive in the same political and economic form without more young, skilled, energetic, hard-working migrants coming here and helping us develop this country. We have so many industries that have structural labour shortages. We need migrants and we need to get better at getting them here to make new lives.
Respect for human rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention; it’s part of our modern history of this country. The values that underpin it, welcoming people who are escaping genocide and persecution to come here and make successful lives and become great New Zealanders, that is absolutely at the heart of who we are as a people. It pains me to see parties like New Zealand First in this Parliament deliberately mimicking the corrosive and devise anti-migrant rhetoric of the UK Reform party. When you add to that attention seekers like Brian Tamaki openly and deliberately using racist anti-migrant rhetoric in a desire to get a few more dollars in the collection plate—this kind of political rhetoric gives permission to the racists to divide our society and do damage to our democracy.
In my view, the best thing that we can do as a country and as a Parliament is to strengthen, not weaken, our adherence and commitment to international human rights standards. Secondly, to be constantly improving and fine tuning the immigration system in a way that makes it clear to the public that the system is fair, it is well administered in the interest of the people of this country, and, of course, of migrants—to retain that public confidence in the system.
It is incredibly important that in this Parliament and in New Zealand’s society that the centre holds; that we maintain a consensus—hopefully, a cross-party consensus in this Parliament—that New Zealand needs migrants. That we are better for migration. That migrants make an overwhelmingly positive contribution to our country and that we need to get better at welcoming them, helping them settle here, and become great New Zealanders. How we welcome newcomers and how we make them feel and how well we assist them to settle goes to the heart of our values as New Zealanders and who we are as a nation.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Madam Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Apologies, I was just taking attention to some detail. Ricardo Menéndez March.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We have more in common with asylum seekers and migrant workers than we do with billionaires and politicians on the other side of the House who seek to divide our communities and hand out billions of dollars to landlords, the fossil fuel industries, and the tobacco industry. This is a trojan horse of a bill, because, for all the virtue signalling that we have heard from the previous members, the reality is that this bill diminishing the rights of migrants and it also expands the liability of deportation for migrant communities. It also keeps painting refugees as though they are a security threat. So when we hear narratives about the integrity of our immigration system and how important it is to mana ake migrants, why don’t these politicians from whichever side of the House they come from focus on genuinely improving the human rights of migrants, which, by the way, are not even recognised adequately in our Immigration Act, because the policies that come out of the Immigration Act are, effectively, exempt from the Human Rights Act. Migrants are actually not protected in legislation when it comes to their human rights adequately.
So it’s really important to put it on the record that what this bill does is it creates additional tools for the Minister to, effectively, deport migrants. To say that this is about protecting migrants by, yep, adding an additional charge for charging premiums offshore and criminalising that, while, at the very same time, gutting the supports that exploited migrants can receive is a joke. This is not a Government that takes migrant exploitation seriously because, if they did, they would not have been cutting the length of time that someone can be on the migrant exploitation protection visa—simply not a serious Government when it comes to migrant exploitation and treating our migrant communities with the respect and dignity that they deserve.
On the Government side, we have had the New Zealand First party scapegoating migrant communities left, right, and centre. In fact, their whole whakapapa of a party has been on scapegoating migrant communities. On the other one, we have had the ACT Party, who have continuously scapegoated refugees and painted them as a security threat. And then we’ve got National, who have not hesitated to use the language of the far right when it comes to “opening the floodgates” in their language. I do want to say I’m incredibly disappointed that the Labour Party continues to support this kind of legislation. But, then again, I remember that as the Greens, we have been fighting against unjust deportations, whether it’s a Labour or National Government.
The truth is that this came off the back of a mass arrivals bill that was not supported by human rights organisations. Introduced by the previous Labour Government, who refused to listen to the voices of human rights organisations, who said, “Why this bill?” And they said, “Because we’ve got to prepare.” In the same way the Government side has said, “We have got to prepare for mass arrivals.” But you know what they have not prepared for? Our underfunded health system, our education system that is struggling to keep up the needs of students, and our public housing stock. They prefer to use slogans of getting prepared for mass arrivals by boats or planes that have never happened and have not been able to be substantiated as an imminent threat.
But the things that we do know we have to prepare for, they have failed to adequately resource. They have gutted our public housing infrastructure. They have gutted the ability for us to have inter-regional rail so that we can connect our towns and cities. Instead, they have given billions of dollars to the wealthy few and the companies that are wrecking our environment and our planet. If they are so serious about preparing for the actual risks that our country faces, they would be turning their heads to issues around infrastructure and the cost of living and the climate crisis, not this bill that seeks to continue treating migrant communities as a security threat, when most asylum seekers are actually lacking adequate support for them to be adequately settled in our communities.
To use one horrid attack in West Auckland as the one example to justify stripping residency from asylum seekers is honestly disgusting. Because we saw charities on the ground as well as advocates, including a former Labour Party MP from a refugee background, who at the time rightfully pointed out that that attack should absolutely not be used to diminish the rights of asylum seekers. What do we have now? A bill that seeks to strip residency status from people who may have sought asylum if they are deemed to be a security threat.
When we talk about a security threat, it’s also disingenuous for the Government members to point to issues around terrorism, again, pretending that refugees pose a terrorist threat to our country. The definition of “security” in our legislation also includes issues in relationship to reputational damage, effectively, to our country, which could be weaponised against our communities. We have seen that in the past in the way that black and Middle Eastern communities have been weaponised and targeted by politicians on the other side of the House. Not that long ago in the previous National Government, we saw an Opposition that was also quite willing to scapegoat Asian communities for a housing crisis that we were experiencing. The political football of targeting migrants and refugees and using that as a distraction to not deal with the serious issues that we have at the time like housing, like healthcare that is actually supported by countless migrant workers who simply want to be treated with respect and dignity and yet are experiencing unsafe staffing conditions.
Additionally, this bill seeks to try and remediate the cuts that the Government has made to our public services like health and education by charging migrants levies without recognising that migrant workers already contribute disproportionately so to the tax base and to the services that we all need and use. Why? Because migrants, especially in the first few years of being here in this country, are unable to access many of these services that we all need, yet they’re contributing in tax. Now the Government, after cutting our healthcare system, after gutting our infrastructure, and instead passing that on to the wealthy few—
Hon Casey Costello: Repetition.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —have chosen to put in place levies.
It’s interesting that Casey Costello, who tends to just use Philip Morris’ lines, says, “Repetition”, when, actually, in her contributions in relationship to this bill, she has failed to own up to the fact that her own leader has had a career of scapegoating migrants and refugees. And all that she has said, during her contributions, have been slogans and completely frivolous contributions that do not address the issues in front of us. It’s actually disgusting that we have a New Zealand First party that is quite happy to form a coalition with a National Party who shows up to ethnic community events and does not own up to the fact that they have decided to form an agreement with the most anti-migrant, anti-refugee party in this Parliament.
The Green Party, instead of causing division by targeting migrant communities, is committing to taxing the wealthy few so that we can all have dignified lives, so that we can fund our public services that our communities need, instead of charging levies through this bill to make up for the cuts that they have made because they have realised that they’re now having to make up for the shortfall due to the billions of dollars they have handed out to landlords and tobacco companies and the fossil fuel industry.
When it comes to electronic monitoring, it’s easy to say that it’s a better alternative to detention when it comes to mass arrivals when it was, once again, parties on both sides who supported having a mass arrivals regime. We tried to add additional protections for people subjected to electronic monitoring during the committee of the whole House stage. We tried to put in an amendment to exempt children from being subjected to electronic monitoring and that was not supported by the Government side. What that tells me is that they seem quite happy to have children escaping some of the most harrowing conditions that one can ever imagine being subjected to policies like electronic monitoring.
This Government paints these issues of asylum seekers as though we are receiving a huge amount of asylum seeking claims, but last year we had one asylum seeking case per 10 days. That’s a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction compared to the claims that countries like Canada, the US, and the UK see—extremely small amount compared to others. So what we have as a country instead is an opportunity to boost the support systems and the judiciary, who can often help process those very same claims so that asylum seekers can be processed in a dignified manner, as opposed to pushing forward legislation that simply increases the liability of deportation and pretends that the Government cares about migrant exploitation, when every other action that they have taken tells us the exact opposite.
For example, they could have decoupled work visas from single employers to give migrant workers better mobility for when they are in exploitative situations and they have chosen not to do so. Once again, the Green Party will keep fighting to hold both major parties to account for their policies on immigration and their track record of, when things get tough, pointing the finger at migrants, instead of addressing the reality that we’ve got billionaires hoarding up a stupid amount of wealth at the expense of our communities and property speculators who continue making a buck while people go without. The Green Party does not support this bill and will fight to overhaul our immigration system so that it genuinely puts human rights at the centre of decision making.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I don’t know which bill that member was talking about, but I’m taking this call on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support this bill.
We know that immigration is important to our nation, but immigration doesn’t mean open borders for anyone or everyone. I know that that is what the Green Party wants—open borders for anyone and everyone. They don’t care about national security. They don’t care about the safety of our communities. They don’t care about an immigration system supporting our economic activity. They don’t care about those things.
Ricardo Menéndez March: Point of order.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: All they want is—
Ricardo Menéndez March: I take personal offence at the imputation that we don’t care about national security. I take offence at the comment—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): You can’t take personal offence on behalf of a group of people.
Ricardo Menéndez March: I take personal offence. I’m part of the group that was mentioned.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Wait for a sec. I’ll just take some advice from the Clerk. OK, so the advice I have received is that because this is a wide-ranging debate, and the member himself has been wide-ranging in his comments as well, in terms of his references to other political parties, that is also afforded to other political parties to be wide-ranging. But I would ask the House to not be personal in your comments.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Resuming from where I left, we do really care about national security. We care about supporting our economy and we do care about supporting our community. We want to see that our immigration system is healthy, that it’s not compromising the safety of our communities or the safety of our nation. That is why we want to see that our borders are managed in a way we need to. We are learning new things in the immigration system and we know that people are applying different kinds of mechanisms. They are becoming really innovative to dodge the system. So we have to keep up and we have to make sure that our legislation is able to keep up as well. That is why this bill is so important.
The other thing the Green member spoke about is the exploitation visa. He is concerned about the exploitation visa. But on this side, we are trying to stop exploitation. We are actually working on the root problem rather than create the problem and then see how we can solve that problem which has been created and let that problem be created at an even bigger scale. We don’t want that problem to be created at a bigger scale, but we want to see that we are minimising that problem, and that is why we are ensuring that this bill goes through, which is about the integrity of our immigration system.
His policies are great—good policies are good—but if there are no compliance checks, there is no point in having good policies. That is why we have put some provisions in this for compliance checks as well. But, yes, of course, for out-of-hours warrants for compliance checks, there is going to be additional oversight through this legislation.
Final point I want to make—I’m not going through all the changes that this bill is making. The other point which I’m really happy to see in this bill is that we know that a lot of people, those who misuse our immigration system to bring people from overseas, those who really want to be here in New Zealand who can’t come through the normal legal channels so they are enticed to pay for a job offer which doesn’t exist—so these people, those who pay for those jobs, come here to New Zealand; they are not filling the genuine gap that we have in our businesses. They are here as surplus people, I would say, because they just want to be here in New Zealand and we want to stop that activity—charging premium. Whether it happens here or it happens overseas, that needs to be stopped, and we want to see that our immigration system is bringing people—those who are genuinely filling a gap in our economic activity.
So, overall, I would say it’s a great bill and any party that cares about our immigration system being a sound system should support this bill. The ACT Party is really happy to support this. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Immigration): I rise to speak on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First has always stood for a sustainable immigration system that serves the interests of our people and safeguards the vulnerable ones from exploitation. Before entering this House, I was actively involved in both investigation and advocating for exploited migrants, and I was invoking a lot of resource and energy in terms of providing the protections from exploitation that immigrants often need to have. It is from this experience that I appreciate how important these pieces of legislation are.
New Zealand First’s manifesto has consistently emphasised the need for integrity in the immigration system and a fairer cost sharing so that New Zealanders are not unfairly burdened. This allows the system to be sustainable. It is important in this House that we stand on our record of what we’ve delivered and how we’ve achieved for the betterment of this system, and I think this piece of legislation will deliver exactly that. We have a track record that shows that we are committed to ensuring that exploitation is eradicated from our country, that our immigration system is sustainable, fair, and transparent, and that we are prepared for any event should we need to address the fairness of our system. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Just for clarity for the House, if Te Pāti Māori is not here, that call drops down to the bottom and people compete for it at the end. So it will then go to the next call, and this is a split call with Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. This is a shameful bill, and we are proud as the only party in Parliament that opposes this particular bill.
What this bill does is it creates fear. It wants to divide and conquer and create a distraction on the fact that this Government and successive Governments have not put enough funding into our core infrastructure and public systems. This is creating an ICE-lite of the US by saying that “You know what? We don’t want the judiciary to actually exercise discretion—the experts, the legal experts of this country—to exercise discretion; what we want, instead, is to make sure that that power is held with Immigration New Zealand so, that way, they can deport people as they wish.”
The fact that they have changed the language from “convicted” into “guilty” and also “found guilty” as well as “pleaded guilty” is shameful. Legal experts have submitted to say that the status quo is sufficient. The broadening is not going to be—and there’s no evidence to say that the broadening of this is going to be—good. This is not going to be a bill that is going to be palatable for my communities, because my communities are the ones who are going to be affected—not by someone who apparently categorically says that they will support the bill for their leader, just to turn around and say that they don’t support it two days later.
This is a bill that just basically says that we don’t trust the law and order system that we have here in Aotearoa. We don’t trust the decision of the judges—unless the judge is taking a punitive approach, in which case, you know what, they are doing a great job. What this bill does—it is going to be looking at punishing children. It is going to make sure that people who have already suffered from trauma are going to be further traumatised.
As we are seeing in this bill, we are seeing that hapū and iwi have not been consulted as a part of this. Te Tiriti is not a part of this. There is no part of this bill that talks about manaakitanga as a core principle of the Treaty of Waitangi, because when people are coming here, rather than taking the approach that we should be taking, instead, we’re saying “Don’t you dare do anything. Don’t you dare express the fact that you have also suffered trauma.”
We have just recently seen what we have done in terms of the abuse in State care. The Greens have also been incredibly vocal of the fact that we want to break some of these vicious cycles that we’re seeing. Yet in this bill, we’re seeing that same level of care, that same level of understanding, has not been extended to asylum seekers, to refugees, to migrants—and the fact that every other party in Parliament is supporting this, which is shameful. All of you are happy to go to meetings and community events and celebrations and pose with ethnic communities to get to get a photo, to get their vote, but when the time comes to speak for or on behalf of our communities, you shy away; you stay silent.
You know what, this is something that is going to create a double tax system. You’re saying that migrants are coming here, they are working, they are residents, they are doing all this, they are paying tax dollars—but that is not good enough for you; they should be paying additional levy on top of it, because they are putting our health system and public education system in burden. You know what? So does the fact that decades—decades—of underfunding in the education health system, is why that is. Stop scapegoating my communities—stop scapegoating my communities. Seriously, this is something that we have seen over and again.
The previous speaker, Ricardo Menéndez March, has spoken on the fact that we are seeing these sorts of bills coming through regardless of who is in power. During the committee of the whole House stage, people in this very party—regardless of who you are—have raised concerns over some parts, yet they still support this bill. They are happy with the fact that levies are going to be used not for the purpose of levy but as an extra tax for the migrant communities. That is shameful. At what part of this bill is it—at what part, being a New Zealander, is it OK for us to do that to one group? Why, at the same time as we’re giving $2.9 billion to landlords, $200 million to offshore oil and gas, and $200 million to the tobacco industry?
The Greens will fight for migrants, and we will not support this bill—and, apparently, we’re the only party here who are willing to do that.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thanks, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak on the final reading of this bill. I just want to again acknowledge the great work of the Education and Workforce Committee. We clearly did good work in terms of the amendments, and that was talked about both in the second reading and in the committee stage. Therefore, I want to commend it to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I want to acknowledge the emotion in the House today, particularly from my Green colleagues, but also from my ACT colleagues, I think. Obviously, this is the kind of bill that that becomes an issue in, and I would suggest that it, in fact, has been a robust debate throughout, where really the whole issue and the issues in this bill have been canvassed robustly by this House, and that’s what we’re here to do.
I support this bill, and I want to talk about why. The first thing I want to talk about is something that has not been talked a lot about but was talked about in the committee of the whole House stage, and that is the issue around premiums of employment. I’m talking about that because I know a little bit about it from a practical level. When I was an employment lawyer, I had this case when I was relatively new to the profession. I had three Indian chefs who had been kicked out of their employment when they had attempted to join the union. The employer had kept their passports, and they were in a really difficult position with regard to immigration. We told their tale in what was, I think, the Employment Tribunal at the time, rather than the Employment Relations Authority, and we had an interpreter tell their tale. Their tale included that they had given premiums to the employer, and the tribunal member at the time dismissed this out of hand. They said, “That’s just ridiculous. That wouldn’t happen.” The interpreter stepped out of the role as interpreter because he was so shocked. He said, “Excuse me, sir, but this happens all the time. This is called ‘bakshish’—this happens all the time.”
I look back on that case, because it had some other features that were pretty shocking. These guys were working 92.5 hours a week, they were working through dinner and lunch, and they were living on the premises. Their work was dismissed by the employer, who said they weren’t really doing anything at all—they were layabouts, and they were lying, etc. We had a contract that had a company seal for one price, which had been given to immigration, and a company seal on another price per week’s work on another. The tribunal awarded an amount under the minimum wage for the first 40 hours but refused to allow any extra money for the extra hours worked because there was no requirement under the law for that. These are the things that make relationships like that exploitative. I think back to that time, and I think, “If only we had taken it seriously—if only that tribunal member had taken it seriously.” Because it was outside of the norms and values of that time, the tribunal member just immediately sided in that way with the employer and thought that these people were lying and making it up. It was just beyond his experience.
I’m glad to see the law catch up a little bit here, and it’s a really good lesson for me. I think there would have been a lot less pain if we had taken it seriously. I think some of the concerns that the Green Party have expressed about exploitation are very real. We haven’t nailed this one; there’s a lot further that we can go to make sure that people are not trapped in exploitative situations as migrants in this country. There are other places we can go.
I think we have to come to this from a realistic point of view, and I wanted to talk about the other situation that I know a little bit about. That is the situation of the New Lynn stabbing. That was a situation where people knew that the person involved was radicalised; they knew he was very dangerous; he was an asylum seeker. They were in a very difficult situation. The judges were in a difficult situation with regard to him being—I think he’d spent more time in prison on remand than he could be kept on for. The police were in a really difficult situation, and I think they had two officers constantly tracking that man, because they were just waiting for the bomb to go off, basically. That would not only have cost people a lot of money doing that, but people were in real danger, and there was a real price to pay.
These freedoms are very important to the Labour Party, in terms of making sure that there is a balance—but there is a balance. There are victims in this situation—and that’s not scaremongering. It’s something we have to be responsible about in this House. We have to think our way around really hard problems. We can’t always stand on the moral high ground if there are going to be real victims in the situation. In that case, we didn’t have the law right, and people paid a really high price. I think it’s really important that we think around this and that we don’t let our sense of moral rightness get in the way of looking around a problem. These are tough problems.
I want to come to probably the one I struggled with the most., which is the “mass arrivals”. That’s a hard thing to do—it’s really hard—and we will have supporters, in the Labour Party, who will be upset by this and not think that we’ve got it right. What I would say to those people, and to the ones who didn’t support us who are in the same position, is that this is a piece of legislation that attempts, again, to deal with the reality of the situation. We are in a time of great crisis where people will travel a long way to get away from oppressive situations and from desperate economic situations—they will take enormous risk—and we will struggle to cope when the arrive on our shores, and we will do our best to make sure that they are treated justly in those situations. It won’t be a case where we will close our eyes to that situation. These are very real predicaments that we face as a country.
I, for one, would like to see us take on a lot more refugees in this country and expand our definitions. I, for one, see that as being a pathway to reaching out to a world that’s in crisis. I’d love to do that, and I’d like to put my actual energy into making sure that we actually do reach out to people in those countries—not only to refugees coming to our own country but as supporters of their capacity to stay in their own countries. From what I understand, most refugees would actually rather be at home. That’s their predominant wish—to go home—and I get that. I think that’s really important. We need to not close ourselves off in New Zealand.
I appreciate that we can be subject to a lot of forces at the moment that are quite evil—they’re quite fear-based. I don’t intend to suddenly succumb to those kinds of fears, and I don’t intend to encourage them in others, but I think it’s incredibly important that we have a realistic law with realistic boundaries that actually helps protect that. People won’t get fearful if they don’t have examples of not feeling safe. That’s a really important part of what we’re doing here. We’re assuring people that we learnt the lessons from something like the New Lynn situation, where we’re responding to it because of the actual reality of the world we live in, which is not ideal. Not everybody is a saint.
I am wanting to say that I think the debate in here over this bill has been robust. You saw how carefully my friend Ingrid Leary went through the bill and asked questions, and you have seen it be tenacious, but we’ve ended up with a bill that we’re supporting, and that’s why we’re not joining the Greens in opposition to the bill—because this is reality. We hope that this bill deals with it, if not perfectly, then in a way that is thoughtful and is compassionate.
Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just, like others, acknowledge that this isn’t an easy area to make policy in. We’ve struck a few bills that have similar themes to this, much like the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill that this House debated as well. It is a question of really looking at security interests and balancing those against the rights interests that clearly also exist.
I do spend a fair amount of time speaking to parts of our migrant community and our former refugee community in Auckland. Whenever I’m speaking about the immigration space, I find myself using the words “the God grant” when I talk about the discretion that the Minister has, and that’s really because of two reasons: firstly, because the discretion itself, even under the current legislation, is incredibly broad. The Minister has really robust powers to make decisions without providing reasons in the current legislation. The other reason I call it a “God grant” is because those powers have this impossible ability not just to affect the lives of individuals but to affect the lives of generations to come.
I think about when the Hon Phil Twyford was the Minister for Immigration and Kabul fell. Within days, our Government stood up a system to look at who needed to come to New Zealand urgently and set up a system of visas to do so. I think about the families that I know now who have children who will grow up as Kiwis—so, again, “the God grant” seems like a fitting way to term these extraordinary powers in what is rather an extraordinary Act. We did, of course, the same with Ukraine, and there will be Ukrainian children who grow up as New Zealanders as well.
As it is “the God grant”, it’s also “the God grant” when a Minister decides not to use their powers, as we’ve seen here this term when the Minister hasn’t set up a system in response to the humanitarian crisis and the unfolding genocide we’ve seen in Gaza. Extraordinary discretionary powers, and probably, if you look at the set of legislation, some of the broadest powers that you will see in terms of how it can impact people’s lives, which is why several of my amendments at committee stage tried to not provide anchor on the discretion—I would say they would provide more of a compass in terms of guiding the Minister’s discretion to direct the Minister to turn their mind to our obligations under the Genocide Convention, under international human rights law and humanitarian law.
I say this all to make a very simple point, which is: although those amendments weren’t accepted into the bill, those obligations still exist. As this bill becomes an Act, certainly on our side of the House, we will be looking to ensure that the Minister, when they’re exercising discretion under these very broad “God grant” powers, is turning their mind to international human rights law, humanitarian law, and our obligations under the rights system here.
I raised a number of amendments trying to include them, but I also raised a point at the end about the imposition of conditions on people who were released into the community and that there was potentially some unfairness around that. The Minister’s response was that that wasn’t a penalty, and I was listening intently. I would just say that there is a trend, internationally, of recognition in some jurisdictions of the fact that even when something is framed as a civil penalty in the law, it can feel like a criminal penalty in truth. I know that that has happened, for example, in the US, where it’s been said that labelling a sanction as a civil sanction is not determinative of its status, but also in Canada, where the Canadian Supreme Court has rejected the argument—it also noted that it was possible, in some cases, for non-criminal sanctions to be considered punishment for the purpose of double jeopardy, and the same in the European court. Those human rights interpretations, in my view, are also very, very important.
The final thing I’d say is that my view is that this is one of those bills that should be reviewed, and it should be reviewed very soon once we’ve seen how it operates in the context of those human rights principles.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It would do well for one party in particular in this House to remember a tried and true saying: a failure to plan is a plan to fail. This bill is about planning. I commend it to the House.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Often when we’re out in the electorate, we get asked as MPs why isn’t there more cross-party collaboration? It’s quite tricky sometimes to explain that if the Government of the day is setting an agenda and then expecting everyone to agree, that is not collaboration. However, today I think as parliamentarians we can be proud that what we have seen is a truly cross-party collaboration and bipartisan journey that started actually under the previous Government and shows pretty good lawmaking.
