Thursday, 5 March 2026
Volume 791
Sitting date: 5 March 2026
Thursday, 5 March 2026
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Start of Sitting Day
Karakia/Prayers
SPEAKER (14:00): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and the peace of New Zealand. Amen.
Business of the House
Business Statement
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Deputy Leader of the House) (14:01): Next week, we will be continuing to progress business that is on the Order Paper.
[The Hon Chris Bishop enters Chamber]
Hon Chris Bishop: I can do that again if you want, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER (14:01): I just would note that there is a particularly large media scrum outside and that some of the media, clearly, are not playing ball with regards to making sure that members get to the House. It’s going to be something that I will speak to the gallery about.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: I’m happy for you to have another go.
SPEAKER: Just a minute. The Opposition would to like to hear more from the Government about its intentions—you’re indicating that?
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (14:01): If they’d be so kind, I’d be delighted.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Deputy Leader of the House) (14:01): Next week, the House will consider further stages of the Public Finance Amendment Bill, the Legislation Amendment Bill, and the Public Service Amendment Bill. The hours of Tuesday will be extended into Wednesday morning for Government business. On Wednesday, the general debate will be replaced by a debate on the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on the Treasury’s Long-term Fiscal Statement and will be followed by members’ business.
Presentation
Petitions
SPEAKER (14:02): Two petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.
CLERK (14:02):
Petition of Daniel Walker requesting that the House urge the Government to fully staff and resource Nelson hospital, to rebuild Nelson hospital, and to publicly release all independent and internal reports into care at Nelson hospital
petition of Donna Dabinett requesting that the House ban social media for all convicted rapists released early from prison.
SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.
Papers
SPEAKER (14:02): Ministers have delivered two papers.
CLERK (14:02):
2024-25 annual reports of the:
Government Communications Security Bureau
New Zealand Security Intelligence Service.
SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House.
Select Committee Reports
SPEAKER (14:02): Fifteen select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.
CLERK (14:03):
Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the inquiry into the harm young New Zealanders encounter online, and the roles that Government, business, and society should play in addressing those harms
reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:
2024-25 annual review of Kiwi Group Capital Ltd.
2024-25 annual review of New Zealand Green Investment Finance Limited and the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General
2024-25 annual review of Government Superannuation Fund Authority
2024-25 annual review of Reserve Bank of New Zealand
financial statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year ended 30 June 2025
report of the Health Committee on the 2024-25 annual review of the Pharmaceutical Management Agency
report of the Intelligence and Security Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of the Government Communications Security Bureau and NZ Security Intelligence Service
reports of the Social Services and Community Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of:
Sport and Recreation New Zealand
Tāmaki Redevelopment Company Ltd.
the Ministry for Ethnic Communities
the Ministry for Pacific Peoples
the Ministry for Women
the arts, culture, and heritage sector
the broadcasting sector.
SPEAKER: The report of the Education and Workforce Committee and the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the financial statements of the Government of New Zealand for the year ended 30 June 2025 are set down for consideration.
Bills
Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill
Introduction
SPEAKER (14:04): The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.
CLERK (14:04): Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, introduction.
SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading.
Oral Questions to Ministers
Finance
Question No. 1
NANCY LU (National) (14:04) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economic impact of conflict in the Middle East?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:04): I’ve seen reports of overnight activity in the financial markets. Oil was trading at around US$81 a barrel this morning; little changed from yesterday’s close but still up around 14 percent from a week ago. US and European equities actually rose in overnight trading, although Asian stock markets were down. The New Zealand dollar is up slightly against the US dollar, and the trade-weighted index rose 0.6 percent overnight. It appears that risk sentiment in the markets is relatively stable, at least for the time being.
Nancy Lu: Has she seen any reports of economic impacts under different scenarios?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, I’ve seen some “what if” analyses from different commentators. Those are interesting but, as I said, markets seem relatively calm at the moment and are not rushing to worst case scenarios. That sentiment may be influenced by comments from the US administration that it is considering measures to support oil flows, including shipping insurance and naval escorts for tankers. It could also be that markets are waiting to see how the conflict unfolds. As I’ve said previously, there is likely to be an impact on the New Zealand economy but that will depend on the scale and duration of any disruption, and how quickly things will get back to normal.