I think that the indicator of that is that we’ve landed on something that is not perfect, as the Hon Phil Twyford said, but it is something that probably all of us can live with—apart, perhaps, from our friends in the Greens. When I look at the way they have characterised this debate, they have expressed moral outrage at what they see as an impingement on human rights and a targeting of immigrants. I don’t share that view, but I do have to say that I was very suspicious of this bill when it was first discussed under our Government. And what I wanted to know was, really, what is the problem we’re trying to solve here? Is this something that is American or Trumpian in its intended impact? Is it hysterical or is there going to be a real problem?
As times have continued, we have seen continuing issues on the high seas involving asylum seekers and pirates. We have continued to see the huge immigration problems in Europe. Then I’m also reminded of our own recent history with the really unfortunate stabbing in Auckland. We must remember our immigrant communities, but we also must remember the communities that have been impacted by that event and the sovereign inability to deal with a very high-risk known situation. That is something that was a gap in our law.
We can also go back to the Tampa scenario of 2001 when we did have a mass asylum, effectively, because there were the refugees on the Tampa, the Norwegian container ship that happened to be near Australian waters. There was an impending election in Australia. Those people were rejected from there and sent to Nauru. There were hundreds of people on board, and 43 children, and 133 of those were eventually accepted into New Zealand by the compassionate decision-making, in my view, of the then Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, who has talked about that event as one of her proudest decisions.
When we talk about the contribution of some of the people from these communities who have endured real hardship and been shown the manaaki in New Zealand, we have Abbas Nazari, who went on to become an international scholar who settled in New Zealand. They have gone on to have families, as Vanushi Walters has said, so that we have descendants of people who have benefited from the manaakitanga that we have shown and who in turn have contributed immensely to our society—the fabric of our society and the richness of our society.
The problem is there. And, as the previous speaker said, the failure to plan is planning to fail. If I look at what the Green Party are suggesting, if I think of the counterfactual about not having a system, in fact, I think we will end up with a situation, if there is a mass asylum scenario, where it will be way more unfair for the people trying to enter New Zealand. It will be considerably more arbitrary. They will be more exposed to human rights abuses, and that is the last thing I’m sure that the Green members would want. I think it’s really important for us to be pragmatic and understand that this is not a fiction; this is a real risk. It may be a low risk, but it is a real risk, and that is why we need to have a solution which may not be perfect but which we can all live with.
Having said that, I do agree with the comments from my colleagues that we would have liked to have seen some more caveats on some of the extended powers. There are ministerial powers that have been extended and they haven’t had the proportionate oversight or accountability, in my view. So we will need to keep an eye on that.
Also we did see, I think, in terms of looking at a cross-party approach, a really diligent manner with which this bill has gone not only through the House but through the Education and Workforce Committee and a Minister of Immigration who seemed very engaged and willing to listen and to make amendments, particularly around the electronic monitoring situation. Because we did have amendments and also recommendations that came out of the select committee which discussed the concern that they would be a boundary protection tool rather than a containment tool. That is indeed what we have managed to land on, which is quite a big shift from what was originally proposed, and I think that shows the democratic system working effectively.
I too would like to have seen the Minister perhaps have more influence in her own executive when it came to the application of what Vanushi Walters has described as the “God powers” when it comes to visas being able to be granted to the families of those who are suffering in Gaza. I have been continually in contact with many families in my own electorate. We have a lot of Palestinian families down in Dunedin. They have been through hell and back, quite frankly, over the last couple of years.
One of my dear Palestinian friends has gone to the bedside of her incredibly ill father in Gaza with no certainty about the visa status of family members there and also of her own immediate family. That is a failure of this Government, in my view, to do the right thing and to afford the access to families and use those “God powers” in a way. Now, I’m not suggesting that’s the Minister’s fault. I just don’t understand why the Minister perhaps doesn’t have the influence to be able to make that happen when that would be the right thing to do—and she’s very aware of the concerns from my community.
I’m also a little concerned that a New Zealand Bill of Rights—BORA—vet doesn’t appear to have been done on this bill. That would have been ideal, particularly given all the competing rights that were involved here. What we did see through the committee of the whole House right near the end was that there could be either an unintentional or an intentional extension of conditions on people who may not normally have that requirement legally as a result of the way the schedules operate. We did ask the Minister in the chair at the time, the Hon Casey Costello, to explain whether that was intentional or unintentional, because if it was intentional, that would be rather sinister in my view. If it was unintentional, then it would have been an opportunity to fix that up. Vanushi Walters spoke very clearly about the way that could be done. In fact, she dropped an amendment on to the Table that would have tidied that up really nicely, but unfortunately we didn’t see that.
I want to agree with some of the things that the Greens have said, because I do think that they are real concerns in our country about the type of support that we offer to refugees. While I support the comments from my colleague Helen White about needing to up the number of refugees that we take—because the world is in such a conflicted and vexed and precarious situation—we also do need to ensure that we have resourcing that they cannot be re-traumatised by their experience of coming into New Zealand. I don’t think we have those resources even at the right level currently and we need to make sure that we do so. So better mental health supports, for example, that might be able to avoid the situation that we saw in Auckland last year. There’s no guarantees for that in PTSD-type situations, but at least mitigating the risks around mental health scenarios would be really important.
Also not just assuming that migrant communities are going to be dropped into a particular city because that’s where many of their community are. I know, for example, for many of our rainbow community, they would actually rather be in communities away from immediate families or connections where LGBTQI+ rights are a difficult conversation in their own countries.
We do need more resourcing; we do need to show a bit more love, I think to our refugee communities. But, ultimately, one of the best ways we can do this when it when it comes to mass arrivals, in my view, is to make sure that we have a well-considered and thoughtful system that treats people fairly and humanely; that protects national security; and gives them every judicial process available that we can to make sure that we are treating them with dignity and compassion. I commend the bill.
GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): I commend this bill to the House.
GLEN BENNETT (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege—and it’s a heavy privilege—to stand and speak to this legislation this afternoon. I was in the House last night and a lot of today listening to the arguments, listening to the critique of this legislation. Again, it is not words on a page but the lives of people and of communities, as we’ve heard about. We’ve heard people talking about their own electorates and about the migrant refugee families that will be impacted, potentially, or their whānau from across the seas.
I reflect on what we’re talking about this afternoon, and I think of the privilege we have to live in these shaky isles, the privilege we have to live in such a beautiful place at the bottom of the world, a place of peace and tranquillity, and a place that people want to come to, because for so many people around the world, there is not peace, there is not tranquillity; there is struggle, there is famine, there is war, there is persecution, and the list goes on.
As has been said by the Hon Phil Twyford, our lead on this legislation, and by the speakers that followed from the Labour Party, we do support this bill. We do say it’s not perfect, but we know that we need to put things in place to ensure that there are protections and that those migrants, those coming in, are looked after.
As I look at the words and the different clauses of this bill, I just want to make a point around the 1951 refugee convention. Again, we’ve moved so far into the 21st century and beyond that convention that we just need to pause and again remind ourselves of what we are doing as a nation in terms of our responsibility to refugees, to those who don’t have the privilege that we have in this space. As I listened this morning and this afternoon, there were nine amendments to the Immigration Act, and, again, these were about ensuring that we improve and fine-tune the immigration system.
We did some work in the previous Government on these changes, and I think we could say that, yes, we have a party that is opposing it, but when it comes to the majority of the House, we’ve landed in a place where we can agree and we can move forward. And some of that is to look at the broadness of a piece of legislation like this, even though it’s around a specific group in terms of refugees or those coming to New Zealand.
It is interesting as I look through the bill and look at things like the ministerial powers that this will provide around granting visa applications. When I look at the criminal offending and the deportation changes that it brings, the challenges when it comes to the need to potentially cancel somebody’s residence or visa-class application, and when it’s looking at the out-of-hours warrants—and we talked about electronic monitoring, and it is a challenge. As my colleague Vanushi Walters said, this piece of legislation, if it does pass this afternoon, which I assume it will, is legislation we would and should revisit in the years to come to make sure that we aren’t overstepping the mark, to make sure that this isn’t something that goes unchecked. I would rather not have someone locked up in a prison. I would rather not have someone on electronic monitoring, but it’s a better position than being in prison.
We look at asylum seekers and the reason they would want to come here, as I said at the start of my contribution, and we need to ensure that we modernise the laws of this place. Again, the last bit is around the immigration levies and what that looks like.
This is a small piece of legislation that can potentially have a big impact, and we hope that is for a good reason, and that it does protect refugees, those coming into our country. We have privilege and we have diversity in this country, and we should share it with others, and we should be open. Therefore, I commend the this to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) 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 15
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing): I present a legislative statement on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and is can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon JAMES MEAGER: I move, That the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
Look, I would like to firstly give my strong and sincere thanks to the ever-hard-working and robust Justice Committee for your consideration of the bill. The committee only seems to have gained in strength and skill over the past 10 months, so I want to congratulate them for the work they’ve done on this bill. The committee recommended unanimously that the bill be passed with only one change, and that is to the commencement date. That is because the original date has since passed, so I think it’s a pretty sensible change to recommend and one which I’m sure all members will support.
This Government is committed to an effective and efficient justice system, and community legal services play an important role in promoting access to justice. The amendments in the bill are necessary to support the long-term funding of organisations that deliver community legal services by clarifying how the Lawyers and Conveyancers Special Fund can be used.
The Special Fund works by collecting interest from banks on solicitors’ and licensed conveyancers’ nominated trust accounts. Money in the Special Fund must be paid to the Secretary for Justice for the purpose of funding community law centres; however, as the law currently stands, it is narrowly framed. It’s actually unclear whether the Special Fund can be used to meet other expenses incurred by community law centres in the provision of those services, such as their overheads.
Without the Special Fund, Crown funding or other sources, like donations, have to be used. So this bill makes a narrow but important change to provide that certainty to community law centres that money from the Special Fund can be used to meet these indirect expenses. It does not affect the core purpose of the Special Fund, which is to fund community law centres. The change will support sustainable access to legal services within our communities around the country, and I commend it to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agree to.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I want to recognise the really important work that community law centres do. They're an important part of access to justice in New Zealand, and the special fund that the Minister's just referred to—the Lawyers and Conveyancers’ Special Fund—is, of course, the way in which they are funded.
I guess it is interesting that, last night, we were doing a statutes amendment bill which was full of tweaks and clarifications, and yet here we have a bill which has one substantive clause and is purportedly a tidy-up because the original legislation wasn't “sufficiently clear”. Why we need to trouble the House with a single bill for a tidy-up rather than putting it in a statutes amendment bill— either the one that we've just seen or I know there's another one which is waiting in the wings—why we couldn't do that, I don't know.
The other question: I was always perplexed—and I never got a good answer to at select committee, to be perfectly honest—as to why this bill is even needed, because the way the whole framework operates is the money from lawyers’ trust accounts goes firstly to the New Zealand Law Society, then it goes into a special fund which is administered by the Ministry of Justice, and then the Ministry of Justice purchases services—legal services—from community law centres so they can enter into the various contracts with community law centres around the country.
I don't know who it was, but someone seemed to think that when you purchase community services—and if this is the precedent, there's going to be a whole lot of contracts around the country for all kinds of services which are in in trouble—but the idea is that, whilst the existing law says you can purchase community legal services, apparently it wasn't clear enough that that includes ancillary services, so all of the things that go alongside it, things that support: for example, computer systems, administrative staff, library systems, and all of those things that are a necessary part—an absolutely necessary part—of providing community legal services.
Of course, the other thing is Community Law Centres of Aotearoa, which is the overarching body—the idea of an organising and coordinating body across community law centres and whether, in fact, that could be purchased out of the special fund because it didn't strictly fit in with the phrase the “purchase of community legal services”. Now, to be perfectly honest, I can't accept that when you enter into a contract for purchasing a service, you're not also empowered to purchase those things which are necessary for the service to be provided. Whether it be community legal services or social work services or drug and alcohol addiction services, all of those things have a necessary administrative framing around them. But somewhere in the Ministry of Justice, I think some over-enthusiastic lawyer—I mean, there’s far too many of those we know—has come up with the idea that purchasing community legal services is a narrow thing. You know, I get it: you're dealing with Crown funds. Well, actually, you're not; you're dealing with funds from lawyers’ trust accounts.
That’s actually an important point that I would point out—that sometimes the Ministry of Justice seems to deal with this special fund as if it's its own money. It's not. It's money which must be spent on community legal services. They are simply a clearing house for those funds, and they perhaps need to take a slightly different approach, because it's not an appropriation. One of the things, when we read the Budget and look at the provision of funds to Community Law Centres of Aotearoa, it doesn't appear in the Budget because it's not an appropriation. It comes from an entirely different way. There are occasionally—or there have been occasions where—the Government has topped up the special fund, in which case, obviously, an appropriation is needed.
The kind of rigour that the Public Finance Act might bring to an appropriation line in the Budget is not the kind of rigour you necessarily need when you're purchasing community legal services from funds from the special fund, a fund which comes from lawyers’ trust accounts. So the main point is this could have been in the Statutes Amendment Bill—
Vanushi Walters: Exactly.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —thank you, Vanushi Walters—and we probably don't even need to be here anyway, but here we are.
I guess the other thing is this: here we are under urgency, right? They want to keep cracking on with this; they want to go straight into the committee of the whole House stage when we have a lot of questions. And yet it's about as urgent—well, it's just not urgent. I mean, it's a really good example of how this Government does, in fact, use urgency for non-urgent work. This is a thing—an issue—that's been floating around for a while. It's a short bill and it could have gone on any Order Paper, but no—they've put it in here under the auspices of urgent business, and it's simply not urgent.
I guess the other thing I've just observed here is that the special fund—it's worth just examining it in the longer term. In fact, there's other work around the special fund that would have been far more useful, and in particular, the amount of the interest or the split of the interest, because lawyers’ trust accounts, in fact, have hundreds of millions of dollars in them at any one time. Banks love that because that's money that they can take—you know, that’s just sitting there—and use as, essentially, their float, and lend money out and so on—make good money on it. They are therefore required to pay an appropriate rate of interest on it into the special fund, but the way it's done is that 60 percent of that interest goes to the special fund and 40 percent goes to the bank in their back pocket, notionally for the administrative costs of administering trust accounts.
Well, that was done way back, I think, in—when was that?—2008, when the Law Practitioners Act turned into the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, and arguably there was some administration, but the administrative burden of administering trust accounts now is extremely low. If you look at it, the banks are getting about $10 million a year from the special fund in profits, and that is eye-watering. I think it works out—I've done the numbers and, I think, from memory, it was about $10,000 per account that the banks get to keep. That's $10 million that could usefully go into the community—ideally, I suppose, because it's lawyers’ trust accounts for legal services to the needy.
But look, if the Government is determined to proceed with this bill—and the other thing I would note and that I'll raise later is: if the Government has been funding the ancillary services—the, as it says, other services which support the provision of community legal services—is there a validity problem? And how are they addressing that? Because if the Government has entered into contracts without authority, then we've got a problem on our hands. This bill doesn't seem to have any validation. It's quite common to see validation bills, right—local government muck things up all the time; we're constantly validating their actions—but there's no validation aspect to this bill. That’s something I really want to interrogate and understand a bit later on.
But I do want to make clear that we absolutely support the work of community law centres. A little shout-out to Sue Maroney, who has been the chief executive of Community Law Centres of Aotearoa and has stepped down, given a new role that she's got, I think, on Hamilton City Council.
So yes, we're going to support this bill, but if you're going to bring it through urgency, a bill that isn't urgent could have been in the Statutes Amendment Bill. We'll give it a working-over and see where we go to from there.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think I just want to pick up on, first of all, the previous speaker’s, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb's, point that this bill is being brought back to the House under urgency. But I also think that there is a level of symmetry there, because, if the Hon Dr Duncan Webb remembers, this bill was introduced under urgency in June, and one of the questions that we had back then was: why was it introduced under urgency in the first place? I mean, yeah, I guess, on one hand, tangentially, you can have budgetary implication, but, again, the budgetary implication of this bill is about as removed from the rest of the bill that is needed, potentially under urgency, as it comes.
Then here we are, under urgency again, going through the remainder stages. I think the first thing I do want to mention and kind of pick up on is that during the initial urgency, because it was the first time that we were able to see the bill, the Green Party did oppose the bill out of caution. In the first reading, I spoke on the necessity of this bill in the first place and whether there is something more to it than initially meets the eye. Because, again, it was introduced under urgency. There wasn’t any form of a regulatory impact statement at that stage that I could see. However, as the Hon James Meager mentioned before, there was a very robust, you know, Justice Committee process. Again, props to the Justice Committee for the work that they do on a variety of different bills. But this is one of them that had a lot of consideration by that select committee during the select committee process.
So in terms of some of these contexts—yes, in terms of the legal services distribution of the special fund—we are looking at particularly the special fund that is done through the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, which provides money into the special fund that must be paid to the Secretary for Justice for the purpose of funding community law centres. I'll talk a little bit more about the purpose and some of the details of the fund, which we were able to obtain as part of that select committee process. But just in terms of the select committee, there were 13 submissions on this particular bill—sorry, 19 written submissions on this particular bill. Then we've had quite a few people who opposed this bill, interestingly. But I think the most important oral submission was done by Community Law Centre Aotearoa—CLCA—which is appropriate since this is one of the bills that affect them the most.
So in terms of the submissions, I think it's important to note that while there were some submissions that opposed this bill, they were partly out of the scope of the bill in their opposition. But, nevertheless, both themes in the opposition is deserving of some highlight in the second reading.
I think the first theme that took place as part of that is: what does it mean for other less funding for direct community legal service? One of the ones I can think of immediately is the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), for example, which also offers a different kind of service, but also is an important service to this area. They also do a lot of work in terms of educating the communities on some of the legal or awareness on things around the Privacy Act, etc. But this highlights the importance when it comes to things like access to justice, which is one of the core priorities for the Greens when we're looking at this. Because, again, I think many of us, or all of us, should hopefully unanimously agree that the rule of law and equity in access to justice is something that is paramount when we're looking at the legal system. But, again, at this stage, we don't see that equitability when it comes to the justice system, and both our community law centres that this bill affects as well as the CAB fulfils some of those and fulfils a requirement, as well as the legal aid, which fulfils various requirements for our communities to be able to have that if people aren't able to pay for lawyers in the first place.
So that's one of the first things. I think that it is outside of the scope of this bill, but it does highlight an issue that we need to address more broadly when we're looking at other concerns—for example, when we're setting budget for various community organisations. Again, because this bill was introduced in the Budget in May, it's appropriate to also bring the Budget into the conversation here in the second reading.
Also, the other, I guess, theme, when it comes to opposition, is around what it means or any particular ring-fencing from a Māori and Māori law perspective. I also think that in that case it is also important, I guess, to note that while the bill itself doesn't really address this particular area, but through conversations with CLCA, CLCA does have a very big focus not only regionally dependent because it very much depends on the need of the communities—but the equity impact or Māori-led service deliveries is something that is quite prominent within CLCA, depending on where you are. With that, I do want to give a special shout out to the Community Law Centre Aotearoa in Rotorua. That particular CLCA, for example, does deal with a lot of the cases around the Māori Land Court, for example.
So it is, again, one of the things that the submitters has raised as part of the submission process that deserves highlighting, and it's something that we should always consider, as with any policy setting or legislation—to ensure that we consider the equitability for Māori and how Te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Whakaputanga also centre in a lot of the decisions that we make.
Finally, I mentioned in the beginning that we, as the Justic Committee, did want to get some more information as a part of that process, on exactly what are some of the fundings that has been available, and what are some of the, I guess, relationships between the Crown and how the special funds in this case is used. I think it's important as part of that select committee process that we are looking at the fact that in cases where—OK, so, I guess, to start with, when we're looking at the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, it does set out how the special fund is used. In that particular legislation, section 301(5) allows banks to retain 40 percent of all interest payable on nominated trust accounts, but with an agreement that the CLCA has an arrangement in place with five of the commercial banks to receive an additional 20 percent of interest on lawyers’ nominal bank accounts.
This is what is being used to fund the 24 community law centres, and I think this is where, I guess, the initial concern and the initial purpose and the reason that the Minister of Justice brought this bill to the attention of the House and it was introduced in the House: it is around the contractual relationship under that particular usage of the special fund, and also the way that the Secretary who holds some of that special fund is able to distribute the special fund, and we see that being played out on clause 4 of the bill.
But it's also important to note here that, as part of that submission process, the New Zealand Law Society also notes the amount of interest on trust accounts retained by the banks and the impact this has on practicing fees, and the amount appears to be greater than what is retained in other jurisdictions. I think this is also something that is worthwhile, although outside the scope of this. But I think, again, it's something that the legal experts in the New Zealand Law Society has raised and that is an important consideration for any further bills.
I agree with the Hon Dr Duncan Webb that something like this potentially could have been packaged as part of the statutory bill because it seems to provide clarifications as opposed to make any sort of substantial changes. So I think this is where some of the, I guess, overlap took place during the select committee process, with submitters hoping that the scope of this bill could be expanded and maybe there was a room in this bill to expand that scope. But, again, as the bill stands, it's quite a minute adjustment and clarification on how the legal services Act is playing out and how the Secretary is able to do that.
So with that, I'm happy to say that, in the second reading, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand will be supporting this.
LAURA McCLURE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this piece of legislation. I note that my colleague Todd Stephenson normally sits on this committee but, unfortunately, can’t be here to take this speech. So this bill just clarifies how money from the lawyers and conveyancers special fund may be used by the community law centres, ensuring that the Secretary for Justice can contract for a wider range of costs that support the delivery of community legal services. This is a good bill and I commend it to the House.
JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. I sat on the Justice Committee to hear the submissions on this bill. As has been briefed by other speakers, we had only 19 submissions, but the submission that we did have from the Community Law Centre, they made a very good contribution to the select committee. It was very interesting to hear that 24 community law centres across New Zealand rely on this funding. From their submission—just taking a part out of it—the 47,000 clients that they provided free law-related services to and education of up to 26,000. So I thought that contribution very much showed how important this funding is to them.
The biggest part of this was trying to broaden the use of the fund. We had an initial briefing how the direct services, the legal services, the representation advocacy work, and education could be used for this funding. However, things like the overheads, professional development, training fees, or coordination and maintenance couldn’t. So, really, this bill, through clause 4, replacement section 94(1), is just broadening the ability to use the fund.
Also it is enhancing community law centres’ ability to assist the most needy. That, again, is very, very important. It offers sustainability within the legal aid system, without new Government spending. On this side of the House, any way that we’re not using taxpayers’ money where we can actually make dollars go further is something that we endorse. So on that, I look forward to the committee of the whole House and I commend the bill to the House.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill, as my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan mentioned, is something that we initially opposed. The bill was originally considered under Budget urgency—I think it was in May rather than June—but then introduced in July, and it appeared at that time to be a change which would broaden the acceptable use of funds that were legislatively ring-fenced for legal aid services, but resulting in less funding for legal aid itself. So here we are, again, in urgency, considering a bill that doesn’t really need to be done under urgency. In fact, we seem to have been sitting under urgency for most of this term, which really shows that we have a Government that is more anti-democratic than anything and doesn’t really pay attention to good legislative process.
Hon Mark Patterson: So mean-spirited.
SCOTT WILLIS: Mean-spirited, perhaps, but it is a Friday and we do have things to do, but we will stay here until Tuesday next week, we’re quite happy—we’re quite happy. We know that a major barrier to seeking justice is its cost and high fees mean some people cannot—cannot—have access to their rights. This is not in the public interest. Community law centres are available to help with some matters, but are not adequately resourced, so legal aid is limited.
I do remember, many, many years ago, having had recourse to legal aid, and without the money to be able to go to a lawyer, it was really, really helpful. To be able to deal with a company that was doing double glazing but did a very poor job and contested their work, claimed money that they shouldn’t have claimed, and I didn’t know quite how to deal with that. Community law was incredibly helpful at enabling people—we were a young family at the time—to deal with that problem and assist us through a challenging situation.
We know that community law centres are an essential part of meeting the growing access to justice gap that we have, empowering people to resolve their legal issues. We know that the need in this area is growing. It is growing because we have increased poverty in our community; we have people under energy hardship in our community; we have people dealing with disreputable companies who are willing to take whatever money they can get; we have people who are dealing with agencies that are not serving their need in our communities because of this Government’s actions. That’s a problem, so we do need access to legal assistance.
We need to resource community law centres so they’re better able to meet their clients’ needs—their clients, who are the people are suffering or struggling the most in this society now—and restore and their mandate to act in individual cases and engage in more justice sector advocacy.
We were opposed to this bill at the earlier reading because it appeared to usher in a change that would broaden the acceptable use of legal services funding, but as my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan has mentioned, that concern has largely been resolved during the select committee process, and we note that the Community Law Centre has given its support to this bill. As a result, we will support this bill at this point, but we will note that we think that the overuse of urgency is a dangerous, dangerous thing that this Government has engaged in, and we think that the anti-democratic nature of this Government is something that we really do need to address. We need to consider this—it’s a bigger question—so while we certainly do listen and pay attention to our community, we also want to make sure that our community has the ability to input into legislation.
Rather than sitting in urgency, we want to see better time for select committee process—longer time. This bill’s had some time, but we’re sitting in urgency doing the devil’s work with this Government, and we want to make sure that they don’t abuse urgency and give us more time to have the public have input into processes. Thank you. We’ll support this bill.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Mr Speaker, we have Opposition that is crowing about the use of urgency at the same time as saying these are non-controversial bills. Why don’t we clear the Order Paper, get through this quickly, and get on with the work of this House? I commend the bill to the House.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. What a crucial bill for the cost of living of all those Kiwis that are out there right now struggling to put food on the table! I’m sure this bill will make a big difference to people who queue up in the grocery line each week wondering how they’re going to feed their kids or put shoes on their feet!
What this bill does is it identifies that the Legal Services Act 2011 enables the secretary to enter contracts with community law centres to purchase legal services. However, there’s a glitch. Because this provision is narrow, it is really unclear whether community law centres can use money from the special fund to meet the indirect costs they incur when providing services, such as their leases or utilities. The Government has taken it upon itself to sit in urgency—not to help people get a job; not to help people pay for their food; not to help people pay for their mortgage or their rent or even help clothe their kids—to change it so that there’s a small technicality in the Legal Services Act to enable community law centres to access some funding.
I’m saying nothing wrong about community law centres, though. They do an outstanding job in New Zealand. Can we just pause for a moment and take a look at all the good work that they do. They have been substantially underfunded by previous National Governments and have really struggled to be able to provide the free legal advice that they do. I think this will actually go towards paying their leases, potentially. It would have been even better if there was additional money to be able to provide them to function and do all the good work they do. We know that many people struggle to access justice because the funds are prohibitive. Many people want to be able to proceed with legal advice—whether it be family law or other issues, immigration, or employment law—but we know that the ability to pay for a good lawyer is really prohibitive for a lot of New Zealanders. Community law services step into that space and do an excellent job. I’d like to acknowledge the Hutt Valley community law centres. We refer a lot of people to them through both of my offices that operate in Petone and Wainuiōmata, and they provide people with free legal advice in areas where people can’t afford a lawyer and they don’t know what to do next.
What community law services often do is they stipulate special sessions where people can come in and receive expertise and advice about a particular area, whether that be immigration, family, or employment law. They’re special sessions where people can come and access a lawyer. I want to acknowledge those lawyers who do give their time and effort to go and provide that advice. It is warmly received in the community—especially those who are stressing about issues where they don’t fully understand how it’s going to impact upon them and their future and their families and their budget. Having that legal advice accessible to them is incredibly important.
For those reasons, we support the bill, but we don’t think urgency is a particularly good time to be passing legislation like this given that New Zealanders are struggling under a cost of living crisis and that, largely, Christopher Luxon is out of touch and has broken his promises to New Zealanders. He’s cut women’s pay; he’s promised to make the cost of living better, and while families struggle to pay the bills, he’s looking after property speculators and fossil fuel companies and largely abandoned middle New Zealand. But don’t worry, everybody—we’ve now got a technical change to the Legal Services Act so that they can all pay their rent, so, rest assured, help is on its way! I’d also like to say that the Lawyers and Conveyancers’ Special Fund was established back in 1982, and it collects from banks 60 percent of the interest earned on solicitors’ and licensed conveyancers’ nominated trust accounts.
The Justice Committee only wanted one change made to this bill; the commencement date was changed to reflect the fact that 1 July 2025 has already passed—we missed that one. This Government has fallen behind its plans in passing legislation, hence why we’re all sitting here ramming through a whole bunch of stuff at the end of the year, because they couldn’t plan their legislative programme properly. But that’s all right—we can just stay on a Friday and do all the work they didn’t manage to do during the year. We can expect more of that next year as the Government realises that it’s failed to deliver on its promises and it’s running out of time. New Zealanders are beginning to take notice of that, and that’s reflected in our polls right now.
This bill is important for those people who want to access more ability to get to legal services. If your local community law service is struggling to pay the rent, this change will enable them to pay for their lease. In some areas, and I know in Lower Hutt, it’s not easy and cheap to afford rent, so it allows the costs and the functions to be met through the special fund rather than Crown funding. That saves the Crown funding that and funds it through the special fund. It will enable future Crown funding to be reprioritised, and we hope that that does happen. We’re grateful for the fact that this bill, brought in for the use of the Lawyers and Conveyancers’ Special Fund, allows for these expenses in the delivery of community legal services. It’s not explicit in the current legislation that the delivery of community legal services can be paid, and so that’s what this bill is doing.
It’s important that community legal services are funded properly, because they provide that vital role. We think it’s a really important move to do that, but, once again, as I have highlighted, we are really concerned about what the priorities of this Government are. It does highlight that maybe they got their priorities just a bit wrong. If 200 people are leaving New Zealand for Australia every day to find better paying jobs, I wonder if the Government could have a better policy programme to retain New Zealanders here—to provide jobs and to give young people some hope and some training or apprenticeships. All those things would be great things to do to actually give people here in New Zealand some sort of vision about what the Government intends for New Zealand to be like in the next five or ten years. But don’t worry, because Labour’s got that sorted out; we’ll be talking lots about jobs, health, homes, and real action on the cost of living. We do have a vision for New Zealand, and we want it built by New Zealanders for New Zealanders, because that matters.
We want an economy that works for everybody, not just a two-tiered economy that serves some people while the rest of the country is really struggling to be able to make ends meet. That doesn’t seem fair, and it seems, quite frankly, really out of touch. All we hear from the Government is trying to blame the previous Government. As the clock ticks on, people are starting to realise that a lot of the entrenchment and the prolonging of the recession in the economy that we’re seeing now is largely because so many of those big projects around the country got cancelled. Twenty thousand construction workers went overseas, and that’s been a significant reason why prices have continued to go up and why people just don’t have the wages.
The fact that we’ve got this technical change to the Legal Services Act really has no impact whatsoever on all of those pressing issues on New Zealanders right across our lands, who are really wondering and scratching their heads and looking at the current Government to try to find some solutions to these daily issues. It demonstrates that they have no clear understanding of the reality of New Zealanders’ day-to-day lives. Many New Zealanders are out of work; the rates of unemployment in regions such as Gisborne are way up. I think it was like a 70 percent increase in unemployment in places like Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay—huge ones. In particular, the doubling of unemployment for people aged 40 to 44—that’s a big doubling of unemployment rates. Our youth unemployment rate is at 15.2 percent. That’s a huge amount of increase in our young people being unemployed.
The solutions offered—apart from this Legal Services Bill—are that they’re taking the jobseeker benefit away from 18- and 19-year-olds at the same time as cutting funding to apprenticeships and tertiary training. You would think, at a time when they’re taking the jobseeker benefit of 18- and 19-year-olds and when there’s record unemployment in New Zealand, that you would offer some alternatives like training or education or opportunities—but no. We’re consigning everybody to a flight to Australia, because the Government doesn’t really care about the outcomes. At the end of the day, we can all rest assured that the rent in our local community law service’s office will be paid on time because of this bold, forthright, and ambitious bill for the future of New Zealand. I commend it to the House.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. I’m a big fan of community law centres. When I was a law student, one of the first things I did was head along to—well, I studied at Victoria—to the Wellington community law centre and volunteer as a student and then as a lawyer. I used to volunteer on the employment night. As my colleague Ginny Andersen says, many of the sessions are specially focused on particular issues that people have. There was always a line, and there were always a lot of people waiting to see lawyers there.
I really love the community law centre movement because, although in my particular line of work, and doing a lot of employment law work—and I did do a lot of work for trade union members—there will always be a section of the community who, for whatever reason, usually financial reasons, are unable to get assistance in any other way than going to a community law centre. The lawyers at Community Law provide a really invaluable service.
I don't know how much people know about community law centres, but it's not a full service— “we're going to take your case to the Supreme Court”—usually. I think, maybe, there might be a few instances, and my colleague Vanushi Walters, who's much more experienced in community law centre legal provision than I am, can probably think of a few examples of some strategic and important cases that community law centres do. But generally, it's the type of hard work of looking through people's papers, figuring out what their illegal problem is, pointing them in the right direction, and telling them it's going to be OK. It's not glamorous and it usually won't get your name on a reported case, but it will make a big difference for those people. For some of them, it will be the first time they've talked to a lawyer. The work of Community Law is really invaluable.
I think New Zealand should be proud of the fact that, actually, our legal community has got together and decided to support New Zealanders through not only staff in Community Law but also with their trust accounts. You'll know, if you've ever bought or sold a house, when your money goes to your lawyer, it sits in a trust account, and so sometimes, there can be millions of dollars sitting there, of course, earning interest from the bank—60 accumulated of people’s different house transactions, not usually just one house; but of course, that could be also the possibility. Anyway, so a lot of money in trust accounts. The interest goes to funding community law centres—at the moment, it's about 60 percent. This money then goes to fund these community law centres.
I've spoken very positively about the community law movement because it's something that I think is really important and invaluable, and we should support it. My wish is that we support it more than we currently are. It is disappointing to see this bill focus so much on funding but provide no real additional change in the amount of funding that will be provided to community law centres. So as far as I'm aware, this is a clarification; it's a funding fix; and it just clarifies that the practice, as it currently stands, is legal. It's not an additional amount of funding for this very important service. That, on one hand, is disappointing.
The second thing is, if we are going to spend the House's time looking at Community Law, I wish that we were doing something that would actually be improving the situation for Community Law, and this bill doesn't do that. This bill finds an issue, which I think, looking at it, is arguable. I did look at the primary piece of legislation, and I think probably what's happening currently, on my brief reading, is probably OK. I'd be really surprised to find an instance of where someone would challenge that, as Duncan Webb said, they provision of legal services that requires a building, a premises, a photocopier, the lights to be turned on, running water, health and safety to be present there, desks, computers. I would really be surprised if it was—which is what currently happens, and that's funded through this fund—found to be not permissible.
We will support this bill. We'd like to see more support for community law centres, and I'd also like to see greater ambition with the legislative program in front of this House. If this was truly a necessary change, why didn't we look at how we might be able to support community law centres more? Surely there was something additionally that this House could have done to enable them to do their work.
I know everyone around this House who is an MP will have, at some stage—maybe weekly; almost daily—referred their constituents to Community Law. They deserve our assistance; they deserve our support; and I wish this House would do more to support them.
SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is amazing. It supports our community law centres who do great things in the community for people who can’t afford to pay for their own private representation. I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now, of all the bills that we’ve seen come through the House under urgency, this one has to win the prize. This one has to win the prize for the strangest use of urgency to put a bill through the House. Shame on you, Government. But I’ve got to say, I’m at least very happy that you didn’t use urgency and you did let the bill go through to select committee. You know why I’m very happy? Because we got this beautiful quote from Community Law itself that says, “We view legislative change to be unnecessary.” Ha, ha! Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic use of time! So they’re kind of going, “Yeah, OK.” But they don’t see that it’s necessarily. Not only are you passing legislation; this is the second time you’ve put it on a list as being urgent. It is absolutely bizarre, I’ve got to say.
It is a pleasure, though, to speak about Community Law, because I spent almost a decade there as a lawyer, a supervising solicitor, and then managing YouthLaw Aotearoa. So they have a very close place to my heart. I’ll have a lot more to say about that at committee of the whole House stage, of course. But I do think that they play a crucial role—or the role that’s most frequently known is the role their lawyers and student volunteers play—but they do play other roles as well. One of those roles was the first one that I got involved with as a law student when YouthLaw were involved in drafting the shadow or parallel report to the United Nations on New Zealand’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. So YouthLaw is part of an organisation that’s called Children's Rights Alliance Aotearoa. When I was part of it, it was called Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa.
An interesting fun fact: the current Children’s Commissioner was on the board of that organisation as well. That’s the first time I met her. But we travelled to Geneva and we were the civil society delegation who were holding the Government to account to see whether the Government were actually complying with children’s rights. Hon Anne Tolley was leading the Government delegation at the time. So, yes, they play an important role in terms of direct legal services like the provision of advice and representation, but they also look at law reform roles and issues and they also look at broader issues in terms of reporting internationally.
Another interesting fun fact was that in a previous National Government, the National Government decided that they would no longer fund Community Law to do law reform work. So that funding was shifted into other legal services. It’s only with the Labour Government coming back in that that service was restored. It always really appalled me that the then National Government weren’t concerned about the systemic issues that we were identifying by actually talking to people about their issues on the ground—so a really broad based set of services that Community Law provides.
I also wanted to give some examples of the type of legal advice that would be kind of day to day bread and butter work of a community law centre, especially with my former YouthLaw hat on. There were frequent instances when we would provide advice to young people about sexual harassment issues, often in the context of student jobs. They simply just didn’t know where to go and we would be the first contact for them. For young people experiencing family violence issues—on that we’d get calls directly from young people, but also from counsellors and people working with young people.
We’d work on minor criminal matters as well, including where young people were charged with offences. But an interesting thing that I found working in that role is that young people often will go into situations where they’re with a group and will want to defend their friends. So on several occasions we had young people claiming to be the person responsible for things like minor wilful damage while they were out with their friends when, in fact, they weren’t the person who did it. On reflection overnight, a week later, they sat down and thought about it and did want help defending that.
Most of what Community Law were doing at the time when I was there was employment law cases—I think that’s common across the country still. It tells of that huge employment need in that part of the system. But I think one thing we struggled with and the system continues to struggle with this is the delay in actually getting justice when you have an issue in the employment space or, for that matter, if you have what I’d like to call an everyday legal issue where your recourse is with one of our tribunals. I’m sure Government members would be horrified to know that if you wanted to take a privacy case, for example, to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, you could be waiting up to three years to get in front of the tribunal members and to have a decision made. That, of course, is not access to justice. I mention that because we can sort of protect this funding, but then, of course, we need to make sure that the other parts of access to justice are there as well.
On the special fund itself—and others have spoken about the 60/40 balance in terms of what comes to community law centres. The amount—and Dr Duncan Webb has referenced this—that comes from the special fund has fluctuated in the past. So there have been many times when the Ministry of Justice budget has topped up the funding and other times when the special fund could accommodate the entirety of Community Law’s needs. So back in 2019, the total pot of funding going to Community Law was almost $13 million, the amount of the special fund was $10.9 million, so that top up was there. By 2023, we had more than $20 million in the special fund. So you can see how, when the markets are doing particular things, that really can affect special fund funding.
Now, I raise this because I was a little concerned when the Minister who was moving urgency listed this bill and said that it was part of budget savings commitments. Now, I think that’s a problem, because there will be times when the special fund can cover the entirety of Community Law’s funding, but, in truth, as others have said, it doesn’t cover the totality of legal need at the moment. So, in my view, there currently is a need for the Ministry of Justice to be topping up that funding even further. This shouldn’t be—and I hope it’s not—an excuse to say that the ministry will no longer be looking at what the total legal need is. So I am very perplexed at the entry of this bill. That remains by concern that that is not what the Government should be doing.
So I will be seeking assurances during committee stage that the Government understands that its obligation is to look at access to justice across the board. I’ve just made reference to one part of our justice system which isn’t operating as it should. It must then provide the funds to ensure that people can access what they need to.
I would also say, in terms of that slightly arm’s length nature that Community Law have, the special fund funding does give it that. I was troubled when I was at Community Law when we had Ministry of Justice contracts that had a “no surprises” clause in them. From time to time, when we were doing law reform work, I would advise the ministry that we were about to release a paper or come forward with a policy proposal. On one occasion I had a response that said, “Yes, that’s fine with us. Go right ahead.” Of course, that’s not what a ministry should be doing. A “no surprises” clause means that you inform, but there is no permission. That happened under the last National Government as well.
So, again, in committee stage I will be looking to ensure that it’s very clear that the Government understands the independence with which community law centres need to continue to work and that the pot of funding that the special fund is is earmarked for Community Law. While administratively it comes through justice, it is earmarked by statute for Community Law, and therefore protects their independence.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s really a shame to hear that on the other side of the House. They think it's a waste of time to work a few extra hours to give our community law centres access to more funds. We don't think it's a waste of time, and I commend this bill to the House.
SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): I commend this bill to the House.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill.
In Committee
Clause 1 Title
CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is in committee on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. We come now to clause 1. This is the debate on the “Title” clause. The question is that clause 1 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to check with the Minister for the Environment in terms of the title for this bill. Now, it would be no surprise for, I think, anyone in this Chamber to know that I do have an amendment here on the title, but I want to check something with the Minister first. Everyone is clear in terms of the purpose of this bill—we just discussed that in the second reading—but the question is if the term “distribution” is the best term to use for the title, if it actually represents what this bill does. To me, “distribution” is not so much in terms of how it is used, which is what we’re seeing in a later clause, or the circumstances in which the community law centres are able to use it, but more, “distribution” I would assume to be how that could be spread or distributed to other things that’s beyond, potentially, the scope of this bill, or potentially other law community initiatives.
So I wonder if, for example, the Minister would consider my amendment that the “Legal Services (Expenditure of Special Funds) Amendment Bill”, or even “(Usage of Special Fund)”, might actually be a more accurate title that reflects what this bill does. So I’m going to start with that particular question and see if the Minister is able to make any comments on my amendment. I don’t, unfortunately, have a number for the amendment.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan for his generous offer of that amendment, but, no, we won’t be accepting that.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. My question here relates to some of the history of this bill. This begins with legislation that was passed in 2006, and it changed provisions that came before it, where the special fund also potentially funded the Law Foundation, as it was then. Because the special fund wasn't at that stage accumulating sufficient funds, all the funds ended up going to community law centres anyway. And so with the 2006 changes, that was made very clear in terms of the distribution.
So I’m just wondering, really, whether the Minister had considered tying the title to something that related specifically to community law. I could understand if that was not something the Minister wanted to do 10 years ago, because at that stage the community law movement probably wasn't as cohesive as it is today. But certainly with Community Law Centres of Aotearoa Inc. now being well funded and the separate community law centres being extremely well coordinated and operating very much in unison most of the time, I think there's an argument to say that we have currently this excellent model that operates across the country, who are coordinating in terms of their practice, and who, I understand, at one stage looked at how they could ensure that people who work at community law are all paid in a comparable way so that they truly do feel like they're operating as one—whom the public see in the form of the community law manual. So, again it’s seen very much, I believe, as a Government service that people rely on and part of the essential access to justice architecture.
I think it's potentially time that we recognise that this is a part of our legal access to justice architecture that deserves some protection in terms of the allocation of these funds. That will also allow community law to plan, and to grow—in, I think, a quite different way—and to know that not only is the funding for their legal services and support services guaranteed through legislation but that it's guaranteed for the entities that they've set up. I think that that will help them develop further entities.
In recent years they’ve looked to set up Te Ara Ture, or the bridge to law, which is quite a novel concept. It's a legal clearing house—Australia has a similar one—and that matches up pro bono lawyers with legal issues that are coming up in the community. I always thought that was extremely innovative, and so, again, if there was a change to the title that truly reflected the mana which with which we hold community law, then I think that will continue to allow them to take bold steps into access to justice architecture that can more greatly support those who do need legal help.
One thing I've always thought about, given that I specialised in young people and providing them with legal advice, is how we help people who don't know that they have a legal issue. And part of that is the education outreach work that community law centres do. And, again, having that security, by being recognised specifically within legislation, will give community law centres that sense of trust that they need to grow programmes, to outreach to people, and engage with the entities that exist on the ground so that they can outreach and start providing almost pre-advice, if you like, to those people who need it.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just wanting to take a short call on the first clause of the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. This bill, I think, may have an acceptable name, but I think, perhaps, we could improve it, so one of the suggestions that I would make is a change to: “this Act is the ‘Legal Services (Clarification of Use of Special Fund) Amendment Bill’ ”; because that's really what it's doing. It's already being distributed in this way, so it's really a clarification bill. I think if we could get that in there, that would be good.
The other suggestion that I wanted to make was: it is a common thing in other countries to name bills after people that have been significant—
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): This has not been taken—we are still on part—
CAMILLA BELICH: Title.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Oh, sorry. My apologies. Carry on.
CAMILLA BELICH: That’s fine, Mr Chair. In other countries, often, famous people who are associated with particular movements are named in bills, and you'll often see that in America, for example—you might see bills that were brought because of a particular person or to solve a particular issue being named after that person. That's not a practice I've seen in New Zealand. I don't know why that is, and I don't know if there's a good reason—maybe the Minister could clarify.
But when I was researching the history of the community law centre, this is something that's been around in New Zealand since the 1970s. As I understand, the first community law centre was founded in Grey Lynn, and one of the key people who was involved in the foundation of the community law movement, and who actually set up the Citizens Advice Bureau in Auckland as well, was an incredible man called Robert Ludbrook. He actually passed away only last year. I seriously think that a nice thing, when we do pass bills that are so closely associated with the contributions of people, to honour those people, would be to consider putting them in the title clause. That’s a suggestion made in good faith, and it was very interesting for me to learn about the origins of Community Law and how it came about. Like many things in our community, it's something that people saw a need for. Obviously, in Robert Ludbrook’s particular situation, I think he actually received a Queen's or King's honour—not sure which exact date he received it on—but it was recognition for his service to doing this type of work: recognising that there was a need for Citizens Advice Bureaus and also for community law centres.
This, I suppose, is more aligned with a bill, hopefully, with slightly more aspiration for the community law service provision in New Zealand. I think, maybe, if we did start maybe naming bills after very important New Zealanders, like this man, then we would maybe start to get some slightly more aspirational legislation through—and so that's a suggestion.
But technical suggestions: go one way—look at it in relation to clarification of use, which is actually what it does, or have a more aspirational title which actually recognises the mana, the history, and the important figures that were involved in setting up Community Law in New Zealand.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Oh, thank you, Mr Chair. I just will have a brief mention on clause 1. The reason I want to do that is because a little later on I’ll be proposing an amendment which seeks to make sure that transactions already entered into can’t be revisited. So that would then make this not only about the distribution of the special fund, but it would also make it a validation bill. It is common—we’ve seen in this House on a number of occasions, bills which have validation in the title, which, essentially, is a backward looking thing. It's one of those “for the avoidance of doubt” things for clarity. Of course, our view is that it’s not needed, but the Government’s view is that this is needed. I’m perplexed as to why they haven’t addressed the validation problem. If they think that contacts have been entered into outside of the permitted phrase within the Act, then validation is absolutely needed.
So my view is that this bill should be—
Cameron Luxton: Hold on!
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Sorry? Are you going to take a call?
Cameron Luxton: No, no. I was just excited to hear what your title was going to be!
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Oh, thanks. Oh, yeah, well, it’s good to know. I’m excited as well. It’s exciting times here in Parliament!
So I think we should just call it the “Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund and Validation of Contracts) Amendment Bill”. Because, if we’re not going to go large and follow the advice of Camilla Belich, which is to identify in the bill the name of some of the doyens of the community law services—and the fact that in Grey Lynn it was established in 1978. I mean, I think it would be a great thing to do that, but, if not, “Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund and Validation of Contracts) Amendment Bill”. Let’s do it.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 1 replacing the word “distribution” with “expenditure” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 Commencement
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come to clause 2, the debate on the commencement of the bill. The question is that clause 2 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair, I’ll just take a short call on this. Really, about the commencement, there’s a couple of things that crop up. One is that, when you’re talking about contracting and you’re actually creating a new contracting framework, you might want to just give a little bit of breathing space. It is, essentially, if the Government’s correct in its legal analysis, changing the legislative authority for contracting, and there might be contracts out there, or contracts that are about to be signed, which actually use the wording of the original legislation rather than the amended legislation. Even if it was a week or two weeks, I would have thought that’d be useful.