Nancy Lu: When will any impacts of the Middle East conflict be reflected in the forecasts?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Treasury’s next set of economic and fiscal forecasts will be released on 28 May, alongside this year’s Budget. These forecasts will reflect information available before the forecasts are closed off in April. That includes, of course, any impacts of the conflict. The Reserve Bank’s next set of economic forecasts will be in its Monetary Policy Statement on 27 May. However, the Reserve Bank may choose to comment on global events in the April monetary policy review.
Nancy Lu: What is the starting point for the next set of forecasts?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: A lot of factors are incorporated in the forecasts. One of those is how the Crown accounts have been tracking in the year to date. The accounts for the first seven months were released this morning and they show that key fiscal indicators are tracking stronger than forecast in the half-year update. Members will be interested to hear that the operating balance before gains and losses, excluding ACC revenue and expenses (OBEGALx) deficit was $1.9 billion lower at the end of January than was previously forecast. Net core Crown debt was lower than forecast, and core Crown expenses were lower than forecast. While there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge in this financial year, it’s good to see the accounts looking better than previously expected.
Energy
Question No. 2
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:07) to the Minister for Energy: What specific gas price sensitivity analysis did MBIE and Concept Consulting carry out for the LNG terminal decision, if any?
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister for Energy) (14:07): The modelling by Concept Consulting included a number of scenarios, including variations in the liquefied natural gas price (LNG) to assess the impact on electricity prices. The modelling showed that the key benefit of LNG is to provide the market with certainty to access fuel during a dry year. That will reduce the risk premium and provide downward pressure on electricity prices. The most important thing to consider is the long-run price of LNG and that is why we expect to see a reduction in consumer bills by at least $50 per household.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: What LNG price path in New Zealand dollars per gigajoule underpins his claims that New Zealanders will save money?
Hon SIMON WATTS: As I outlined in my answer to the primary question, Concept Consulting included a number of scenarios including variations in LNG price. For the member’s interest, when one looks at the LNG price in terms of what it is currently trading at, it is somewhat and closely aligned to the 10-year average.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: How can New Zealanders have confidence in his claims when the regulatory impact statement and cost recovery analysis record a constrained analysis of options, constrained time frames, no completed business case, and no independent stage gate review?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Kiwis can be confident because LNG makes New Zealand more resilient. Surprisingly enough, having more options than less options gives you greater resilience, and greater resilience means less volatility. For those at home, if you have less volatility, you see less power prices and downward pressure on power prices. On this side of the House, we understand energy and that’s why we are putting more options on the table.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: If he agrees with the Prime Minister that LNG prices go up and down, why did he lock New Zealanders into this volatility without first demanding genuinely comprehensive analysis of LNG price and contract risks?
Hon SIMON WATTS: The member has just asked a question in terms of me locking New Zealanders into a scenario. The counterfactual is that in the context of having no gas, it means that we currently do not have enough gas to fuel our existing power plants. The reason why we don’t have enough gas today is the previous Government banned oil and gas, and that’s why our energy prices are high. Thank you, Labour. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just—all right.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Has he, in light of this week’s price spikes, sought updated advice on whether scaling up domestic solutions like more renewables and demand-side measures could provide the same dry-year security, with less exposure to global volatile prices?
Hon SIMON WATTS: As I have outlined in answers to questions already in this House, when the assessment was undertaken by this Government in order to select the LNG scenario, a number of options were considered; however, none of the other options were able to deliver the solution to the problem which this country faces, which is we do not have enough gas to make electricity in a dry year. None of the other solutions will meet that requirement in terms of cost or time. We face an acute problem, because in 2024, we had prices exceeding $800 because we did not have the fuel. It is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that we do have fuel to make electricity in a dry year, and that is what we’re doing.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked the Minister a very direct question about whether he’d sought updated advice this week in light of events. I’m still not sure whether or not he has sought that updated advice from the answer he gave.
SPEAKER: Well, I took it from the answer that he said that they had considered a range of things, none of them came up to scratch from their perspective, and nothing has changed.