Again, the other thing is that we on this side of the Chamber don’t usually like retrospectivity, but this might be one of those cases where the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee would note that it’s actually in everyone’s favour, and it disadvantages no one, to have a retrospective element, which, essentially, would mean commencement before the Act is passed. That would be an unusual way to do it, having a commencement which was before the Act was passed, but that would be the other way around it: to say, well, this framework has been in place, in fact, I think, since the Law Practitioners Act, so you could actually have a commencement going back to 1986 just to make sure that these contracts are all properly enforced. There’s a few thoughts on commencement.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to ask the Minister of Justice some questions around commencement, but from a different angle from the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. Now, the committee is understanding that this bill was first brought to the House under urgency. When it was brought under urgency in May, it was only under urgency for the first reading, so, naturally, it would have gone to a select committee process. Considering there wasn’t any referral motion that was being brought to the House, at a minimum the select committee process would have been for four months. I wanted to check, in that case, what was the original intention of having the commencement date on 1 July 2025?
Now, my only assumption back then was that it was because of the fact that it aligns with the Government Budget, because the bill was introduced under Budget urgency, but now, because we’re now long past 1 July 2025, the commencement date has been adjusted by the select committee as the day after Royal assent. I think the question still remains, which we weren’t able to tease out in the Justice Committee, which is: considering this is going to go to a select committee anyway, why have a retrospective date in the first place?
Granted, I think the day after Royal assent makes sense, but I think the caveat that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb mentioned is an important one. I guess, when we’re looking at this, if the original date was 1 July 2025 and now it’s the day after Royal assent—let’s assume it is Monday, or tomorrow if the Governor-General is available on Saturday; I don’t know—what then would happen to this particular area? I want to check with the Minister if anything has changed or if there were any effects that would change.
Again, we have mentioned the fact that the bill was introduced in the House under urgency, and now we’re reading it under urgency, so there must be a level of urgency that is involved in this. There must have been some form of impact or effect that the Government may be aware of that we are not aware of, between July and November.
Those are my two questions: what is the intention originally of the original date, noting that the report-back date was beyond 1 July; and also, then, what is the impact of this bill not passing on 1 July 2025, and now here in November?
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just go back here to the question that I raised in the second reading, which is: why is this bill commencing? I’m really just trying to identify the problem here. I have the Community Law Aotearoa submission to the Justice Committee in front of me, and paragraphs 3 and 4 of that, I think, speak to precisely why this bill is not needed—and I don’t even mean under urgency; I mean at all.
I just want to read that because I would like to hear the Minister of Justice’s response, in particular to Community Law’s submission. They say that they view legislative change to be unnecessary. “The Bill appears to be intended to clarify a perceived ambiguity that use of the Special Fund and/or contracts for community legal services may not include functions that enable, facilitate or support the provision of community legal services, such as administrative and management staff. CLCA’s view is that the law already allows contracts to include these matters.
“Section 298 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act sets out the purposes for which the Special Fund can be used (funding community law centres). The Bill does not change section 298. Our view is that ‘funding of community law centres’ includes functions that enable, facilitate or support the provision of community legal services. Section 94(1) of the Legal Services Act governs the content of contracts between the Secretary and community law centres. In our view, section 94(1) already allows the Secretary to fund functions that enable, facilitate or support the provision of community legal services as a necessary part of ‘purchas[ing] community legal services’.”
There’s a very clear view there. There’s a very clear view there from a group of lawyers as well. Again, why is this bill commencing? Why is this bill commencing under urgency? It remains, to me, very unclear.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Mr Chair, I just want to, I guess, seek your guidance. The Hon Dr Duncan Webb, Vanushi Walters, and myself have asked the Minister a number of questions that require clarification from the Minister, and the Minister has not responded to any of our questions thus far. I want to seek your clarification—understanding that the Minister is not the Minister who is responsible for the bill but that officials are there and are available—if the Chair would allow for the Minister to respond to a previous clause’s question if the clause completes and we move on to a new clause. I just want to check if that’s something that would be acceptable.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): That’s a fair enough question. There are a number of issues that come in when considering a closure: repetition, new material, and ministerial participation. While questions are still coming from one side of the committee, it’s hard to think there would be a closure without any ministerial participation at all, but I’ll leave that to the parties to decide. Minister, Hon Penny—
Hon Penny Simmonds: Simmonds.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): —Simmonds.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment): Thank you, Mr Chair, I will respond. The Government sought advice from Crown Law, and, after considering the advice, the Government decided that it would be preferable to have the law clarified. The Government acts responsibly when it gets that advice from Crown Law. Obviously, Community Law Centres Aotearoa’s advice is not the Government’s advice. The bill was originally intended to be considered for the start of the new financial year, but, obviously, it moved on and had the select committee process, and the Justice Committee’s report gave the amendment for, as has been noted, the commencement date to be the day after Royal assent.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): 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 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Motion agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 Principal Act
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to clause 3, the debate on the principal Act. The question is that clause 3 stand part.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Look, there’s so much to talk about in clause 3. Of course, clause 3 identifies the principal Act—the Legal Services Act 2011—and says, “This Act amends the Legal Services Act”. Of course, on this side of the House we don’t think it does.
We don’t think it amends the Legal Services Act at all. It just says the blindingly and bleatingly obvious—namely, that when you enter into a contract with a community law centre, that contract can be not only for community legal services but also for funding, facilitating, and otherwise supporting the provision of community legal services. I think that it should just say: “This Act relates to the Legal Services Act 2011.”, because that’s all it really does. It doesn’t actually change anything. It sort of just waves vaguely in the direction of the Legal Services Act and says, “Why don’t we just add some unnecessary and largely meaningless words to it?”
I think let’s call it: “This Act relates to”. Actually, you could probably do better than that: “This Act unnecessarily points towards and vaguely changes the Legal Services Act.” If this Government wants to waste taxpayer money on legislation like this, so be it. Let’s say it. Maybe that’s what it should say somewhere.
We passed the title clause; we could have put a wasting money and time title, but we won’t do that. We won’t do that; there you go. Let’s say that the Act does what, in fact, it does: just sort of vaguely points towards and adds some unnecessary words to the Legal Service Act 2011.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I do have a question for clause 3, the principal Act. As the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, articulated, this bill assumes an amendment to the Legal Services Act, but I actually don’t want to talk about the use of the verb here but talk specifically in terms of the Legal Services Act itself—noting that, in the Legal Services Act, the section pertaining to the community law centre is sections 93 to 96. Indeed, in the next, subsequent clause—we’ll get to it soon—we are amending section 94.
However, what is interesting is where the section that relates to community law centres sits. It sits under Part 3 of the Legal Services Act 2011, which is the administration of legal service systems. The issue then comes to the fact that, when you are looking at the other parts of Part 3—for example, “Function of Secretary for Justice and Legal Service Commissioner” is Subpart 1; “Quality assurance systems for providers” is Subpart 2—it doesn’t relate to the context and the detail of some of the elements that we see in sections 93 and 96. For example, in section 93, immediately preceding the section that we are amending in this bill, it talks about the definition of the community law centre.
I want to check with the Minister of Justice, then: if that is the case, when this bill was first considered and introduced, why wasn’t there a broader consideration of potentially reshuffling or moving around some of the sections of the community law centre, potentially into another part or as a separate and distinct part—as you see in some of the earlier parts with legal aid—so that it stands alone as its individual part?
Now, the other reason that I’m suggesting—and again, this then potentially would have allayed the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s, I guess, reminder—that this bill in itself is not necessarily the most substantial bill, but I’m just suggesting that there could have been other things that could have been done that packaged things together. If there was any consideration of the Minister that other parts of it were considered to be separated out, also considering that the special fund element only relates to this part, which means that there is a special place of this part—so I think that the legal services or the community law centre aspect should deserve its own sections. That’s my second question: whether the Minister or the officials ever considered having, rather than this being a Subpart 3 of Part 3, to have to be a standalone part within the Legal Services Act 2011.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m going to stand to make a similar but different point to Dr Duncan Webb, which is that, yes, while this on its face says that it amends the Legal Services Act, in fact, the change that the Government want to make doesn’t. The way in which the Government have worded this change amends it, in my view, for the worst—for the worst.
Maybe you can get away with saying that you do amend the Act, but I think the language used in the amendment actually adds a level of unclarity, and therefore I hope that, in the next part, when I speak to the amendments that I’m proposing, the Government will accept those amendments to actually make the law clear. In which case, we go back to Duncan Webb’s argument that it’s not needed because the Act already says that.
It is very perplexing, once again, why the Government believe that this is truly an amendment that changes the law and, again, why it was needed. The advice from the Minister is that Crown Law said that clarity would be useful. I’m a little bit puzzled as to whether there are other circumstances at play in terms of Crown Law’s advice that the committee isn’t aware of. It just seems to me to be—I mean, with any Government you, of course, have to prioritise what you’re doing. There will be times when there is law that should be tweaked or clarified.
I spoke to Geoffrey Palmer the other day, who said to me there’s a—[Interruption] Let me tell you about that conversation. He said to me there’s a whole host of legislation—[Interruption] Oh, I can’t believe you don’t want to hear what Sir Geoffrey said.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I can’t hear the member speaking, so that means it’s too noisy.
VANUSHI WALTERS: He said to me that there is a whole host of legislation, both primary and secondary, on the book that really ought to be repealed—not even tweaked, but actually repealed—because it simply doesn’t apply to modern New Zealand. His view was that a good way for a Government to spend time, if you were serious about clarifying the law, would be to ask the Law Commission to undertake a project where they assess past primary legislation and secondary legislation and recommend repeals or updates. You could have the equivalent of kind of the slab bill which we dealt with in the last Parliament, but it would be a mass repeals bill that would really tidy up and clarify the law.
Now, that’s a good way to spend one’s time. The question is: why look at this one on its own and make a tweak which is unnecessary? Again, it really does seem very unusual, and I’m looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response to both that as well as to Sir Geoffrey’s suggestion.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): While I acknowledge that a number of members of the Opposition consider their advice to the Government might be superior to that of Crown Law, the Government did, in fact, seek advice from Crown Law and, after considering that advice, decided that it would be preferable to make this clarification with this amendment.
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I just have a very short question—just to acknowledge the fact that I thank you for your engagement, Minister, but if you wouldn’t mind responding to my question as well, that would be greatly appreciated.
Just further on, in terms of the question that I had, I guess the reason I’ve asked if the Minister has considered taking this particular part out of a subpart of Part 3, under the “Administration of legal services system”, and into this undistinctive part—very similar to Part 2, “Legal Aid”—is because the concern that I will have then is whether we're still going to be looking at the Special Fund being able to be ring-fenced for the use of the community law centre or whether it will also be looking at being used by other parts of Part 3 or other aspects of the legal services system, like the surveyor or assurers that I mentioned before.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): In answer to the earlier question from that member, I will note that the Government sought the advice from Crown Law, took note of the advice from Crown Law, gave it consideration, and came up with this amendment from it. This is the amendment that we chose.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): 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 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Motion agreed to.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 Section 94 amended (Secretary may enter into contracts with community law centres)
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, we come now to our final debate. This is the debate on the amendment to section 94, “Secretary may enter into contracts with community law centres”. The scope of this bill is very narrow and is focused on the entering into of contracts with community law centres. Therefore, I’m ruling Vanushi Walters’ amendment for the secretary to consider the need for culturally appropriate services when contracting for community legal services, while within the scope of the bill, should be debated within this clause for debate, because it is better considered as a new subsection (2) to section 94.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve been looking forward to debating clause 4 and speaking to my amendments. We will turn to the first one. I made the point in the last clause that my sense was that, actually, the amendments made things less clear, rather than clarifying, so hopefully these amendments will be received well by the Minister for the Environment. The first one is in clause 4, replace new section 94(1)(a) with “(a) purchase community legal services and/or”. The current clause has “(a) purchase community legal services:”—little colon—
Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Should that be a semicolon?
VANUSHI WALTERS: Ha, ha! And then it’s got (b). What that might mean in practice is that, for contracts to comply with the Act, there would need to be two separate contracts, depending on whether community legal services were being contracted for or whether services to fund, facilitate, or otherwise support the provision of community legal services was being accommodated for.
If the argument is that this is about contracts for a community law centre on the ground and what we’re wanting to do is cover some of their background support costs, etc., then I think what we absolutely would need—for clarity’s sake, given that is what this bill is claiming to do—is to just adopt that little “and/or” to make sure we are clarifying this and make sure we don’t need to come back and use another urgency session to add “and/or” maybe in a couple of weeks’ time. This is getting so comical that I really couldn’t put it past this Government to do something like that. Please, to the Minister, would she please consider doing that? I believe that that was a recommendation from the Law Society—another very capable group of lawyers. They saw that the intention was for this bill to bring about a whole lot of clarity, and they’ve helped us out with that suggestion. I’ve put it in an amendment, and I think that that would be prudent for the Minister to accept.
Now, the only reason why you would leave it as-is is if the intention was not to cover that gap of community law centres on the ground, but the intention was to ensure that support services of a different kind were being covered and that those support services exist in a different contract. What I’m thinking, essentially, is a body like Community Law Centres Aotearoa, for example, who may or may not be engaged in direct legal services but who certainly coordinate and provide support and ensure that there’s coordination between the different community law centres—if the intent was to cover those in separate contracts, then I can absolutely see that you would want to keep them separate. But, from what the Minister has said thus far and from what I’ve seen in the papers, that’s not the intent. The intent is to cover community law centre contracts on the ground. This is centres like YouthLaw; this is centres like Māngere. Māngere, interestingly, has a lot of history as one of the earliest community law centres as well. I understand David Lange was quite involved. He was the MP for Māngere at the time and was very involved in the setting up of that community law centre. I don’t think they could have imagined the impact and the coordination that community law centres now have across the country.
Initially, when they were set up, it wasn’t a Government initiative to set up community law centres across the country in a kind of fair and equitable way. They arose because individual advocates were advocating for those centres from the ground up. Contracts were quite different. Again, the way they started, a lot of it was direct legal services - heavy, and then that administration across community law centres really grew in the background.
I’ve only managed to just speak to my first amendment and I have two more. As you’ve indicated, the third has been more suitable to address in this clause, so I really would like to continue and I will be seeking the call to do that.
Also on Māngere, I would also say that Judge Becroft, our former Children’s Commissioner, was highly involved not only in setting up Māngere but actually also in setting up YouthLaw. If you look at the history of community law centres, you’ll find that there’s a string of similar people who set up those first initial community law centres who then went on to seed other community law centres as well, and Judge Becroft is one of those people who, of course, along with Robert Ludbrook, then set up YouthLaw. I knew Robert very well and had the sad but—Robert passed not long ago. Well, it’s probably last year now, but I attended his funeral. It was extraordinary the reach that he had in terms of community law, but also into other parts of the voluntary legal advice sector. There were older members of the Black Panthers there as well, who talked about how Robert had been pivotal in terms of providing advice to them.
This idea of providing free legal services sprung out of lawyers just kind of doing it. Then the architecture came up in response to grassroots contracts that were negotiated with then the Legal Service Agency. You can see how administration was really at the back of everyone’s minds. Again, I think if we’re going to get it right this time in terms of those support services, let’s do it right. I do hope the Minister agrees with that first proposal. Moving to the second proposal.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): And probably the third one in this.
VANUSHI WALTERS: Moving to the second one, which is also on clause 4, this one is to replace new section 94(1)(b) with language that says, “fund matters that enable, facilitate, and otherwise support the provision of community legal services”. This one was a suggestion directly from Community Law, because they didn’t believe that the language the Government had adopted was clear. Again, this is just comical.
Again, you’ve got a proposal from—sorry, it was a proposal from the Parliamentary Counsel Office in response to what Community Law had said at the Justice Committee. So you’ve got a proposal directly from the entity who you’re trying to help out, you’re trying to clarify the scope of their role, and they’ve gone, “Here’s what we’d like you to say.” You have Parliamentary Counsel Office who draft the language for that. It seems a little odd to me that we wouldn’t then include it within the bill. Again, I would say we don’t want to be here, back in urgency, doing this again for clarity’s sake.
The last amendment tabled is what I had proposed would be a new clause 5, but on the instructions of the Chair, I understand that it would be more suited to be included as part of clause 4. I’m happy for that to be the case. That is to insert a new section that “the Secretary must consider culturally appropriate services when contracting for community legal services.” It further says that “when exercising the power under section 94(1), the Secretary must consider the need for community legal services that are culturally appropriate for all parts of New Zealand society, including kaupapa Māori services.” Community Law has, since I was there, before I was there, and post, had kaupapa Māori community legal services with increasing growth. This is just an ask that we embed that within the statute to recognise that it is incredibly important that that’s explicitly there.
Many years ago, community law centres were told by the former National Government that there would be potentially many fewer community law centres. It created this sense of competition for contracts, which I think really disadvantaged the sector. Eventually, we moved past that and there was a lot more cooperation, in my view, under a Labour Government. But, again, I think, when you have statutory direction about what is protected and what the expectations are, then it makes for a sector who can cooperate and plan together much more effectively. Thank you.
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): I note and acknowledge the suggested proposed amendments from the member. I can clarify for the member that the current drafting denotes that contracts can be made for either or both of the purposes stated in the new section 94(1)(a) and (b). The proposed amendments from the member aren’t necessary. Thank you.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Chair. I have, actually, a really quite important question, and then I have a request. The question I have is: has the Minister or her officials turned their mind to the validity of pre-existing contracts? Now, I have an tabled amendment—which I think is on the Table; certainly, it’s been delivered to the Clerks—which proposes, in clause 4, adding the following new subsection which would say: “all contracts entered into by the secretary to fund, facilitate, and in other ways support the provision of legal services are valid regardless of when they were entered into and, in particular, whether or not they were entered into prior to section 94(1)(b) coming into force”.
If this is a tidy-up, which you’re saying it is, and there are contracts out there—because the problem is, as I understand it, and I was talking to my colleague Camilla Belich about this a moment ago, “legal services” is defined in the Act, and it’s defined, arguably, relatively narrowly. There’s an assumption, if you use the word “legal services” when you’re talking about contracting, that you’re using the defined term. There’s exceptions to that, but that’s the general interpretive approach. If you’ve done that and you’ve entered into these contracts and the money’s been spent on support services and professional development and all these other things, then there’s a question about whether the money was actually spent in breach of the contracts, because they were for legal services. That’s the first thing, and I’d really appreciate if the Minister could let us know—perhaps take some advice and say, “No, there is no problem”, or “There is a problem, but we don’t care about it”, or “There is a problem and we can expect another bill to fix that very shortly.”
The second question is this—because you’ve got Community Law Centres of Aotearoa saying that, in fact, this bill’s not necessary on their reading of the law; you’ve got the New Zealand Law Society saying, as I understand it, pretty much the same thing, and they’re happy to provide the illegal reasoning; but you’ve got a bit of a black box when it comes to Crown Law advice. We’re all scratching our heads thinking, “Well, they’re seeing something we can’t see.” For something as innocuous as whether this amendment in clause 4 is needed, it will be really useful to provide the Crown Law advice. For something like this, it’s not top secret; it’s not some big issue. It’s just, “Well, we’ve got to this position for the following reasons.” It would be really nice to see that—because, although I accept that my feeble mind isn’t up to the might of Crown Law, some of my colleagues are pretty clever, and I respect the Law Society and Community Law Centres of Aotearoa to get it right. At the moment, Crown Law’s the outlier here. It’d be great to see their advice.
That’s two questions. Certainly, the first one is important: do existing contracts breach this legislation; and, if so, what’s being done about it? The second is: can we have a squiz—a bit of a gander—at the Crown Law advice?
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): To answer Dr Webb’s questions from his multichoice that he gave me, there is no problem; the contracts remain valid. To your second question, no.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to seek the Minister’s guidance or support on one of my amendments to the bill. This is an amendment that is dated 4.36.01.
Essentially, the current wording of section 94(1)(b), inserted by clause 4 of the bill, states: “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support the provision of community legal services.” As some of the other members have mentioned, how it interacts with what is now section 94(1)(a), inserted by clause 4 of the bill, is it has a lot of comparables. My amendment over here clarifies—and this is, again, a recommendation by a submitter and particularly by the Community Law Centre Aotearoa, who deal with this every day, and they are one half of this contractual agreement—that rather than saying “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support the provision of community legal services”, it’s better to say the words: “fund functions that enable, facilitate, or support the provision of community legal services”.
I think the idea that the function aspect of this particular section is incredibly important. Otherwise what you are seeing is that the Secretary for Justice, in fact, then is logged into a contractual obligation to not just fund but also facilitate and support provisions of community legal services. I don’t know if it’s the intention of the Secretary to also facilitate such provisions. Again, when we are looking at something like this, we’ve got three consecutive verbs with a very nice use of an Oxford comma, but, again, I don’t think that is the intention of this bill. My recommendation is to clarify that the secretary is only funding the function, and the facilitation of the support of the provision of the community legal service remains with Community Law Centre Aotearoa. I want to seek the Minister’s guidance on whether she will support my amendment.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just a short call from me, really, in response to some of the comments that the Minister has made in response to Dr Duncan Webb’s issue that he raised. The Minister—and you can correct me if this is incorrect—seemed to say that there’s no problem with the contracts and that they remain in place. If that is the case, then what is the purpose of this bill? As I understand it, the entire purpose of this bill is to secure the contractual arrangements moving forward. Dr Duncan Webb’s question was: if that’s correct, then surely we should ensure that the previous spending on contracts is also not going to be affected by the fact that this change allegedly needs to be made?
I think it’s made in good faith; it’s a helpful suggestion. If there is genuinely an issue with previous funding, then something should be done to ensure that that funding isn’t challenged or that the contractual arrangements that happened in the past were made in a way that was consistent with the law. If it wasn’t, then that’s problematic, and if what the Minister said is correct, then why are we making this change?
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): 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 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 4 amending paragraph (a) is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 4 amending paragraph (b) is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 4 amending paragraph (b) of section 94(1) is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.
The question is that Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s tabled amendment to clause 4 inserting new subsection (1A) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment regarding the need for culturally appropriate services be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 48
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Bill to be reported without amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for third reading immediately.
Third Reading
Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
This bill amends the Legal Services Act 2011 to broaden the use of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Special Fund. Money in the special fund must be paid to the Secretary for Justice for the purpose of funding community law centres. The special fund serves an important role to ensure that people can access free legal help in the community. However, there is ambiguity around whether special fund money can be used to meet expenses incurred by community law centres when delivering community law services. This is because the current law is narrowly framed.
This bill makes a minor change to broaden the use of the special fund. This will enable the Secretary for Justice to enter into contracts to also fund, facilitate, and otherwise support the provision of community legal services by community law centres. It is important to support the long-term funding of organisations that deliver community legal services and ensure people are able to access the legal help they need.
To conclude, I’d like to thank members for their support of this bill. 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): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a momentous day it is as we add 12 words to the Legal Services Act! We’ve made our position clear: we’re not going to stand in the way of this bill passing—well, not for very long anyway—because community law centres are really important.
I must say it’s good to know that there’s cross-party support for the continued existence—and hopefully the flourishing—of our community law network, because, as the Minister pointed out and other members have observed, community law centres fill a really important gap in access to justice. Access to justice is essential to the rule of law, and the ability to not only go to court—which is only one aspect of access to justice—but also just to know your rights and also to know how you can sort your stuff out in a legal sense is actually really, really important.
To a large part, it’s that second aspect that community law centres fill. They are able to talk to people and say, “Well, look, we think you’re in the right”, or “You’re in the wrong”, or “There’s some middle ground”—but also navigating how then to vindicate those rights. Many a time people say, “I want to go to court and sue”, and so on, and, look, maybe that’s the right course, but many a time there’s another way, whether it be through an alternative tribunal, one of our many ombudsman dispute resolution schemes, or the disputes tribunal.
That kind of information and just that helping hand—because, I can remember, I both used to volunteer at the community law centre, I used to be a supervising solicitor at the community law centre, and I’ve sat on the board of a community law centre. Quite often, people might think their issues are trivial—“I’ve bought this appliance, this washing machine, for $600 and it’s broken.” Now, for some of us, that would not be a particularly troubling thing, but for other people in the community, that is catastrophic because the weekly surplus that they have is so small that that sets them back in a very significant way. To be able to sit down and say, “Well, look, that retailer might have given you the brush off, but the first step is to go back to the retailer and let them know a few things.”—the first thing you need to let them know is that you’ve clearly taken some advice, just on the lowdown. The second thing is that you know what your rights are; that you can’t simply be told, “Well, it’s two years old, so it’s out of warranty.” The third thing is to let them know that, if you don’t get satisfaction there, you know where to go next.