Hon Shane Jones: Will the Minister make available any price sensitivity analysis undertaken by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) when the refinery was closed down under the honourable Woods’ leadership?
SPEAKER: That’s too wide of the question.
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Points of order are heard in silence.
Hon Shane Jones: Price sensitivity analysis, MBIE—underlying that is fuel security. The closure of the refinery is obviously a blow, arguably, to fuel security. How can that possibly be out of line?
SPEAKER: Well, because it wasn’t a Government action would be one reason. But I’ll allow the Minister to make a comment to move us on.
Hon SIMON WATTS: It would be fair to say—and I think what the member is also referring to is—that when a Government makes a policy decision in order to reduce options within a country, it creates volatility and puts upward pressure on price. What we saw from the last Government’s policy decision to shut the oil refinery, to ban oil and gas, is it reduced New Zealand’s energy independence, reduced its energy resilience, and as a result, this Government is having to tidy up their mess.
Children
Question No. 3
KAHURANGI CARTER (Green) (14:13) to the Minister for Children: Was she aware of the reported increase in kids in State care with complex needs and disabilities being housed in motels, sometimes with untrained staff, before the Aroturuki Tamariki Experiences of Care in Aotearoa 2024/25 report; if not, why not?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR (Minister for Children) (14:14): I have asked Oranga Tamariki about the serious allegation in the member’s question of kids being housed in motels with untrained staff, and they’ve been unable to identify what the member is referring to. If the member has evidence of this occurring, I would strongly encourage her to provide this information so it can be addressed and we can make sure that kids are safe, rather than waiting to raise it in the House. To the broader question, yes, I am aware that motels are being used as an emergency option, as a last resort where no other safe option is available. This practice even pre-dates Oranga Tamariki as an organisation.
Kahurangi Carter: Has she seen the report released yesterday, and has she read it?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: Yes, I have read the Independent Children’s Monitor (ICM) report very closely.
Kahurangi Carter: Does she stand by her statement that it is “unacceptable” that children in care are staying in motels; and, if so, how does she justify the over 25 percent increase that has taken place under her watch in the last year?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: No one wants to see kids in motels or young people in motels, but the reality is that sometimes it’s more important to make sure their safety and wellbeing comes first. There are many reasons why a young person may be placed in a motel. The most common length of stay in a motel is one night, and most children and young people stay fewer than three nights. Sometimes, it is a case of not wanting to remove them from their community or from their family supports while we make sure we can find a safe place for them to stay.
Kahurangi Carter: Does she agree that 246 tamariki and rangatahi in care spending over 4,000 nights in motels, with the longest stay being nearly a year, is inconsistent with motels being used as a last resort?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: As I said, the most common length of stay in a motel is one night, and most children and young people stay for three nights or fewer. Sometimes, this is unavoidable. In an emergency situation where there is no placement available and we don’t want to remove that young person from their community or their supports, this is a better option. They still also need to go to school and have a routine. Removing them from their communities is not a better option.
Kahurangi Carter: What does she say to the caregiver who stated, “We got told about her disability but got limited information around how to work with her needs. It was really rushed, especially not knowing anything or given any information”?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I think that, because the first question was incorrect, I would have to take away and verify what that member is saying before I can answer it.
Kahurangi Carter: How does placing tamariki with complex needs in the care of untrained caregivers and insufficiently trained caregivers, like security guards, fit with the key priorities she has set, including ensuring the safety of children and young people and supporting caregivers?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: I have read the ICM report very closely, and there is no mention in that report of untrained staff being used to look after children in motels.
Hon David Seymour: How would the Minister advise members of the public or Parliament to raise serious concerns about children’s welfare with Oranga Tamariki?
Hon KAREN CHHOUR: There are many ways that those concerns can be raised. They can be raised with Oranga Tamariki themselves. A letter could be sent to my office so that I can follow up. Even a letter to be sent to speak about the situation would be helpful, too.