Nine times out of 10, equipping an ordinary New Zealander with those three facts will be more than enough to solve their problem. All of a sudden, the person at the counter doesn’t dismiss them out of hand; they go and get their manager and their manager knows that there’s a thing called the Consumer Guarantees Act. That is really empowering, so our community law centres do need to be funded properly. The Canterbury community law centre does a great job down there in Christchurch, but one of the things that is really important—and perhaps this bill will make sure continues—is making sure those lawyers stay up to date and they’re well resourced. Recently, I know they went through and reviewed all their salaries to make sure they’re paid on a scale which was not derisory—which arguably had been the case—and also to make sure they get further education so that, when the law does change, they can make sure they’re giving up-to-date law; and also that they have all the research tools they need, that they can go online and look at the legal commentaries and the statutes and so on and so forth, which will cost money.
If that’s what this bill does, all well and good. We think it was probably the case anyway, but we’ve been told it’s not, so that’s why we’ll be supporting this bill further in this House. I mean, if you think about it—and there is that problem: I’m disappointed that, in the committee of the whole House, the Minister in the chair, the Hon Penny Simmonds, didn’t really give a great deal of comfort as to contracts which were already extant. It may be that the Crown Law advice that she won’t let us see says that this doesn’t affect existing contractual arrangements, but there is a question about that. The definition of “legal services” in the Legal Services Act is a little bit narrower. I had thought that it was relating to the lawyers and conveyancers definition, which is a very broad definition. It, essentially, says what services are regulated services, and legal services there can be all kinds of services, but a slightly narrower definition, I think, in the Legal Services Act.
Look, it’s a piece of legislation which is saying it’s necessary, but again, I just want to really make sure that, across all parties, we ensure that the special fund that this bill talks about is properly resourced. One of the things which has happened recently is that interest rates have been relatively high. We can talk about that in other contexts later, but one of the upsides of that is that the money going into the special fund has actually been pretty good. We were in a very low-interest environment; the Government actually—and it was the Labour Government that did it—had to top up the special fund. That hasn’t been necessary recently, but it’s perfectly possible that, as interest rates do go up and down, that will need to happen again. It’s good to see that, from what I have heard in the relatively short speeches from the other side, there is a commitment to ensuring that lower-income people do get free legal services, and therefore I’m inferring they will be properly funded.
Of course, the other thing is that it’s not just low-income people. Community law centres generally have an open-door policy. Community law centres don’t tend to seek as customers middle-class and wealthy people who can get their own legal advice and pay for it, but they also come in, particularly in the kinds of clinics that they have where you can have a drop in and ask a few quick questions. It’s not just low- and super-low - income people; it’s a wide range of people that come in.
Also, just recognising that, in terms of early intervention, the work the community law centres do in the family space is really, really good, because when people break up and have property issues and care of child and children issues, getting to sort that out at an early stage, before it gets tangled and acrimonious, can be a really, really useful thing. What perhaps we don’t understand is that, many a time, people split up and no lawyer sees it—often ever—but that’s not a good outcome sometimes for the children in particular in the relationship, because it’s always better to have some kind of structure around how that child is cared for; how the child is funded, right? Child support either within the IRD system or outside of it is an important part, and our community law centres funded through the special fund are a really good part of that. I’m sorry if I’m boring you Vanessa Weenink, but, you know—
Rima Nakhle: No, no. You’re not boring us. Not at all.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Wakey, wakey. It’s been a long day. I must say the other thing that we need to address about the special fund is the proportion of it that goes to community law centres, in terms of the interest on trust accounts, whether it remains appropriate that banks keep 40 percent of the interest on trust accounts. You’ve got to remember that’s clients’ money. The general rule should be it go back to the client, but, in this case, the legislature has intervened and said, “Let’s use it for community law centres”—and then said—“and let the banks keep 40 percent of it.” That’s a pretty significant share. As I think I said earlier, perhaps in the second reading, that’s about $10 million of interest that would go to clients or the special fund that the banks are getting. I mean, of those three people—clients, poor people needing legal services, and banks—I know where I think it should go, and I know the least deserving of it. But there you go; that’s something we can address on another occasion.
This is a bill that’s not urgent, that could have gone in a statutes amendment bill, that’s probably unnecessary and doesn’t address all of the problems it needs to address, but we’re generous people on this side of the House; we’ll probably support it anyway.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7 p.m.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Good evening, members. When we broke for the dinner break, we were debating the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. We are up to call No. 3 in the third reading; it's a Green Party call.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill in its third reading. As I've mentioned in my second reading speech, this is a bill that was originally introduced under Budget urgency, and it was something we opposed initially but, through a very thorough select committee stage as well as engagement with the submitters, we have now supported this bill.
This bill was something that we did go through in the select committee stage, and I want to just highlight some of the key points during the committee stage that deserve some attention on this bill. Understandably, this is a small bill—only four clauses—yet we were able to have a good discussion on each of the clauses. I think, particularly, let's start with clause 1 from a title perspective; we did have quite a robust conversation around the title. I would really like to thank the member Camilla Belich, in particular, as well as Vanushi Walters, who gave a very good and an insightful history of the context of Community Law Centres of Aotearoa that brings this bill to us. It's now been wrapped into the Legal Services Act 2011.
It is unfortunate that the Minister did not take on board my title amendment, and the main reason for that is because the main reason I'm putting the amendment is because I do believe that “distribution”, in this case, is not the appropriate word to use. I think it might have been the member Camilla Belich’s suggestion that “clarification of distribution of special fund” would have been much more insightful, or “clarification of special fund”, because it simply is not actually to do with the distribution of the fund itself. In that sense, the title can be interpreted as a little bit misleading.
In terms of the commencement date, we saw that the commencement date has changed: it's now the day after Royal assent. The original commencement date is 1 July 2025. There is a level of significance because, as I mentioned, this is a bill that was introduced under urgency in May, but only the first reading was introduced under urgency, and there was no motion that had been brought to the House at the time that it was going to have a shortened select committee stage. It was a question that we raised with the Minister—we weren't able to get that in select committee, but it was a question we raised with the Minister during the committee stage—on how they're intending to have this bill and this Act come into force on the 1 July 2025, when they were still in the process of the select committee.
But also, at the same time, members asked the Minister questions around whether, between 1 July 2025—considering that it was introduced under Budget urgency; therefore, understandably, there will be some Budget implications—but considering that, with the Budget implications, what has changed, if anything, and what impact does it have to the Government or to the implementation or the commencement of this bill now that, even after Royal assent, you're looking at a four-and-a-half month delay in terms of the commencement, and whether there's any significant issues.
Then we moved on to the principal Act of this bill, and that is clause 3. I think this is the area that we did spend a little bit of time on during the committee stage. It's important to highlight the fact that this bill—and I'll talk more about clause 4—but this bill is a very small bill that could have been wrapped into the Statutes Amendment Bill, which was something that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has mentioned, but instead it's being introduced as a separate bill. We did check with the Minister to see if it was going to be wrapped into its individual bill that that deserves a select committee process and everything separate, beyond what we see in the Statutes Amendment Bill; whether there has been any thoughts about wrapping in other things from the Legal Services Act into it as part of a package, particularly when we are looking at the fact that the community law centres part of the Legal Services Act—it occupies Subpart 3 of Part 3, “Administration of legal services system”, specifically sections 93 to 96, and section 94 is what's being amended here—whether there's been any consideration on expanding the scope and potentially looking at separating out the community law centres into its own part within the Legal Services Act.
The rationale for that is—well, there are two reasons for that. Number one is, in terms of sections 93 to 96 on community law centres, it doesn't necessarily fit nicely under the definition of “Administration of legal service system” , similar to other subparts of that Part 3 of the principal Act. But also, other legal service providers—legal aid, for example—have their own section: it's Part 2 of the Legal Services Act. If legal aid has its own section, then presumably there is a possibility that community law centres should also have its own section within that particular Act. But also, another important part is that this particular bill deals with special fund, and “special fund” in principal legislation is only applicable to community law centres. By embedding it as a subpart of a major part, questions were raised on whether that is going to mean expanding, or whether we're still going to be able to maintain the integrity of the ring-fencing of that particular fund within that particular subpart.
Finally, the crux of the bill is clause 4, which has the most significant amendment. Now, this is something that I think the member Vanushi Walters has raised a number of really significant tabled amendments around, which weren’t accepted, and it's a shame because a lot of that actually came from the submitters themselves in terms of the amendment. It came from legal experts in the New Zealand Law Society; it came from the Community Law Centres of Aotearoa themselves, which is the most affected by this particular legislation—so it was unfortunate that the Minister wasn't receptive of some of these amendments.
I do want to mention my specific tabled amendment, as well, that the Minister didn't really consider as a part of that, which I actually think is an important one, because the current wording of clause 4, amended section 94(1)(b), does say “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support” in the context of the secretary. The clarification I have—and this also came from the Community Law Centres of Aotearoa’s submission—is that it should state that the secretary is “funding the functions that enable, facilitate, or support the provision of community legal services”. The reason I want to raise this as a particularly important aspect is the way that we're looking at a succession of sequential verbs—of using “fund, facilitate, and otherwise support”—also, then, would imply that it's also the secretary's role to facilitate and otherwise support the provisions, when, in fact, my assumption is that the secretary's role is to fund, and the functions of that remains with the Community Law Centres of Aotearoa, which then ties into the “facilitate, or support the provisions of community legal services”. This is something that the Minister wasn't able to support on, but I'm hoping that, by mentioning this particular nuance, it does give a scope for, potentially, both Crown Law and the Ministry of Justice, but also provides some sort of clarification in terms of interpretation for the Community Law Centres of Aotearoa, as well.
To conclude, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand does support this bill. We do recognise that, although this is a small bill—and we've heard a lot of murmurs from the Government side as we were debating this bill during the committee of the whole House stage—but it is a bill that has been introduced. It is, out of all of the bills—a lot of the bills that have been introduced by the Government—reasonably benign, or actually completely benign. If we're going to be able to see more bills being introduced like this, this is something that we could actually encourage and have something that is reasonably benign that everyone could support. With that, the Green Party commends this bill to the House.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Justice): I rise in support of the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. This bill makes a change to how the special fund can be used. People sitting at home who watched that last speech could be forgiven for having no idea what this bill is about or what anyone's talking about, but it's pretty simple: lawyers and conveyancers up and down New Zealand, for various reasons, have trust accounts where they hold their clients’ money for a period of time. Fans of that iconic New Zealand show “Outrageous Fortune” may recall that Jethro got in trouble for abusing or misusing money in the trust account, and Gary Savage actually blackmailed him and stiffed him on a property deal as a result. A lot of lawyers have these trust accounts; most of them don't misuse it.
What's interesting is that they sometimes accrue interest when they are put in the bank, and that interest goes to the special fund and the Secretary for Justice—that is, the chief executive of the New Zealand Ministry of Justice—uses that money to fund community law centres. I actually think that's quite a nice feature of our legal system, because community law centres help a huge number of people and it's not obvious what else would happen with that interest that could be better than this.
But there's a small problem. The law, as it stands in the Legal Services Act, says that it has to be used for “community legal services”. There's some dispute as to whether the depreciation, the maintenance, the electricity, the rent on a community law centre counts as a “legal service” or another use of money. What we're doing with this legislation tonight is saying, actually, the Secretary for Justice can make some rules about what exactly is included, assuming they'll use their common sense to ensure that the money does actually go to providing community law services, even if the precise use is not paying for a lawyer to sit in a room.
It's pretty sensible stuff—not difficult to explain—and, you know what, maybe if Lawrence Xu-Nan learned to do that, we'd put up some more agreeable bills for him. I commend it to the House.
JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. I’m going to take you back to Budget night, because I spoke to this bill also in urgency on Budget night—I was the last speaker of that session before the clock ticked over to 12 o’clock, and I remember saying, as I was talking about the rest of the Budget, that that Budget was a game-changer for business, in some ways. The policy that we’d announced that day in the Budget was Investment Boost, which was a game-changer, but when you take it back to this bill, this is a game-changer for access to justice and access to legal services, and that’s why this bill is so important to community law services.
In the speeches that I’ve given through the first and second readings, as I said, I sat on the Justice Committee, heard the submissions, and we got that substantial submission from the community law centre. The services they provide throughout New Zealand—those 24 centres—provide access to so many vulnerable New Zealanders. As we heard also, they gave over 27,000 education sessions in their last year. They give access to justice and to information that people require. New Zealand First supports this bill as very much a tweak so the funds can be accessed more. It also shows New Zealand First’s commitment to sensible and cost-effective solutions to improving service delivery. It’s about using funds that are there and not using taxpayers’ money. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is a split call. I call Tamatha Paul.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai o te Whare. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.
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CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the select committee recommendations was to change the starting date of the Act, because the original date has already passed. Therefore, it’s important that we get this bill passed this evening, and I commend it to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise also to support this bill, as we said we would throughout the speeches this evening. It’s true that it is a very simple bill to understand. I think the two key questions that we’ve been asking through the committee stage are whether clarification is really needed, which is the first one, and our view is that it wasn’t—our view is shared by Community Law Aotearoa—and the second question is: even if clarity was needed, is this the most important work that the Government should be doing for the people of New Zealand? Again, the argument was that, no, it could well have been part of a Statutes Amendment Bill, it could have been part of work that I mentioned Sir Geoffrey had suggested in terms of the review of laws that should be repealed that are on the statute book, but we are going to support it none the less.
I did notice through the course of the speeches that, on this side of the House, we had a number of people stand up and speak to their personal involvement with community law, whether it be volunteering or as members of staff or as members of the board, and it is a fantastic thing to do in terms of contributing to our community. [Interruption] I didn’t quite hear that from the Government side, so just some gentle encouragement that it’s not too late—lawyers or non-lawyers, there are plenty of things you can do to contribute to access to justice.
Where I started my speech on the second reading was a comment on why we’re in urgency. I do think that’s relevant here at the third reading as well. I was recently contacted, as I’m sure many of the other members were, by a group called Improving Urgency, who have a set of recommendations that they’re arguing for. They’re doing it precisely at this moment in time because, as we all are very familiar with, our Standing Orders are under review and this is the time when parliamentarians across the House will get to decide whether those provisions relating to urgency are good, or perhaps where something ought to be done so that we avoid the situation that we’re currently in, where we see ourselves in urgency to clarify a law that community law says doesn’t need to be clarified.
Improving Urgency suggests that we look at a set of criteria that would be applied to determine when urgency is needed: the presence of a genuine emergency, imminent deadlines that are linked to international commitments or legal obligations, and when the issue requires immediate legal action to prevent significant financial or reputational damage—this is what they suggest in terms of where we could go. If you are fond of reading this fantastic book McGee, you will also get some direction in terms of what urgency ought to be—the suggestions in there are legal reasons, emergency or unforeseen events, and political situations—so it does allow for the fact where you campaigned on an issue and you are wanting to move that quickly through the House. But, again, I’d just suggest that the stretch of the use of urgency is getting a little bit ridiculous.
I do worry: a few people have said to me, “Urgency will end at midnight, and at least that’s a limit on it.” In fact, we could, if the Government wanted to, go into extraordinary urgency, which, as the members on the Government benches will know, I will have a lot to say about that as I know my colleagues will on the next bill. I have certainly had a steady stream of coffee throughout the day. If we were to go into extreme urgency, as I’m sure the members will want to know in advance before they make this call, the House only breaks between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., so we’ll, essentially, be going all the way through to 8 a.m., which will potentially be quite entertaining and perhaps we could see if the speeches on that side get longer, or if they get any shorter, if that’s even a possibility.
I do want to acknowledge community law. They are an extraordinary service, and they did a study when I was there with them, back in 2018, that looked at value for money. Even back then, they had a return on investment of $50 million of free legal services each year. It cost $11 million but it was said to deliver $50 million, and that’s because issues were resolved at a very, very early stage, which is fantastic. But I did also want to speak to one issue, which I do think is one the House needs to continue to be mindful of—
Hon David Seymour: Extraordinary urgency ends on Saturday.
VANUSHI WALTERS: It does end on Saturday, as Mr Seymour has said.
Hon David Seymour: We finish at midnight anyway.
VANUSHI WALTERS: That would be true for today. The opportunity is lost for this week, but why do I suspect that urgency is in our imminent future, again, but moments away? Perhaps the public can watch and see whether that might be the case, in preparation for the next lot.
I did also want to just acknowledge the history of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act in 2006. When I was going back to the Hansard to look at that bill and the changes made, I came across this beautiful quote from Nandor Tanczos. They were considering the percentage of money that the banks kept, and it looks like the select committee interrogated, even back then in 2006, whether the banks should be holding as much of the percentage of money as they are—of course, currently, it’s 40 percent on law. I will make the point that I understand that negotiations have happened with a number of banks who are looking at reducing that margin voluntarily. My view is very strongly that that should be reduced in statute. Nandor said, “The bill as it was introduced originally sought to amend that provision so that the banks would retain 45 percent, and community law centres would receive 55 percent,”.
The only amount that they managed to negotiate that down to was 5 percent, and they got it down to 40 percent in community law, retaining 60 percent, but he also made this point: he said, “The question of the true cost”—
Hon David Seymour: I woke up and she was back on the bill.
VANUSHI WALTERS: I’m very much on the bill, and I’m quoting Hansard into Hansard about an issue that is very relevant to the bill. This is so good. He said, “The question of the true cost of the service has never actually been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. This is the service that the banks provide in setting up and maintaining those accounts. So I am moving to amend the proportion the banks would now retain from 40 percent to 30 percent. The concern about that proportion is that if we get it wrong, the banks may cease to provide the service.” He was acknowledging that it couldn’t be too low, that it shouldn’t be too high, and that even at that stage, they hadn’t truly analysed what that appropriate amount was. I do think that that’s a matter for this House to consider at some stage, because what we know is that, at the moment, there isn’t sufficient free legal advice and certainly not free legal representation for people who need it, so it’s something we should look at.
I did want to acknowledge one more time Te Ara Ture, which is also a community law centre initiative trying to help address that gap where pro bono lawyers assist community members with legal issues. An interesting fact from last term was that Chris Bishop had a member’s bill that attempted to allow lawyers to provide free legal services without necessarily that funnel, if you like. Our view was very firmly that community law plays a very important role in terms of directing that capacity to precisely where it’s needed. The other interesting service that they started was the legal information bot, where people could type in question and have those answered, which is fantastic, especially for young people.
Many people have been acknowledged today, and names dropped and such. I did want to mention one more in closing,Piers Davies, who’s been a significant part of the community law movement and who in one week’s time will step down from the YouthLaw board. He told me about 10 years ago that he was going to step down, and he’s really pushed and done everything possible to ensure access to justice, but especially for young people, so to all our heroes in community law, but today, especially to Piers Davies, I commend this bill to the House.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Madam Speaker, happy Tuesday! Where else would you want to be on a Tuesday in urgency, Madam Speaker? Isn’t that great? I wish to wake the House up after that 10 minutes of nothing. This will be refreshing. Extraordinary urgency? Well, that sounds exciting, so I say to the member Vanushi Walters, “Bring it on!” This bill, the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill, is a great piece of legislation, great for our community law, and therefore I am going to commend it to the House.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill. This is not a bill that I’ve participated in before now, so it has been interesting to hear the debate on this third reading.
Of course, I was a lawyer for one part of my life and was very much involved with the ins and outs of the trust fund. As David Seymour said before, this is a very important function that law firms hold, because, of course, if you are doing a conveyancing or a much bigger transaction and your lawyers hold your funds for you, if the lawyers do something bad, that’s going to end badly. That may have happened in the past, so one of the things that we’ve been doing in New Zealand for a long time is using some of the money that’s made from those funds, as David Seymour said, to fund community law. We know, also, that community law centres are great organisations that help people in need.
I want to pause on that for a moment, because now I am not a lawyer and I am a constituent MP. The phenomenal work that the Dunedin Community Law Centre does is just so helpful to so many people, and I want to commend all of them for the work that they do. Be it on immigration case or when people are having civil disputes and need a little bit of help, community law is there for them, so it’s very important for many of our citizens that community law is able to operate as effectively and as helpfully as possible.
I’m also the member for a university town, which, of course, has law students, and many of them volunteer at community law centres, or they certainly did in the past when I was a younger lawyer and would help at Dunedin Community Law Centre. It turned out that somebody who’d studied a lot of trade regulation and international environmental law and the Resource Management Act wasn’t that helpful! Luckily, most of my colleagues had done things like family law and more property law papers, and they were much more helpful than I ever was. I do want to make that shout out to community law.
We’ve heard from the various speeches that the drafting of the current law could be read to be very narrow and not include costs such as the lease for the premises that, of course, these community law organisations have to operate out of. Everyone is agreed that it’s good to fix it. It says in the bill: “Where the Special Fund cannot be used to meet costs, Crown funding is required instead.” Noting that I haven’t been part of this bill, that does look, to me, like this is a move away from Crown funding for any community law functions and that this is another way to help the Government’s books by, really, more levies. We’ve seen that with the waste levy for instance: that it gets used for a whole lot of different things.
That is a negative, but we’re trying to focus on the positives here, because, as the member before me, Tom Rutherford, said, it’s Tuesday night in Parliament’s time and Friday evening in other people’s time. I wanted to pick up, though, on some other points that were made in the discussion of this bill—
Hon David Seymour: Tell us about it.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: David Seymour is asking me to tell him about it, and I’ll tell him about his speech. He said something along the lines of, “If the Opposition speeches were clearer or shorter, then perhaps the Government would put up more agreeable bills.” We are seeming to be in agreement tonight, so I’m wondering if that is a promise that—
Hon David Seymour: Unfortunately, the member hasn’t qualified.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: The member hasn’t qualified for being unclear or clear?
Hon David Seymour: She could improve her average performance if she sat down before time.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Well, I’m wondering about this statement that David Seymour has been making about the Opposition speeches and if there is some sort of promise here that, rather than taking us into urgency time and time again and looking at bills in all stages, this Government will commit to the sorts of bills that all members of this House can agree on. I’m hoping that that is what he is saying. I can’t quite hear him.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: No, of course it’s not.
Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, I’m hearing that it’s not what he’s saying. Well, a challenge to you, Mr Seymour—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired, because that is the end of the speech.
GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie):
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“Whakaupa” means “to delay, prolong, or protract”, and I shall do none of that. I commend this bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a slightly longer call—a full call; I only had a part-call in the last reading. Community law is a very interesting subject matter, and I did touch on some of my experience in community law. I volunteered there. I was also on the management committee of the Wellington Community Law Centre before the Community Law Centres were merged into a national body, which is a change of structure. I did go back to volunteer as a lawyer at Community Law once that structure was in place.
The issue, really, is that this is an extremely special and important part of the way that we provide legal services and legal advice to the community. I think it’s the people who work in community law, like my colleague Vanushi Walters, who was heckled somewhat during her speech—I think we need to acknowledge that Vanushi Walters studied at Oxford University and is a qualified lawyer, and instead of going to earn the big bucks at one of the major firms, she ran YouthLaw for many, many years in Community Law Centres and has done more pro bono work than, I think, probably anyone in this House who’s legally qualified. She has made a massive contribution to community law and also to the spirit of free legal services and access to justice. I just wanted to acknowledge that, Vanushi, because you are an exceptional lawyer and an exceptional citizen in the sense of your commitment towards access to justice. It’s important for us to remember that and also your long experience with community law and your contribution there, too.
I do agree with some of the speakers on the other side who acknowledge the way that community law is funded. It is, as we’ve traversed, a very interesting funding mechanism, where all of the very, very wealthy trust accounts—I don’t know whether an account can be wealthy, but anyway, they usually have a lot of money in them. That’s because lawyers hold money on trust for a number of different important transactions, and that’s to ensure that they get paid on time. It’s also to ensure that they’re safe, and it’s to uphold different contractual agreements. For whatever reason, sometimes your personal money can be held by your lawyer in their trust account, and there are lots of rules associated with running a trust account. As qualified lawyers, anyone who’s ever gone through that process, there’s a lot of training and education that you have to go through in order to be able to legally manage one of those in a responsible way. These are significant functions of the way that our legal services are provided.
One of the ways that the legal community and, in fact, Governments of the past and successive Governments have decided to utilise the function of that is through allowing the interest that accrues on those trust accounts, rather than just being kept by the bank—although there is a percentage which is kept by the bank, and this has been mentioned a few times, and I’ll just park that there for now while I finish explaining how the trust account works—that money then, or 60 percent of that interest, goes to this community law funding. We’ve got 24 Community Law Centres throughout New Zealand. I visit a few of them, certainly not all of them, but I do know—
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Wairarapa?
CAMILLA BELICH: I haven’t been to the one in Wairarapa, but I’d love to attend the one in Wairarapa. I think all of them that I have visited have been incredible services, and I mentioned it very quickly in one of the contributions that I made, but I think it’s worth saying again: members of this House will know how useful Community Law Centres are because of the number of times they refer their constituents to those services. It could be that they refer them to attend and see a lawyer, or it could be that they refer to their very excellent community law guide.
Before there was a plethora of legal information on the internet, this was, really, the one free area that you could find very, very good, solid legal advice. This community law guide is kept in most public libraries, I think, still today. It’s usually distributed for free and updated, and it’s a hugely important resource that Community Law provides and has done for many, many years. That is an example of something that Community Law does. I think that would fall within the current definition without this bill, and the reason I say that is that, if you look at the Legal Services Act, the definition of legal services actually covers education. I think that particular area would probably be fine without this change, and that’s reassuring, because that has been something that has been funded for a very long period of time.
I think Community Law could do more, and I think the frustration with this bill as it’s gone through the House is not that there is huge disagreement on what this bill does but that there is disagreement as to whether it’s necessary or whether it’s the best use of Parliament’s time or whether, in fact, the due diligence has been done to ensure that previous spending of Community Law Centres has been for the right cause. I think the frustration has been that, actually, the potential for our community law—and when we look at the funding, which is the subject of this bill, this doesn’t fundamentally change the percentage of interest that goes to Community Law. This could have been something that could have been looked at in this bill. I know that’s a policy area perhaps for the Government or an incoming Government to look at, but certainly I think there’s more that Community Law could do and more that they could provide. I think there’s an appetite for that. I think there’s also a need for that, too.
My own experience of working in community law was that, a lot of the time that people would come in and seek legal advice, often they were wanting common-sense advice, and to be that first person there when they come through the door and have a problem and to be able just to point them in the right direction is something that you can do as a lawyer. You don’t necessarily have to be a lawyer, and that is why I think it’s great that, within the suite of legislation that this bill is a part of, we allow law students to work at Community Law Centres, and it forms a part of their training as well. I’ll use one example from my time providing advice in this particular type of circumstance. I had a woman come and see me. She said to me, “I’ve been sacked.” I talked to her about it, and she wasn’t going to go into work the next day because she was so upset about having lost her job.
When I went through it with her, I found out she hadn’t actually been dismissed and that there was every indication that her employer was expecting her at work the next day. It had just been a miscommunication around something that she had done at work that, she’d been told, was wrong, but she’d taken it entirely the wrong way. I think that shows the value of being able to access that type of advice. She was feeling incredibly vulnerable. If she hadn’t turned up to work the next day, it’s very likely that maybe she would have ended up losing her job, but just going through “What’s happened? What documentation have you received? This doesn’t look like a dismissal to me. It looks like you’ve just had a performance issue raised with you.” was enough for her to feel much better and, within a very short period of time, go back. I didn’t see her again, but I assume, hopefully, she was able to go back to work. These types of services can provide very meaningful help and advice for people when they access them, too.
In relation to this bill, our general view is that we’re supportive of it. We wish it would go further in order to fully bolster and support community law. We think there’s probably ways that it could do that. We’re not 100 percent around the need for it, just due to the fact that it’s quite a difficult concept to think of how legal services would be able to be provided without all of these other utilities, as some other speakers have talked about, in terms of the rent for the premises, the other items that you need in order to provide advice—the photocopiers. These things, as I understand, have been paid for by Community Law under this agreement. This bill probably will clarify that, so one thing I can say about this bill is that it makes it clear that the services that have been provided to date are very well within the law due to this clarification. It could have gone further, and there could have been other things that we focused on too. It’s reassuring to know that Community Law Centres also support this bill.
I thank the Government, really, for allowing us to discuss the important work that Community Law does, and I would encourage them to think about the really amazing contribution that Community Law makes to the community and what we collectively as a Parliament can do to support that important work moving forward. I think it helps not only us as parliamentarians in our job, it helps the members of the public who access those services. There could be even more benefit if we were to truly fund and support community law within New Zealand. I do appreciate the opportunity need to speak on this bill, and I commend it to the House.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be, technically, the last person to contribute on this bill. Speaking of technicality, I think it's very important to clarify, because there's been some interesting opinions, from the other side, that the current law is unclear with respect to whether the special fund can cover indirect costs. What we're doing here is clarifying this discrepancy. I commend this bill to the House.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Madam Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Scott Willis—you were very quick off the mark that time.
SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker; it is very much appreciated. It's my pleasure to be able to take the last call on this bill tonight, and certainly nice to have the little bit of angst from opposite as well, or the gaslighting that we typically get, because it does indicate that I think the members opposite are feeling a little bit angsty. They want something else.
We want to be here. We appreciate this opportunity—[Interruption] We certainly appreciate this opportunity—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I can't actually hear Mr Willis. I don't know if he's speaking to the bill or not because I can't hear him. We'll have some quiet so I can hear what he's saying.
SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker—because politics does not have to be adversarial. [Interruption] This bill, as minor as it is, is something that we are all agreeing on—we're agreeing on. Really, the amount of heckling I'm getting for agreeing to a bill is quite surprising, but not so surprising, really, when we consider the nature of the Government on the other side because we do have a Government that is pushing and has desired to push such a minor bill through urgency. Sir Geoffrey Palmer has called the extreme use of urgency “a shambles”—a shambles.
We've heard the value of community law. We've heard from Rachel Brooking—I did not know that Rachel had volunteered in the fantastic Dunedin Community Law Centre, but I do know that this is a great place for people to contribute. We've heard about the need to think about how to best resource community law and this bill is doing a little bit there, but really not very much. So I'm really in support of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, Vanushi Walters, and Camilla Belich that we look at a review of how that funding works in the future, because this bill isn't really going anywhere near far enough and it's not doing anything very much.
Those are things that we think are valuable and we shouldn't just stop here. Given we've got this sense of bonhomie, when we're all getting on, why don't we look for other places where we can actually make some progress? Why don't we look for some other places where we can actually make some progress because the bitchiness might come with fatigue, but it is not necessary.
It's good to hear that we've got students involved. One of the things that I've particularly enjoyed with community law, or understanding in community law, is the many kaupapa community law services designed by Māori for Māori. They are really important to give Māori decent legal advice to help fight the Crown on land and Te Tiriti issues, for example. Particularly important at this juncture of our Parliament—we certainly need to give assistance to people who are concerned if Te Tiriti rights are being ignored. This is really important—there are a whole lot of things that are happening in community law that we don't necessarily see, but it's the type of thing that really gives confidence to people to be able to take their concerns to somewhere they can get some professional advice, and it doesn't cost the earth.
This bill is a minor bill, and we should be mindful that we don't waste Parliament’s time on minor bills. However, given the opportunity to speak on bills while we have the luxury of being in Parliament—and we are grateful to the Government for keeping us here—we want to make sure that this bill moves forward but we want to also make sure that there's not the use of urgency for little purpose. That is our equal concern because we have seen, from this Government, a shambles of process which really limits Parliament’s ability—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Member: Waste of time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Who spoke during voting? Don’t do that again.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): I present a legislative statement on the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative—[Interruption] Quiet. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon NICOLE McKEE: I move, That the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Justice Committee for their examination of this bill. My appreciation also goes to the submitters who took the time to participate in the select committee process and for their contributions. This Government is committed to reducing delays in the courts system. We are very conscious of the fact that many New Zealanders are waiting too long to achieve justice and get closure through the courts. That is why this bill is so important.
The amendments in the bill are necessary to support the efficient, fair, and timely resolution of court proceedings for all court parties and participants. The bill increases the cap on the number of High Court judges, enabling two additional judges to be appointed. More judges will help the courts better manage the growing workload.
One thing that has been heard through the select committee process, and other comments on the bill, is that the increase of two additional judges may not be enough to meet the demand for judicial resource. The Minister of Justice has, therefore, introduced an Amendment Paper to be considered at the committee of the whole House stage, which will enable the appointment of a further three judges. This will bring the total of potential new judges to five so that our senior courts can more effectively manage the workload.
The court system is complex, and more judges alone cannot address the timeliness challenges. That is why this bill also improves various court processes so the courts can run more efficiently. The bill makes changes to improve pretrial case management so there is less duplication; it ensures appeals are heard by the most appropriate court; and it gives judges better tools to manage proceedings that plainly abuse the process of the courts. It also allows coroners to close certain inquiries when it is no longer appropriate to conduct these.
The Justice Committee has made recommendations that clarify and refine the bill. This includes changing the commencement date to 1 February 2026, enabling an order that deals with plainly abusive proceedings to be made on the papers, and ensuring consistency across the Coroners Act. I support these recommendations, which will help improve efficiency in the courts. Justice delayed is justice denied, and this Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill goes some way to addressing this. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): There’s a couple of truisms in the justice system. One of them is that you can’t hide the bodies, and the other is that whatever else you try and do with crime statistics, look at what happens in the courts, because that also tells you the truest story. When I look at this bill, there are two things I look at. Yes, we do need some more High Court judges. There’s no doubt about it. We certainly agree with that. But you’ve actually got to look at why we need more judges. Yes, we need to speed up things, but, actually, if have a look at the cases that are going before the court where the increase is. The increase is actually murder, attempted murder, and manslaughter, which are category 4 offences.
Now, we often hear—and every Government’s guilty of this—the Government talking about how it’s great we are doing well on crime. Often, it will involve a different way of looking at crime statistics, and they will always be presented in a manner which makes the presenter look best. I always remember visiting New York at the time of all the reforms over there, the Bratton reforms, and that was when, all of a sudden, each city looked at what New York had achieved, and they had a thing called CompStat, and it was where they actually started counting the crimes. They made each precinct, actually responsible for the crime that happened in their precinct. This caught on right around the States, and it exposed a few things. One of them, Philadelphia, was the city that had these wonderful results—“Boy, hadn’t crime gone down?”—and in every category, it looked like they had basically solved the problem forever of crime, except for the murders, because they couldn’t hide the bodies.
That’s why we have a look at the statistics. We have a look at what’s happening in our courts, which, of course, is what this bill is about. Rightfully, every speaker should be concentrating on the bill. I’ll promise you, Madam Speaker, that’s exactly what I will be doing.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s exactly right, Mr O’Connor.
GREG O'CONNOR: That’s why this is a very good idea that we actually do increase the number of judges. How high? I’ve actually got a tabled amendment. It’s interesting that here we are again. Many of our speakers tonight have spoken that we are very, very late on a Tuesday night, speaking about this. We actually wonder why we have to come back here to increase—in one of the provisions of this bill—the number of judges by two. I have a tabled amendment that says, “Let’s have a range of judges so that, as crime goes up and down and as the number of bodies perhaps go up and down, we can actually have some flexibility in the system.” Of course, it being a second reading, I won’t spend too much time on that tabled amendment. I look forward to about, perhaps, 11.30 tonight when we’re in the committee of the whole House on this bill. It will be a shame for anyone to be wasting some good sleeping time.
This comes the second part of this bill, in particular, where we actually talk about the cases. There’s been some sort of—I won’t say playing with statistics—obfuscation around the statistics. But one thing that is clear is that the cases that are coming to court are actually taking longer to resolve. They’re more serious. You can put that down to something. I spent some considerable time as a detective. In fact, I trained detectives. I look, now, at the sort of evidence that comes before trials compared to, perhaps, when I was training detectives. I look, I suppose, the complications. Things like DNA wasn’t available. Cell phones weren’t available. CCTV wasn’t available. These are all the things now that, if you go and sit through any serious trial—certainly any serious criminal trial—you’ll very quickly see that that’s where the first of the evidence is. For any detective and any police officer going to a crime scene, the first thing they do is look for a phone. The first thing they do is look for CCTV. The first thing they do is looking for DNA. As you can imagine, these are a little more complicated than things like fingerprints, a little more complicated even than perhaps getting a confession or other ways and means of taking cases before the court.
You’ve got this combination where you’ve got more serious crimes, more, as I say, murder, attempted murder, and manslaughter category of offences going through. They’re all taking that much longer. Again, these are the things that are putting considerable pressure on the criminal justice system, and, very sensibly, this will attempt to resolve some of those issues. Again, it’s not going to, because the other thing you do need, of course, is courtrooms. None of these things by themselves will work, because the bottleneck in the criminal justice system is almost invariably the courts. Periodically, you’ll see that police, for various reasons, will be taking action on any particular sort of crime, and it might be several months down the track, but the bottleneck will occur when they all need to go through the criminal justice system.
An attempt was actually made to solve that. In fact, the National Government in 2012 introduced a system called tag and release. It was, actually, quite an interesting system where they actually had a strategy of reducing the entries into the criminal justice system by 19 percent in a year. Well, that just meant that the bottleneck was moved from the courts back to the police station, so as people were arrested, they would come through, and they would be tagged and released, pre-charged, and warned, and they would never be in the system again. There would be very little paperwork involved, and they’d be back out to do their deeds again. It worked quite well for about two or three years until, very quickly, the offenders cottoned on to the fact that it was a risk-free occupation to go and play up on a Saturday night down in the local city centre, because, at worst, it might cost you a couple of hours sitting in the watch house or sitting in a cell. You’ll be very quickly back out. There’ll be no court appearance in the number one court on Monday or Tuesday morning, and so you very quickly realise it was consequence free.
When we introduce any new strategy, it’s almost invariably about three or four years down the track before you really do understand the impact of it. We’re in sugar-hit country; we’re in politics, so, often, we’re all looking for some new strategy that is going to solve everything from common cold to AIDS, and we’ll stand on every mountaintop and talk about it. Any of these new strategies that come in—again, I’m looking at strategies like this that we’re talking about in the bill here, Madam Speaker, which you, rightfully, are looking at me to make sure that I am referring back to the bill—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: You haven’t strayed too far.
GREG O'CONNOR: Well, I’m just making sure that you didn’t feel any need to actually point me back to the bill there, Madam Speaker.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you stayed on tag and release for a while, so I knew you were on the bill.
GREG O'CONNOR: I know what an extremely difficult job it is to sit to where you are, Madam Speaker. You’re doing a fine job.
So, anyway, coming back, I may have just lost my train of thought there as I went through that.
I’ll just moved through this—I do notice the time has moved on a little. Another important part of this provision, too, relates to the Coroner’s Court. Now, this is also something that very much relates to what I was talking about before, because the Coroner’s Court traditionally is that which reports last in the whole process. Again, typically when there’s a homicide, it will be the job of the detective who’s in charge of the body—one of their jobs—to go along and open the inquest. That will then carry on through the trials, and way, way down the track, finally, it will be closed by the coroner. The best thing you can ever do is get a certificate as to cause a death, which means that the coroner doesn’t need to be involved. Often these deaths do go into the system, and having an off-ramp for the coroner, where new evidence becomes available, that precludes the need for what is often a very expensive and complicated process of having a coroner or having an inquest. Again, it’s quite a sensible provision. It’s hard to see where it would be used. The initial thought would be that, perhaps, it’s used for where it becomes obvious that there may be a self-inflicted death. That’s actually not the case. Self-inflicted is one of the exclusions to this. Self-inflicted deaths will always go through the system.
So, I realise that there will be other opportunities, later on tonight during the committee of the whole House, to talk about some of these issues. Again, we won’t know for three or four years down the track whether some of these things have worked, because it is a grindingly slow system, the justice system. It does get there at the end, but really evaluating the success of things like this is usually where, say, a five-year review would be a good idea. We’re commending this bill to the House.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thank the previous speaker because, again, I think that the previous speaker Greg O’Connor is absolutely spot on when talking about the fact that we seem to be in this sort of sugar rush in the sense that we keep on chasing what is the short term as opposed to seeing some of the longer-term impacts that we have on some of these matters. But in terms of the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill, the Green Party does support this bill because it does make some good progress in that sense, towards both timeliness and also access to justice, and also in terms of addressing some of the issues within our court system.
I want to first just address probably one of the more significant sections of this bill, which is the increase in the number of High Court judges from 55 to 57. But I think it’s also really important to acknowledge as well the Minister of Justice’s Amendment Paper 443, which further increases that number, from 57 to 60, and I’m sure that this is something that we’ll be discussing in the upcoming committee stage.
With that being the first major section of the adjustment made in this bill when it comes to the Senior Courts Act 2016, the other significant part in the other half of this bill is the changes to the Senior Courts Act which are around plainly abusive civil proceedings. This is the sort of functioning that we’ve seen with a few of these bills coming through the House. It’s from a court perspective on, for example, vexatious litigants, etc., and this is very similar to that in the sense that the registrar is able to inform or is able to refer the plainly abusive civil proceeding to the judge, and the judge will have the power to make orders and give directions in respect of plainly abusive civil proceedings.
This is something that the Justice Committee did flag to officials on this bill, mainly because of the fact that it is unclear what the plainly abusive civil proceedings would entail, and then whether that is going to inadvertently prevent or deprive areas for some of the genuine issues that we’re seeing, or for people who are scarred, for example, who are either from disabled communities or who are neurodivergent, who may simply not understand some of the nuances in terms of vexatious litigation. However, I think that overall, during the select committee stage, this was something that was discussed, and additions were added into it as a sort of safeguard, and I wanted this to be mentioned. That is an area, which is the new section 164B(2A) in clause 7, which also covers some of these in terms of what judges have to record and how judges will be able to make some of those rulings. That’s the first major part of this bill.
Actually, before I move on to the second half of the bill, regarding the Criminal Procedure Act and the Coroners Act, it’s also important to mention some of the submissions process as a part of this. In terms of the select committee process, we could see that there were not as many submissions as we thought for a bill that increased the number of judges, which does have, I guess, a budgetary implication. Again, this bill was one of the bills that was brought to the House under urgency in May, and we’re getting around to this bill now, as well. So—
Tamatha Paul: A bit of a backlog.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: There is a backlog of bills, yeah. In this case, in terms of the select committee process, there were 28 submitters on this, with wide-ranging opinions, and there were broader things, as well. I think, in general, there were concerns raised by some around whether this is prioritising timeliness over fairness and how that was going to be addressed.
I do think that as we are starting to see an increased number of High Court judges, particularly when High Court judges are also increasingly more diverse—actually, in general, our senior court judges are becoming more diverse. In saying that, I would like to bring it to the House’s attention that although in the latest census, we’re seeing that there are 19.2 percent of the people here in Aotearoa New Zealand are people of colour migrants or colour, the number of High Court judges, or judges in general—not simply High Court judges, but the number of judges—who are, for example, of Asian descent is less than 4 percent. The number of High Court judges of Asian descent—which is the District Court and above—currently, I think, sits at one. So, despite the fact that we have this enormously diverse population, our higher court judge appointment processes and our higher court judge demographic hasn’t necessarily reflected that or kept up with the changes in our demographics.
It’s also important to mention that one of the things that is recommended in terms of the fact that we are looking at is increasing the number of High Court judges is also to do with the simple fact that as the population is increasing, the number of cases is going to be increased and a number of cases are going to be more complex, not necessarily in the sense that there are more complex laws, but, again—like I mentioned before—the nature of the cases will be more complex. One of the things in which we are, unfortunately, seeing is a reduction in funding around the section 27 reports, which is incredibly crucial when it comes to the timeliness of our judicial process.
Especially, like I said before, when the judges themselves do not necessarily have the same lived experience or share the same experience as those who are in front of the court, it does cause certain delays if there isn’t a robust cultural report or process. I do draw the House’s attention to some of the latest issues and the latest work that’s been done by, particularly, Chinese lawyers around contractual agreements within Chinese communities, which has been hugely complex and has also meant that cases become more complex, the rulings become more complex, and there are more reasons, then, for people to appeal to a higher court. I think that for something like that, in terms of whether we want to address judicial timeliness, we should also really be looking at whether some of those matters meant that we are seeing more appeals happening further and further, higher up into not just simply the High Court but also the Court of Appeal, as well as the Supreme Court. All of that tied together is one of the themes that did come through in terms of the submitters.
The other thing that did come through in terms of the submitters—and this is, again, similar to what I mentioned in the second reading of the previous bill on the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Funds) Amendment Bill, as well—was that there is this general undertone of concern that people have in terms of equity for Māori within the justice system. I think that this is also a feature that we see here within this particular bill. Again, although that particular feature may be embodied as part of the timeliness of the court system that we’re hoping to see going forward, the specificity of how that provides equity may not have been covered or addressed in this bill. That’s unfortunate, but it’s also understandable, and we’re hoping that the Government is able to bring something that would be able to allay some of those concerns that the community have in the future.
Moving on to the second part, Part 2 of this bill, it is also an equally important section, and it actually comes out from beyond, I guess, the court system, but it is also involved within it, and part of that is around the Criminal Procedure Act 2011. I want to start by addressing some of that in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, and for this particular part, one of the things that is most important is the pre-trial processes if the defendant is being charged in respect of two or more offences in different District Court offices, and how the processes will be managed for that. We will have some other questions on this during the committee stage as well, because I think this is really important, and one of the things that we did discuss was how that’s going to be coordinated and managed between different District Courts.
There is also the other one that I mentioned before, which is how the Court of Appeal judges may remit first appeals to the High Court. This, again, comes back to what I mentioned before, which is that cases are becoming increasingly complex. We do allow people the right of appeal, and it is about how that process is going, as we see, further and further into the Court of Appeal and also the Supreme Court.
Finally, we’re seeing an amendment to the Coroners Act 2006—who knew that I might be running out of time? I think that the most concerning part of this—and it may be discussed a little bit further—is the retrospective element of this. For example, as of 30 June, there are 3,240 active coronial inquiries, and so how is that going to be managed as part of this?
The Green Party does support this bill. We do have some amendments on this that we’ll want to seek guidance on, but—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Surprise, surprise!
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: —they will wait until the committee stage.
Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill. The ACT Party does love efficiency, and we are backing this bill because it will bring efficiency that can be made across the judicial system. This bill will improve timeliness in the judice system by appointing more judges, giving courts better tools, reducing duplication, and supporting our coroners. For those reasons, I commend it to the House.
JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill. It’s probably one of those bills, actually, where if we could change the title, it would be quite good for some of the members. But anyway, we’ve got past that.
The major parts of this bill are changing the number of High Court judges from 55 to 57—a lot of that is about the complexity around cases now and, also, the obvious thing around population growth of New Zealand—striking out plainly abusive proceedings on the papers—that just makes sense; it’s no different from us striking out submissions when we get abusive language—streamlining criminal pre-trial processes, so if you’ve got a number of different trials or cases across the country, putting them all into one court or one place just makes sense.
What I do want to highlight is the coroners being able to close inquiries. That was something that was quite debated within the process of the submissions through the select committee process. Looking back retrospectively at something is, often, something that we don’t change or allow to be changed. But we’ve got over 3,200 cases sitting there; it only makes sense if we can give closure to families with some of those cases that have been sitting there for nearly up to three years.
On that, I look forward to the committee of the whole House. I commend this to the House.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central):
[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]
I rise to support the Judicature—I’ve never seen that word before in my life—(Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill. We agreed to support this bill to select committee. We had some parts about the bill that we wanted to explore around the vexatious litigation element because we didn't want there to be any provisions that dismissed claims in the court that might have been legitimate but complex, and we wanted to make sure that everybody has that access to justice.
We supported it with reservations, but now that it's gone through that process and the select committee has happened, we are happy to support it through its second reading—yeah, woo hoo! Our main concerns were around vexatious litigation within the High Court, and we felt that these safeguards against that kind of behaviour and conduct were already in the High Court rules. But we can see that there is some merit to transferring these to the Senior Courts Act, and we're pleased that standard discretion by judges apply. We're particularly pleased about this given the different bills that have come through this Parliament in this term which have had a significant impact on judicial discretion, which I'll talk about later on, if I have time.
This bill, we hope, will address the backlogs that currently exist in our courts. We know that they are quite big. We know that according to the latest New Zealand Law Society report, there were over 140,000 court appearances that were delayed because of COVID-19. We've mainly resolved a lot of those—a lot of that backlog now—but, still, there are delays. As everybody says—and I wonder if people have said it today—justice delayed is justice denied, which is a great saying that really encapsulates parts of this bill.
Obviously, the bill does more than amend the Senior Courts Act. It does some other things to other Acts, including the Criminal Procedure Act and the Coroners Act. Now, I'm not going to talk about the Coroners Act because I don't know a lot about—
Tom Rutherford: The law.
TAMATHA PAUL: —the coronial inquiry. I’ve amended a law, have you?
Tom Rutherford: I didn’t say anything.
TAMATHA PAUL: Good. Anyway, back to the bill. One thing that was also raised in the New Zealand Law Society report is that the cost of civil jurisdiction within the High Court has increased over time. They've found that cases going through the High Court have become more complex and have taken a longer amount of time to litigate, and so allowing the number of judges to increase from 55 to 57 will really help with those lengthy cases that are really chewing up the High Court's time. We think that it's a good thing to have more and better judges within our justice system.
The other thing is that delays in courts are really problematic because they really erode the public’s sense of confidence and trust in the justice system, particularly for those individuals who have got cases before them that are really traumatic or personally affecting—whether they're dealing with, say, a violent partner or someone who is abusing them or something like that. The fact that they have to wait so long due to backlogs is really not a good thing, because they're, obviously, waiting in fear.
I think that whole part around public confidence and rebuilding that back from those hundred thousand - plus court appearance backlogs is a good thing—for us to do everything we can to reduce that wait time.
Again, we could get into judicial discretion in depth, and I'm thinking in particular about the changes to the sentencing law reforms, which really erode judicial discretion when it comes to sentencing and things like sentencing discounts. Also, my colleague Lawrence made a really good point around section 27 reports and how that has also contributed to the lengthiness of the courts because the judges don't have a full picture of the person who stands before them. Ironically, removing section 27 reports has actually made everything more expensive, because now lawyers have to get psychological assessments and drug and alcohol assessments to give the judge a full picture of the person who stands before them. I could go on and on, but sadly—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: But your time is running out.
TAMATHA PAUL: —I cannot. My time is done. Thank you.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a Government that is tough on crime. In the past year, there have been 182 patches seized, 643 insignia items seized, 178 firearms seized, 856 charges for the prohibited display of gang insignia in public places, 255 finalised charges, and 188 convictions. In order to make sure the system works and that these can go through the courts, we need to make sure there are enough judges. Therefore, I commend this bill, this evening, to the House.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. That is the kind of depth of analysis we expect from Carl Bates. It got us all the way there, didn’t it?
This bill is another “access to justice” bill. Sadly, it’s a bill that’s here because this Government seems to think that the only way to address problems in our society is incarceration. We’re tough on the causes of crime on this side of the House, and we want to address the problems and we want to “fix up” people rather than “lock up” people. That’s the fundamental distinction between our two approaches to criminal justice.
Tom Rutherford: What about ram raids?
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, someone—some young person over the other side—talked about ram raids. The fact of the matter is that we addressed ram raids, and thank you to the National Government for doing at least one thing and picking up one of our programmes, which is the Fast Track programme, wrapping around families with troublesome young people.
Rather than boot camps, which do nothing and which are an abject failure, the Fast Track programme, which was to address those young people doing things like ram raids, said, “What are the problems in these families that are giving rise to this kind of behaviour?” We looked at it, and it was problems like health, problems like drug and alcohol addiction, including in the family, problems like not having enough money or even enough food, or young people not going to school and not engaging with services. Thank you to the National Government for picking up and, in fact, expanding our Fast Track programme. The reduction in the number of young people offending is largely built on the back of the programme that we started, so thank you for that. It’s one of the kinds of things that we could do that would not necessarily require an increase in the number of High Court judges.
I’m not begrudging a High Court judge the amount they get paid. I can’t remember the exact number, but it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s actually not the cost of a High Court judge, because, on top of that, you’ve got to accommodate them, you’ve got to give them an executive assistant, you’ve got to give them a judge’s clerk, and you’ve got to give them all of those other things that go with. It’s well over a million dollars, and if you think of that million dollars, in terms of what you could do elsewhere in the system, it’s worth thinking about. Having said that, I want to be clear that we want to make sure that our justice system is properly resourced. For that reason, we’re supporting this bill. It’s important to note that there’s no obligation to appoint the number of judges set out, and maybe there should be a minimum number of judges to make sure we’ve always got enough. The last thing we want is the executive nickel and diming the judiciary by not appointing enough judges. That hasn’t happened to date, but it’s a protection that we might want to consider.
Lifting the cap is appropriate. Having said that, I also want to look at the other things that are in this bill, which some of the other speakers have skimmed over. In fact, National Party members skim over everything, because the backbenchers—I mean, at least their Ministers engage with the issue, but the backbenchers aren’t actually engaged with the very tricky issues that present themselves. If you look at, for example, the powers given to registrars and judges to dismiss out-of-hand claims on the basis that they are an abuse of procedure, it’s actually kind of both conceptually and practically challenging. If we think of some things that have happened recently, there is a real danger that someone comes up and presents themselves and they don’t present themselves well and they are a difficult person and they present themselves and present their case in intemperate language. They may even do it in a way which has all the hallmarks of not just an annoying person but a person who’s a little bit—I want to be careful with my language—not balanced. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s not something to the allegations they’re making.
When we come to say that a registrar can refer a matter to a judge on the basis that it is plainly abusive, we need to exercise real caution. There has always been a power for the court to dismiss matters which are an abuse of the process of the court. It’s always been there, but there have been protections there. The protections have always been: if you file a case—and it’s inevitably a lay litigant, and they could have a claim which is not well formulated, not put in legal language, and it might have all kinds of things in it, some outrageous allegations and some language which is not appropriate, but sometimes in the middle of it, deep down, if you look hard enough, there’s a kernel of truth. That gets tested in court, and it might get thrown out at the first instance, but there’s a right of appeal. You can go upstairs, go to the Court of Appeal, and you can argue it there, but here, if you look at it in this case, this gives the power to judges to throw out, essentially, proceedings which they think are plainly an abuse—and this is important—without hearing from the person who filed that claim. They can look at something and go, “Oh, that’s got nothing to it.”
The general test for an abuse is that it has a collateral purpose: that it’s not brought for the legitimate purpose of vindicating some legal right but is, in fact, brought, for example, to harass or to damage the reputation of another person. They are classic collateral purposes. Many a time, it’s often said that there are many open and shut cases which are not open and shut. There are many cases where there is no reasonable defence where, all of a sudden, there is a reasonable defence. I guess, when we come to look at this in committee—and the select committee report rightly reflects these views—we need to approach this with real caution. We talk about access to justice and, at the same time, what this does is limit access to justice by giving the power to the court to shut down without a hearing a claim that they consider, that the court considers, that the judge considers to be plainly abusive. We just need to be really cautious there. As it happens, it’s an issue; vexatious litigants are an issue that I looked at closely: the number of times, with vexatious and abusive litigants, where their behaviour is appalling but the acclaim has something to it, and it’s easy to conflate the two. It’s easy to conflate poor behaviour, appalling behaviour, appalling language with the fact that underlying it all is a genuine grievance that deserves to be heard.
I guess my point, as we come to this bill, rushing it through the House, of course, as is the want of this Government, when the courts come to exercise this power is always to pause. One of the kinds of practical things is this: vexatious litigants in particular don’t go away easily. In fact, one of the hallmarks of them is that, when they are turned away in one sense, in one forum, they will open up another litigation in another forum. There are few useful strategies to address this problem, but one is to actually give them a fair hearing, to follow the rules, to listen and to give reasons. One of the challenges of the framework proposed in this bill—and I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, but we should exercise it cautiously—is that that is not the case. You don’t give a hearing, you don’t hear from the person involved; it’s done on the papers. Think about it this way, if you were a difficult person who felt you had been aggrieved, what would most wind you up? Your claim being dismissed out of hand, never having the chance to eyeball a judge and say, “This is what my problem is.” and being talked to respective respectfully by a judge.
That’s what people want. That’s what we’re denying. That’s why, in respect of that abuse of procedure, we need to be very cautious indeed.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, this bill does deal with a number of changes. For me, one of the main ones I'd like to highlight is that, after the amendment is passed, we're going to be getting, hopefully, five more judges. On this side of the House, we don't give $2.75 million to the Mongrel Mob who provide meth to destroy families; we actually get judges there so that we can get our victims heard. I'm so proud of the fact that under our Government, there's 38,000 less victims, and we look forward to making that number even higher. I commend this bill to the House.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to also take a short call and say a few words about this Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill, which I always thought was pronounced somewhat different, and when I say always, my whole life I’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly—at least at least since when I first was aware of it, which dates right back to about first reading.
Labour is going to support this bill because we do believe that New Zealanders deserve a justice system that doesn’t leave victims waiting years to have their day in court. But we do need to be honest about the bill. Adding more judges is essentially the legislative equivalent of putting out the buckets when the roof is leaking. It’s necessary, for sure, but it’s hardly some bold system-strengthening approach—and certainly not this bold approach, this silver bullet, this big fix that the Government likes to pretend it’s taking.
This is what happens when the Government confuses being loud about crime with being serious about crime. They can talk about cracking down until they’re blue in the face, but without the workforce, the rest of the workforce and the infrastructure and the basic supports to actually move the case through, nothing much changes.
I thought it was interesting, my colleague Greg O’Connor talked earlier about the category 4 cases and how that now makes up 76 percent of the High Court inflows. And that’s, you know, clearly not just a flip, that’s actually a structural shift. We heard that trials are longer, that they’re more complex, they’re also more frequent. So, you know, yes, increasing this cap is appropriate for now, but it’s hardly bold and it’s the very least this Government could be doing to get to the bottom of this problem.
More importantly, I think the Government also owes New Zealand a bit of an explanation, as my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb just said, for why the most serious violence cases are spiking and why they’re not doing anything to actually address the drivers of crime. If you’re going to brand yourself as tough on crime—"law and order Government” as has been branded in the contributions to date—you actually need a bit of a plan to stop harm from happening in the first place, not just react to it after it does happen. That’s a little bit half-baked—half-baked at the very least. The Government can keep pretending and absolutely put their head in the sand.
Well, after two years, the Government has made a very small change to try and address a problem that they claim to be a big change. And it’s a little bit hypocritical that they’re here making a big deal about it. And you certainly don’t clear a backlog by ignoring the people—all the rest of the people that run that system, do you?
As I said, we are going to support the bill. We do fundamentally believe that victims in every community deserve to have their day in court. And you can’t deliver timely justice and fair outcomes if you don’t have a system that does so in a timely manner. But again, I don’t want to, and I don’t think that we should be overstating what this bill actually achieves. It’s modest at best. It’s practical for sure. We’ve got no qualms about the practicality of it.
Noting again, as colleagues have done, we are an urgency. If the Government was on top of their legislative programme, we wouldn’t be sitting here at this very, very late stage of urgency suddenly getting to grips with this very simple change that’s apparently going to make this very big move. Let’s not overstate it.
The Government continues to choose—and it is a choice, absolutely—not to confront the wider problems in our system. And that is why so many people are ending up in the system in the first place, and why those violent crimes and those serious crimes like murder—and as my colleague Greg O’Connor very eloquently said earlier on, “You can’t hide the bodies.”, and the Government certainly can’t hide from the fact that they’re not doing bold things in this space.
We do need our justice system strengthened from end to end. And on this side of the House, we will certainly continue to keep advocating for a much more comprehensive evidence-based approach that actually delivers the things that people in this country deserve.
GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): It’s my pleasure,
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VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. [Interruption] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak in support of this bill at second reading. We are supportive of it because it is an access-to-justice bill, as colleagues have said.
I hate to start with a negative but it’s a bill that also perplexes me because I feel little bit like the Government are doing the access to justice hokey-tokey when it comes to decision makers in the justice space. I say that because in—
Hon Member: Hokey-pokey.
VANUSHI WALTERS: —hokey-pokey, hokey-tokey, say it five times fast!—the draft bill we have the additional two, the Amendment Paper’s going to, hopefully, change that, I’m very supportive of a change in terms of an increase, but I will be supporting changes that my colleague is making in his Amendment Papers, as well, but, in the same year, the Government have also reduced the number of decision makers on the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
So the Human Right Review Tribunal currently has, I believe, the two chairpeople but also the three deputy chairpeople. The deputy chairpeople can hear the case with a community panel on their own, and that speeds up the system, essentially; it means that you don’t need to have the chairpeople there at every case. However, in this year’s Budget, those additional deputies have not been extended. So it takes the Human Rights Review Tribunal down from five, to two decision makers. Now, if you speak to people involved in the tribunal, this is sexual harassment claims in the employment space, these are discrimination claims, these are also health claims that go through the Health and Disability Commissioner, and they’re Privacy Act complaints as well. Some of them will tell you that it can take two to three years to get to a final decision—two to three years when we have five decision makers. So it begs the question: why would you reduce the number of decision makers there, when clearly there are already delays, if your theory of the game is that increasing the number of decision makers is going to help with the system? So access to justice hokey-tokey aside, a little bit of consistency would be very much appreciated. But we are supportive of this bill.
I think what the Government tend not to do is see the access-to-justice space as a whole. I do think that that’s part of the problem. I will speak to other things that they should be doing to achieve the goal of this bill later in my speech or, if I don’t get the opportunity to, in committee of the whole House.
I did want to, first, touch on a point that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb raised, which was self-represented litigants. I do think that that is something we’re going to have to watch in terms of what this bill does, to ensure that the vexatious provisions aren’t used outside the scope in which they were intended to be used. The first thing is the problem of the way in which the litigants can behave, and Dr Webb made the point that their behaviour can become conflated with the issue itself. But I also think the other problem is the scale at which we’re seeing a growth in self-represented litigants. So I do have some helpful data here which shows that at the end of June 2023, we had more than 70 percent of civil cases in the District Court involving a self-represented party—70 percent in the District Court; now, that’s compared to 52 percent at the same time in 2015, eight years and a massive increase in self-represented litigants. The Family Court, you have a doubling in the last 10 years of the people who represent themselves. So it’s not an issue we can ignore; we really need to make sure that we find a way for the courts to recognise these people will not have the same set of skills, necessarily as a legal representative.
Interestingly, the community law centres—we’ve, obviously, just passed a bill about community law. Community Law Auckland did have a system where they would go into the courts and assist self-represented litigants and just help them understand court procedure. But I think the question is: well, how do we expand a model like that so that if we are going to bring in provisions that may potentially be quite rights-damaging for self-represented litigants that we’re also providing them with the support and, maybe not legal advice, but, certainly with some legal support at the front end so that they are able to support themselves while they are in court.
We had a number of submissions that we heard at select committee on this. The Law Society is always extremely comprehensive. They raised the issue of the definition of “plainly abusive” and the fact that, again, in regards to self-represented litigants, that may present as a problem. I may speak to a few more of the issues that they raised, in the course of the committee stage.
There are also amendments to the Coroners Act which allow the coroner to close cases. Now, when I read that provision, my mind went back to the last term of Parliament where we had a petition in front of the Justice Committee about the slow pace at which coroners cases were proceeding. So I do think this goes some way to addressing that. But what was also clear when people were submitting to us is that it was a very emotional process. Some people were waiting for considerable amounts of time for very personal decisions for them to be able to access life insurance payments, as well. We have to remember there will be people who would like their family member’s case to go through a coroner’s hearing, who will be confronted with a coroner’s decision to close a file instead of investigating. I do have an amendment on this point, which just asks that if the coroner is deciding to close a file, they turn their minds to precisely the same factors as they would have to if they were opening a file or opening the initial file, as well, which I think is a sensible change and, hopefully, one that the Minister will agree with. I will speak more to the amendment when that comes through the pipeline.
I’ll just mention, briefly, Greg O’Connor’s amendment which is looking at setting a range of judges, as opposed to a cap or a lower threshold. So the problem with a lower threshold, if you said that there always had to be, say, 60 judges, is that, at any given point, you would have to have appointed more than that lower threshold. That’s obviously because there may be unforeseen resignations, for example, so you couldn’t dip below the statutory provision, or there may be a debt, in which case you would also be below the statutory provision. So a low threshold is somewhat problematic. Having a high threshold in terms of what the cap is is potentially quite useful; although, again, what I would suggest—and this is the amendment that has been tabled—is that a range would be the best option. The reason why you might not also want a minimum is that you may not want unconstrained powers of appointment.
So the thing about the High Court judges is that those are very serious, sensitive, important decisions that are being made at the High Court—judicial reviews go to the High Court, which is, of course, a case about whether the proper process has been carried out in public institutions, and by Government Ministers. Certainly, within that delicate balance that is Parliament and the discretion of Ministers versus our judiciary—not that this would ever happen—but you would never certainly want to provide for the powers for someone to stack a court by making a large number of appointments in a short period of time.
Just in my last 30 seconds—I did mention there are other issues that ought to be addressed in this space, as well, that just feel like they’re being ignored. This morning, on RNZ, we heard about the poor state of our courts and the fact that in some of them, I think it was Rotorua, that there were cockroaches still being seen climbing the walls; certainly, in Waitakere, there’s mould and there are leaks; and I’ve had to interview clients in the hallways, as well. So all of this is part of what true access to justice means. I look forward to speaking more about that at the committee stage.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Mr Speaker, this is great legislation increasing the number of High Court judges. I commend it to the House.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green): It is interesting that we have such in-depth and insightful contributions from the Government side. They last all of five seconds. I would try to reach the brevity of my good friend Greg Fleming as well, but unfortunately, I have a little bit more time on my hands. So we’ll give it a bit more attention because the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill is actually a small bill but it’s a small bill that we are paying attention to. We do support it, but it is also a bill that really does show that this Government is a Government that mistakes busyness for action: simply trying to get stuff done without really doing anything. That’s the nature of this Government.
We don’t need to be too concerned with this bill. What we need to do is consider the pipeline to the courts. We really do need to consider the pipeline to the courts. We need to get tough on inequality. That’s what we need to get tough on, and that’s the focus of the Green Party, Te Pāti Kākāriki: guaranteed minimum income to reduce desperation, cleaner, cheaper, smarter power to reduce power bills; public transport for affordable mobility; the provision of jobs through our green industrial strategy. All of this will have a positive impact on the numbers entering the court system. This bill is a bill that’s dealing with the symptoms—it’s dealing with the symptoms; it’s not dealing with the cause.
As my colleague Tamatha Paul mentioned, 140,000 court appearances were delayed through COVID and we’re now doing catch-up. That’s why we will support this bill. We will support this bill, but there is also that question that my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan mentioned: how do we do things a bit better? How do we get more diversity and representation in our High Court? Because that’s something that we know we’re lacking. We’re currently lacking this at the moment. We do have a very diverse society and a multicultural society. That’s really valuable. How do we get that diversity and representation in our court system and in our High Court? That’s one thing.
We’re also pleased that this bill increases the number of High Court judges, but what it doesn’t do is meet the request of the Chief Justice who said that we needed to have a 25 percent increase in our High Court judges. So it’s not quite getting there. It’s not following the recommendations from our Chief Justice. So this is problematic.
We also heard that things are getting a bit more expensive and a bit more complicated because there’s that lack of section 27 reports. By causing a whole lot more problems in society, we are creating the need for a bigger court system. Again, we’re addressing the symptoms, we’re not addressing the problem and we’re not addressing the cause. That’s the problem, really, that we’re facing here. We’ll support this bill because we do need that representation—we’ll certainly support this bill—and we do need courts that work and we do need access to courts, but, and I’ll say it again, we cannot ignore the causes that drive people into desperation, that drive people into our courts. That’s why we need to be focused. We need to be tough on inequality much more than focusing simply on the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Landlords.
SCOTT WILLIS: That’s exactly right. As my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan said, one of the things we could definitely do is get tough on landlords and put $3 billion into our court system. Now, that would be very helpful.
Our concern is this bill is a small bill. It is helpful. It doesn’t do a great deal, and it doesn’t go far enough according to the Chief Justice, but it does do something. However, there is so much more to be done, and we are very focused, on this side of the House, on getting tough on inequality and not giving away more to the tobacco companies. Thank you.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill.
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to Senior Courts Act 2016
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the House is in committee on the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill. We now come to Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 3 to 9—“Amendments to Senior Courts Act 2016”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): I'm pleased to be leading the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill through the committee stage. This bill supports the Government’s commitment to an effective and efficient justice system. The bill amends the Senior Courts Act, Criminal Procedure Act, and the Coroners Act to improve timeliness in New Zealand's courts by maximising judicial resource.
The amendments will increase the cap on the number of High Court judges from 55 to 57, give courts better tools to address proceedings that plainly abuse the process of the court, meaning these can be disposed of quickly by a single judge, reduce duplication at the pre-trial stage of criminal proceedings, ensure appeals are heard at the most appropriate level, and enable coroners to close inquiries they have previously decided to open if it is no longer appropriate to conduct the inquiry. These improvements will ensure judicial resource is focused on the most critical matters.
The benefits of improved court timeliness will be felt across the justice sector. I wish to also draw Minister Goldsmith’s Amendment Paper to the attention of the House for consideration during this committee stage. The Amendment Paper makes a further increase to the number of High Court judges that may be appointed, to 60. This is intended to better enable the courts to respond to unexpected long-term absences. When a judge is unexpectedly on extended leave, for example, due to illness—or serious illness—this puts a strain on rostering and negatively impacts timeliness. The additional three judges would be appointed to cover this unexpected long-term absence to maintain timeliness in the High Court.
The Amendment Paper also makes changes to better support the transition between High Court judges. It would enable an incoming judge to take office up to three months before the retirement of an existing judge. This will make the transition between judicial appointments more efficient. I'm happy to take questions on that as we debate the bill during the committee stage.
There are key changes to this bill that have been made at select committee. In the report to the House, the Justice Committee recommended two key amendments. The first is clarifying that an order to strike out proceedings may be made on the papers. Clause 7 of the bill inserts new sections 164A to 164C into the Senior Courts Act. These provisions relate to striking out or otherwise dealing with plainly abusive civil proceedings. The Justice Committee recommended amending new section 164B to allow a judge to make an order to strike out or otherwise deal with a plainly abusive civil proceeding on the papers.
The second one is clarifying that a coroner need not provide information about circumstances of death. Cause 20 of the bill inserts new section 65A into the Coroners Act to allow coroners to close an inquiry they have earlier decided to open if new information or a change in circumstances mean it is no longer appropriate to conduct the inquiry. For consistency with other existing provisions in the Coroners Act, the Justice Committee recommended that new section 65A be amended to clarify when a coroner does not need to provide information about the circumstances of the death. The coroner would need to have taken into account the public interest in the death and be satisfied there is no clear benefit to the public in providing that information.
I thank the Justice Committee for their work on strengthening this bill and their support in the House progressing this bill through committee of the whole House and the third reading.
GREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister. It’s interesting, Minister, that we’re focused on the judges, in this amendment, as though the judges are the only people that exist in the whole of the system. In fact, anyone who’s had anything to do with courts, particularly High Courts, will know that the judges are very much a part of a big machine. In fact, the role of judges is probably diminished, truth be known, because, now, of the amount of prescription imposed on judges.
The days of the old character judges like, say, Sir John Jeffries is one that comes to mind, in Wellington in particular, who actually commanded a lot of authority, not just from even their presence in the court room, but from actually the wisdom of their judgements that often resonated right through—whether it be lawyers, police officers, and even defendants. So just interested that this amendment really just focuses particularly around the number of High Court judges.
I’ve got an amendment paper, Minister, around the High Court judges. What we’d said is we’ve now—and I notice that the Minister’s amendment has now moved it to be no fewer than 60 or to 60. My amendment says let’s keep this flexible. Flexibility in the system has got to be preferable to the very prescription that I see as being something of a bar to justice or certainly slows justice or prevents individualising a lot of the decisions that smart judges used to make.
My amendment says that, perhaps, that we should have the flexibility that says the number of High Court judges appointed from time to time refer to the section 6(2)(b) must not be fewer than 60 but not exceed 65, because this would again allow for the ups and downs, the variations that do come. There’ll be times where there will be the need, for various reasons. For example, you’ll see at the moment particularly around where the economy is under strain there are a lot more civil cases coming through where businesses have come into strife and all the associated legal issues that arise from that. Again, that would just give the issue that may well be we need to go to 63 judges for some time to deal with that. So my amendment is to deal with just that. It’s actually an amendment to the Minister’s amendment, which, of course, is the one that has been placed on table just now.
My question would be: how did we come to the number that we have? Is there any reason why we can’t introduce some sort of flexibility here around five—I’m aware that there is, as my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb pointed out, a lot of cost involved in one of these High Court judges, which, again, reflects on the point I made that a judge is just one part of a very big machine in these courts. So the question is: how did we arrive at the number we did, and is there any reason why we can’t have the flexibility between 60 and 65 to reflect the conditions that may exist at any one time?
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The Hon Nicole McKee. You OK?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Yeah, yeah, no. When I stood up, the chair went back, and I went with it.
Greg O'Connor: I hope my question wasn’t that—
Hon NICOLE McKEE: No, no. It was fine. I thank the member Greg O’Connor for putting his thoughts together on this bill. The questions that he asked are really good ones as well. I would like to take the opportunity to be able to answer them. I’m referring to the member’s Amendment Paper 443, where he is looking to amend the Amendment Paper of Minister Goldsmith.
In answer to his questions about the minimum and maximum number of judges, there is a reason why we don’t increase it to 65. That is because the High Court judges are paid through a permanent legislative authority, which is held in section 135(1) of the Senior Courts Act 2016. The judges remuneration is set independently by the Remuneration Authority to maintain judicial independence, and so we need to think about that every time we add numbers to the cap because it means that there has to be an appropriation put aside for that number. It includes, as the member had pointed out, additional staff that need to go with those judges too. To increase the cap even further means having to put aside additional funds.
Now, we don’t tend to go under the cap that we’ve had by saying that we’ll have no fewer than 60. The reality is that when a judge is appointed, they’re, effectively, appointed until they retire. So they’re there for life. But the change in the Amendment Paper that Minister Goldsmith has proposed is to allow the transfer of some of these judges who are coming up for retirement—and there’s quite a few of them coming up for retirement—but there’s also, unfortunately, a number of people who are getting quite sick at the moment. The way that the current legislation is recorded is that we cannot implement a new judge until an existing judge actually retires. Then a new judge comes in and has to have three months’ worth of training, so we’re actually down a judge for three months while that training occurs.
So the Amendment Paper is proposing that we open up to allow an extra three more judges—five in total—with those three judges being able to train within the three month period that a judge is either going to be sick and stand down or is retiring, and then that way we have no loss and continuity between the judges for that three-month period. So that’s the reason why the Amendment Paper is proposing a request for an extra three, and the reason why we are not capping it at, say, 65, mainly because the funding would have to be put aside, and we think that we’ve landed at the right number, allowing the three-month changeover for three judges at a time, and increasing the cap by two.
GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): If I may, is the danger of that not then, Minister, that the workload is irrelevant in this? We often hear members across the House boasting about the strategies that are being implemented that are going to end up with more people in prison, and certainly a harder attitude towards them. Surely a flexible system is one where every part of the system must move?
I remember Bill English saying, in about 2016 or 2017—lamenting—that prisons were a failure of society and lamenting the number of people that we actually had in prison in New Zealand. He also added, “Heck, I’m not going to put more police officers on, because I know that if I put more police officers on, I’m going to need more prisons, and I’m going to need more judges—it’s going to impact on every part of the system.” You may remember during my second reading speech that I mentioned that the courts tend to be the bottleneck in the justice sector—the whole criminal justice system.
Where we can’t even have the flexibility to apply more or less—and, in fact, it’s only ever going to be governed by the Vote—then surely, Minister, it means that we’ve actually got no ability to reflect reality. We often hear that we must be able to have that flexibility to react to the reality of the world in which we’re living, but by being only by driven by the Vote, as you’ve said, and little else, then we actually just build that bottleneck. In fact, it could create a less or a lower functioning and more unfair justice system for that very reason.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to follow both my colleague the member Greg O'Connor as well as the Minister's response on this, because the number of judges is—I think—probably one of the more significant aspects, and it has probably the broadest impact to our court system, of the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill.
First of all, in terms of the Hon Paul Goldsmith’s amendment, it's really heartening to see another further increase from 57 to 60. I'm really, really happy to see that the Government is increasing that, and I also want to acknowledge your response to that, Minister. But can I just check, in terms of that, what the Minister is saying is that the extra three is more about adding that flexibility—so we're not always going to have 60, because there is a degree of ebb and flow; which is also good, because, I think, that also feeds into I think what Greg O'Connor was saying in terms of the adaptability when we need it, and there are stages where maybe we won't push up to 60. But as the Minister yourself said, there are people who are getting to retire who are ill, as well.
I wondered—two questions, I think: I do have an amendment on this, as well, and it's an amendment to the Hon Paul Goldsmith’s Amendment Paper 443, which pushes up from 60 to 69. The reason that it is 69 is because, in the memorandum that the Chief Justice mentioned, in 2030, an additional 25 is what the Chief Justice said is needed in our court system to be able to work through and everything—hence 125 percent of 55 is 69. I want to check if the Minister would consider that.
The other question I have for the Minister—and the Minister mentioned, in terms of the appropriation for this—and I don't know if the Minister remembered that we had this very sort of same conversation during the Estimates scrutiny week, where I asked you in terms of the appropriation that was set aside for High Court judges and the fact that the appropriation didn't line up with the number that is, specifically, two High Court judges or the remuneration equivalent of two High Court judges. But in there it was lower than two, and the Minister responded by saying that, you know, people retire at different times and leave at different times; that appointment may not always be the same. But now, we're seeing that being pushed up by another three, so I do want to check that that is not something that, at least upon initial reading on a face level, the Budget 2025 appropriation for courts has allowed for. I want to check with the Minister, then, is this something that will potentially eventuate as kind of working within what the Budget allocation, or is it something that will eventuate as part of a supplementary Budget? I don't know if the Minister is able to actually speak on that, but I want to check anyway, because the addition of three High Court judges is significant and does mean that, like the Minister said, more money needs to be set aside.
Those are my two initial questions to begin with—actually, three questions: I wondered if the Minister wouldn't mind just speaking a little bit more about the new clause 4(3), as inserted by Amendment Paper 443, replacing “the Governor-General thinks that 1 or more additional Judges are” with “at any time the Governor-General thinks that an additional Judge is”. I want to check with the Minister, because there's no explanatory note attached to it, what that change of phrasing means.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): I thank the member for his questions. In regard to his amendment lodged at 7.36 p.m., I have the same response I gave to Greg O’Connor, which is that under the permanent legislative authority is how our judges are paid. So the increase of two permanent judges has been accounted for, as the member has pointed out. The extra three that are added on are there for replacement of any judge that retires or get ill, for example.
It just allows us to bring in that transitional three-month period so that when the judge who is standing down has stood down, they are no longer being paid, and the three—it may only be one at a time—are needed. But as the member mentioned, it’s about the flexibility and allowing up to three judges at any one time to be trained within that three-month period. But the costings for that will change after that period of time. I hope that answers the member’s question.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Thanks, Mr Chair, and thanks, Minister, for your constructive answers to my colleague’s questions. I have some questions in relation to clauses 5 to 7 of the bill, which are new sections 164A to 164C, and these are the provisions that discussed plainly abusive civil proceedings. I’m really keen to flesh out the strike-out provisions, so I have some questions, and they are all, kind of, centred around those two concepts that, among other concepts, underpin our justice system: the rule of law and the concept of natural justice. The bill talks about if a person—
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Was that new section 164A to—
TAMATHA PAUL: New sections 164A to 164C.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): OK—cool.
TAMATHA PAUL: Yeah. So obviously, where a person has been struck out twice within two years, they will be—what is it; what is the wording?—they are not going to be able to file further proceedings for the following three years within those senior courts. I just wanted to ask how you arrived at some of those time frames. The time frame of being struck out twice within those two years, is that based on those kinds of provisions and other laws? What rationale helped you to arrive at the three years to be struck out? Is that based on other similar provisions within our law? Is there a reason for why we've gone with three years? Interesting that we went with two strikeouts since the Minister is a three-strikes person. But, yeah, I’d be keen to just understand a little bit more about how you arrived at that rationale.
Another question I had is—and apologies if I'm missing some of the details that might have been provided during select committee, but obviously, Lawrence, as our permanent member on the Justice Committee, is privy to a bit more information—if there was any analysis done on who might be affected by these kinds of provisions and whether there's been any analysis of, I guess, maybe, what type of person in our society is most responsible for, essentially, wasting the court's time with plainly abusive litigation? It would be really helpful to understand what type of person is it. Is it a person who is using litigation to abuse another person, which we see sometimes in the family court and other courts when it's an inter-family or domestic dispute? Is it people who have a lack of understanding of the law and, therefore, are constantly just using the court's time because there is a lack of understanding? Is it people with a lot of resource who are able to pay for lawyers and all of these kinds of things? So yeah—trying to understand who will be most impacted by the strike-out provisions.
While we're here, I'm keen to start talking about that language of “plainly abusive litigation”. There is a lot that we could discuss about that phrasing. We know in the Law Society's submission on this bill that the bill doesn't provide a definition for “plainly” in this context, so I’m keen to understand: what does that mean? What are some examples of things that are “plainly abusive”? Does it mean that it is the use of strong or inappropriate language? Or is it just that someone is continuing to seek the same recourse with the same outcome, and they just continue to pursue that same avenue over and over again? What does “plainly” mean in the context of this bill, and what does “plainly abusive” mean in terms of case law? What examples can we look to in case law or within proceedings to understand the way that that term is used in this context?
We'll start there. I'm sure there are probably many more questions around the use of “plainly abusive”, so I’m keen to dive back into that, but I’m keen to get the Minister's answers on some of those questions.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the member for her questions. I’ve got quite long answers, so bear with me, but I hope it helps.
I’m going to start with clause 7, inserting new section 164A. This is enabling a registrar of a senior court to refer civil proceedings that they believe are plainly an abuse of court process to a single judge of the court in which the proceedings were filed to consider whether to make an order striking out or otherwise dealing with the proceeding under new section 164B, which I’ll get to. The process for striking out or otherwise dealing with civil proceedings that plainly abuse the process of the court, in new sections 164A and 164B, is more modelled on an existing process that is already in the High Court Rules. The bill applies this to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court as well. The intent is to enable proceedings that are plainly an abuse of process to be dealt with efficiently by a single judge in each of the senior courts. Currently, at the moment, they need to get a panel of judges—bringing, quite often, three or more judges in—so this is allowing them to have one. The registrar’s role in referring a potentially abusive proceeding to a judge is the same as the existing role of a High Court Registrar under the High Court Rules that I mentioned just before.
Moving on to section 164B: the new section 164B enables the judge, if satisfied that a proceeding that the registrar has referred to them is plainly an abuse of process, to strike it out or make that order or give directions. A judge can strike out a civil proceeding if they’re satisfied that it’s plainly an abuse of the process—and “plainly an abuse of the process”, I’ve been told, is a very high threshold. The courts have adopted a two-limbed test in determining whether something is plainly an abuse of process. The first test is whether it would be manifestly unfair to the respondent that they be required to respond. The second test is whether right-thinking people would consider that the court was exercising very poor control of its processes if it permitted the matter to proceed further. Again, this is already detailed in the High Court Rules.
This provision is enabling only. A judge will still keep his or her discretion on whether to make an order under that section. The judge can also make an order to give directions to ensure the proceeding is disposed of or proceeds in a way that complies with the court rules. I note—and the member said she’s not on the Justice Committee—the select committee added to new section 164B that another order may be made on the papers without the opportunity to make submissions. This ensures that the new power is consistent with the current strike-out power contained in the High Court Rules, which allows an order to be made without allowing the person who filed the proceeding to make submissions. That came from the select committee.
If I move on to new section 164C, because it just sums them all up together: the restraint that has been made in new section 164C is similar to the existing provisions for a general order in sections 166 to 169 of the Senior Courts Act, which allow a judge to issue an order restraining a party from commencing or continuing proceedings if satisfied that at least two proceedings brought by that person were totally without merit—so meeting those two tests. The key difference from the current law is that the restraint in new section 164C applies automatically where two proceedings are struck out as plainly an abuse of process. It does not require a party to apply for an order or for a judge to make an order on their own initiative. The restraint itself is not able to be appealed, but the strike-out orders that lead to the restraint can be. If a strike-out order is set aside on appeal, the restraint no longer applies. People will still be able to access the courts if they are restrained, but they need to seek permission from the High Court first. They will still have that opportunity. The intent here is to prevent the repeated abuse of proceedings that wastes courts’ time and the time of parties.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister, for the comprehensive explanation. That’s really, really helpful in terms of that.
I just want, I guess, to pick up the last thing the Minister said, on section 167C, which is that people still have the ability, for example, but they have to go through a High Court judge, which I think answers one of my questions, which is around what happens in the kinds of appeals, the kinds of cases being brought, for example, to the Supreme Court, particularly when it comes to things like the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Are they still able to do that? I am assuming that a High Court judge will be using their best judgment to decide if it is of a serious enough nature that the order isn’t going to be in effect in that particular case. Thank you, Minister, for that.
I want to check with the Minister: as part of the select committee process, in new section 164B(2A), inserted by clause 7, the Minister did mention that one of the things that was carried over was the idea of “may make an order or give directions … on the papers”, noting that the intention of that is to be able to make it on papers without notice to the person filing the proceedings—“without giving the person who filed the proceeding the opportunity to make submissions.” At the same time, it would not affect the person’s right to appeal an order. It could be—we’ve been doing this for 70-plus hours—but if a person doesn’t know that an order has been made by a judge, would they then have to wait until they re-appeal an order? “How will they know to appeal an order if they don’t know that they’ve got notice?” is, I guess, the crux of my question?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the member again for his question. The allowance here is for the judge to make the order without the papers, without the submission, and there is a process that every judge and court goes through in order to serve orders on a person once an order has been made.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
A party vote was called for on the question, That debate on this question now close.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Greg O'Connor’s tabled amendments to the Minister’s amendments to clause 4 set out on Amendment Paper 443 be agreed to.
Amendments to the amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendments to the Minister’s amendments to clause 4 set out on Amendment Paper 443 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendments to the amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 443 be agreed to.
Amendments to the amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Part 1 as amended stand part.
Part 1 as amended agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments to other legislation, and Schedules 2 to 4
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clauses 10 to 29—“Amendments to other legislation”—and Schedules 2 to 4. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you again to the Minister for a very informative response to questions on Part 1 around the Senior Courts Act.
In terms of Part 2, I think I’m going to start with the first half of Subpart 1, which is amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and move on to the Coroners Act 2006.
So starting with Subpart 1, I note that clause 12 is probably the most significant clause with the management of pre-trial processes if the defendant is charged in respect of two or more offenses in different District Court offices. I just want to check with Minister. In this case, particularly when we're looking at section 156A(2), it does say, “A District Court Judge, on the Judge’s own initiative or on the application of the prosecutor or the defendant, may direct that the pre-trial processes in respect of some or all the proceedings be managed in one of the offices of the District Court …”.
Can I just get a clarification from the Minister. With that, when you’re looking at two different District Court judges, is this to do with when a defendant is charged with the same crime in two different areas or with two different crimes in two or more areas? That’s my first question to the Minister.
In terms of the second question I have for the Minister, what I’m finding that's quite interesting in terms of subsection—
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Can you just repeat that first question?
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Sure—OK. So when a defendant is charged with two or more offenses, two or more offences means that the offences—each—will have to take place within the jurisdiction of a different District Court—so one offence in one District Court, one in the other one? Or does it mean two or more offences that cross District Courts? That’s my question to start off with, which may provide some clarification for further questions. I wasn’t clear as to section 156A(1)(b) when it says that “proceedings in respect of the offences have been commenced”; it doesn't necessarily clarify the charge itself.
My second question is around what we see in terms of section 156A(3), particularly when we’re looking at paragraphs (a) and (b). I think that paragraphs (a) and (b) are a very important inclusion to ensure that if any sort of pre-trial processes are being shifted between different District Courts, the timeliness and interest of justice is still a core part of it. But I just wanted to check with the Minister: how would that look in terms of the process itself when a judge makes that determination?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Before I answer the member’s questions, I’d just like to clarify even further an answer to a previous question, which was about when the first strike-out order is made and what happens with that. When a judge makes the first strike-out order, they must inform the litigant of the potential for automatic restraint to apply if they bring future proceedings that abuse the process. This means that people will have a fair warning of the consequence of making abusive applications. Decisions for strike-out may also be appealed. If overturned on appeal, the strike-out decision will not count towards restraint—so that’s further to member Tamatha Paul’s question about that.
To the member Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question: when someone is accused of multiple offences, charges can be filed and proceed in different District Court office locations. This means that the defendant can have court appearances at several locations, and that can add to delays and inefficiencies within the court system. Having the ability to bring them into one actually is not only efficient for the courts but it’s probably efficient for the person, because it means they don’t have to go to several different jurisdictions and can have everything heard in the one place—efficiency all around.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. That clarifies my question on that part. Thank you, Minister. I just want to now move on to new section 319A inserted by clause 13, and this is I think my last contribution for Subpart 1—I’m just going to check one thing—and yeah, then I’ll move on to the Coroners Act.
In terms of clause 13 inserting new section 319A, I think this is a really interesting section in terms of the ability to ease the workload of the Court of Appeal and the High Cout and the more efficient and timely determination of the District Court of Appeal. I’m curious to know, because this section specifically says “applies to a first appeal or an application”. I guess, I kind of want to know—in terms of the processes you make the first appeal under this part of the District Court, but what happens if, for example, it goes to High Court and then gets bounced back, are you able then to make a second appeal, which the new process under 319A would not be available for someone making subsequent appeals?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): I’ll speak to the intent of the bill and what the new section 319A, being inserted into the Criminal Procedure Act by clause 13, actually does. The provision is about enabling a single judge of the Court of Appeal to remit certain appeals and applications for leave to the High Court for determination.
This new provision is limited to appeals and applications for leave to appeal under Part 6 of the principal Act, for which the Court of Appeal is the first appeal court for decisions of the District Court. The provision is enabling a single Court of Appeal judge to remit cases for which the Court of Appeal is the first appeal court to the High Court for determination.
Appeals relating to most District Court jury trials, and some District Court judge-alone trials, are currently heard by the Court of Appeal as the first appeal court. This is enabling some first appeals to be remitted to the High Court, which will mean that these cases are determined by one High Court judge instead of three judges in the Court of Appeal. This will ensure more efficient use of judicial resource while retaining the Court of Appeal’s oversight of the appellant jurisdiction in criminal cases.
That's the whole intent and purpose of that particular clause. The member was asking questions about second appeals, but it actually has to flow in how the courts themselves appeal. The intent, really, is to just outline the fact that we shouldn't have to have three judges to refer a case back to the High Court because it's automatically gone to the Court of Appeal. We're basically saying bring the High Court back in and allow one judge to make that decision.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister; that also clarifies my question so I'm going to move on to a new section now. I’m now looking at Subpart 2, in Part 2. So we've now moved on from the Criminal Procedure Act into the Coroners Act. I'm looking at clause 20, inserting new section 65A: “Coroner may close inquiry despite initial decision”.
Now, one of the things that was brought in as a bit of a concern was the retrospectivity of this particular section and the fact that it would apply to inquiries open before, on, or after the bill’s commencement date, and I—have lost my place.
I wondered if, for example, in the new section 65A(7A) that is being introduced as a part of this, where the coroner decides to close the inquiry and someone requires them to provide information about it, how would that interact with the retrospectivity of clause 20? I guess, in some ways, when we were at the select committee stage, we could see the intention behind that retrospectivity, particularly in terms of some of the outstanding cases, but I just want to engage with the Minister in terms of some of the Minister's thoughts around this area and the retrospectivity for the closure of an inquiry. So that's my first question.
My second question for the Minister—and I guess this crosses over another bill that is currently going through as well, which is the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill. I want to check with the Minister if there are any thoughts around how this particular bill interacts with clause 31 of that bill and the way that the consistency can be matched between sections 64 and 94 of the Coroners Act. So in this case, when we're looking at clause 31 of that other bill—which also has a section around, I guess, a clarification of clause 31 of the Coroners Act.
I guess the first question I have for the Minister is: what are the Minister's thoughts around the retrospectivity elements of this? And my second question is: how does the Minister foresee this bill, and particularly this clause, interacting with sections 64 and 94 of the Coroners Act which is currently going through under the bill in the House?
Sorry, Mr Chair, the Minister is just getting some advice, I hope. While I'm waiting for the Minister on those two particular questions, I might move on to clause 21, which is section 83 amended, and this is to do with the appointment of specialist advisers. I want to check with the Minister on this particular section. When it was discussed in the Justice Committee it also was one of the ones that we would have thought would be quite obvious as something that should have been included. I guess for something like that, I wanted to check with the Minister because the Minister was also the Minister in the chair when we did the statutes bill and was hugely informative and engaging in that. For something like this, would that be considered something that could also have been brought through as part of the statutes bill instead of having been brought into a separate bill altogether? So that's my next particular question.
So my three questions to the Minister are: clause 20—what are the Minister’s thoughts on retrospectivity? What are the Minister’s thoughts around the interaction with another bill that's currently going through, particularly that also has implications to the Coroners Act? And, in terms of clause 21, section 83 amended, is that something that could have been introduced or been brought into another bill, in particular like the statutes bill or a regulatory systems bill?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m going to apologise to the member, because I’ve missed quite a bit of what the member has said. I did pick up some of the beginning part of what he said. What I might do is, actually, in speaking to clause 20, which is the new section 65A that the member was talking about—if he bears with me while I actually refer to Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment timed 9.08 p.m., I think that might actually end up answering some questions for him. It’s about the coroner’s consideration of section 63 matters when they’ve decided to close an inquiry, which is what the member was asking about—the closing of an inquiry.
In considering whether an inquiry is no longer appropriate, a coroner will cast their mind back to the reasons they initially opened it in the first place. The reasons for opening the inquiry under section 63 are actually quite a non-exhaustive list. They will not all have been relevant to the decision that the coroner made to open an inquiry in every case. I recognise that the decision to close an inquiry, as the member mentioned, can have quite an impact on families and friends. The changes in new section 65A(3) of the bill require the coroner to notify interested parties of the proposal to close the inquiry, and they must provide the reasons for doing so. The notified parties will then have 15 working days in which to make submissions to the coroner on the proposal to close the inquiry. This consultation will, by its design, involve a discussion about what led the coroner to open the inquiry in the first place and also why they since decided that it was unnecessary to prolong the inquiry any further.
There are a whole lot of conversations that will be occurring. They won’t just say, “That’s it, we’re going to deny it.” In fact, if I recall in legislation, if the family are really adamant that there was, say, some foul play, then a judge will take that on board in their consideration. The purpose of them being able to close the inquiries was when it became quite obvious that a person had, for example, died of natural causes. Once an inquiry has been opened, the inquiry must go through all of its processes—even when the coroner and all people understand that, actually, the person died of natural causes. This is allowing them to be able to close the inquiry when everybody determines the same outcome. At the end of the day, the judge will make the decisions, but the coroners that I know are quite empathetic to the families, and they do work with them. They’re not going to go about trying to close off inquiries unless they do actually have an understanding that there is a reason for doing so.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Vanushi Walters’ tabled amendment to clause 20, replacing new section 65A(1), be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Part 2 agreed to.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Schedule 4 agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): I was waiting for “The question is…”, but, anyway, I do have a final question. It’s a reasonably short question—
Grant McCallum: Don’t say it’s your last question!
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: It actually is my last question. It actually, genuinely is my last question. I am deeply appreciative of the committee’s patience these last, I don’t know, like 75-odd hours. But also, more excitingly for this committee, it is also my last amendment. I would like to refer the Minister to my amendment at 8.30.02 p.m. on the commencement date.
Now I’m going to refer to this bill in conjunction with the bill that we just discussed, which is the Legal Services (Distribution of Special Fund) Amendment Bill, because both bills were introduced at the same time and both bills had a commencement date of 1 July 2025. However, I want to check with the Minister on why the updated commencement date for the two has changed, because for the previous one, the commencement date says, “This Act comes into force on the day after Royal assent.” However, for this particular bill, the commencement date says, “This Act comes into force on 1 February 2026.”
I guess for personal sort of consistency, my amendment is to seek the Minister's guidance on whether there was support on this. It’s just to simply also change the clause 2 amendment, replacing “1 February 2026” with “the day after Royal assent.”, to be consistent with the other bill.
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Thank you, Mr Chair. In speaking to the member’s tabled amendment of 8.35.02 p.m., the reason why 1 February 2026 has been inserted is that time is needed to put the operational measures in place to implement the changes.
GREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Just in relation to the title of the bill, I just wonder why we’ve got such a complicated title. If one googles the word “judicature” and pronounces it properly, it refers to the “administration of justice by courts and judges, or, more broadly, the judiciary.” So why don’t we just call it the “Judiciary (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill? I defy anyone in this House when they saw this bill tonight that did not look at it and say, “What the hell is that all about?”
A bill went through this House some years ago—I think it was my fellow member over this side—the plain English bill. We’re all about getting everything nice and simple, so how about an amendment that, instead of the “Judicature” bill, we call it the “Judiciary” bill, so we will all know exactly what it’s all about?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Minister for Courts): Judicature—judicature—it sounds so cool. Actually, to the member: I really like hearing you trying to say it.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): I move, That debate on this question now close.
Motion agreed to.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s tabled amendment to clause 2, replacing “1 February 2026” with “the day after Royal assent”, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 49
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15.
Noes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Amendment not agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Madam Speaker, the committee has considering the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Government has indicated that it no longer wishes to continue urgency. The House stands adjourned until Tuesday, 9 December. Good night.
The House adjourned at 9.53 p.m. (Friday)