Media and Communications
Question No. 4
REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (14:18) to the Minister for Media and Communications: On what dates has he, or any person acting on his behalf, discussed TVNZ news coverage with any member of the TVNZ Board (including the Chair of TVNZ, Andrew Barclay) or the chief executive of TVNZ?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for Media and Communications) (14:19): On Sunday 1 March, I received a text message from the chair of TVNZ asking for a call. We spoke about a range of matters including TVNZ financials and board appointments, and he observed, as I recall, that TVNZ had been in the news that week over a law and order story and that he was taking an interest in it in the context of the board’s interests in improving trust in TVNZ. I didn’t engage further in the discussion on that matter. Also, on Tuesday evening, I spoke at the 60th anniversary of Country Calendar, hosted by TVNZ, and spoke with three board members and the chief executive. To the best of my knowledge, TVNZ news coverage did not come up in those conversations. The primary point of discussion was the history of Country Calendar. Yesterday, I spoke to the chair, informing him that I had been questioned about our phone call on the way out of the House as a courtesy, and I rang him again at 6.30 yesterday evening, after the coverage over the afternoon, to check on his welfare, as he is a new chair.
Reuben Davidson: Has he sought an assurance from TVNZ chair Andrew Barclay in any of those conversations that he hasn’t discussed or directed the Minister’s or his ministerial colleagues’ concerns around TVNZ coverage of crime numbers on 26 February 2026 with any staff member of TVNZ, and, if not, why not?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry, can I ask him to repeat that? It had so many legs, I couldn’t understand it.
SPEAKER: Yeah, thank you—I would like to hear that myself one more time.
Reuben Davidson: Has he sought an assurance from TVNZ chair Andrew Barclay that he hasn’t discussed or directed the Minister’s or his ministerial colleagues’ concerns around TVNZ coverage of crime numbers on 26 February 2026 with any staff member of TVNZ, and, if not, why not?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No, I haven’t sought that assurance directly. What is my expectation of the board? The primary Government interest in TVNZ is, one, that it maintains its financial stability; two, that it’s growing its audiences and producing great quality local content; and the third thing that has been raised in my letter of expectation is building or improving levels of trust. I expect the board to have an interest in all of those topics.
Hon Shane Jones: No more woke!
Hon Member: Stick to kids’ TV.
Reuben Davidson: Supplementary.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: This is a serious issue.
SPEAKER: Just a moment. When someone stands up to start asking a question, it’s a good idea for everyone else to be quiet.
Reuben Davidson: Is he then guaranteeing to the New Zealand public that the TVNZ chair, Andrew Barclay, has not sought to influence editorial discussions at TVNZ?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, I wouldn’t expect the board to be interfering in editorial decisions at TVNZ. I would expect the board to have an interest in the broader issue of improving trust, as I do with the Radio New Zealand board, and that’s absolutely appropriate.
Reuben Davidson: Does he have regular scheduled phone calls with the chair of the TVNZ board, Andrew Barclay?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No, I don’t. I meet the board formally every quarter, but I’m in the habit, quite often, of speaking with chairs of entities that I’m responsible for, at all hours. That member may not be aware, but being a Minister is a busy role, and we talk to people at all hours on all sorts of topics.
Reuben Davidson: What notes or record of the phone call on Sunday, 1 March did the Minister make?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: None.
Reuben Davidson: What did the Minister say when the subject of One News coverage of crime numbers was raised by TVNZ chair Andrew Barclay?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: As I said in answer to the first one, I didn’t engage further in the discussion on that matter. I may possibly have grunted, but I’m not sure.
Reuben Davidson: Is it appropriate for a Minister to complain about TVNZ news coverage in a public forum?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, I’m afraid that does happen from time to time, and it seems to me it’s quite possible that the previous Labour Government Ministers may have done that from time to time as well. But I’ve often made the observation that a politician complaining about the media is like a farmer complaining about the weather: you may be right, but it makes no difference, and so you’ve got to figure out how to succeed in any respect. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: We’ll have everyone listening to the question.
Reuben Davidson: What, if anything, has the Minister done about other Ministers in Government complaining about news coverage at TVNZ?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, my concern is that I might find that I have no time left to do anything else if I was bothering myself. It is unfortunately something that happens from time to time. Now, whether that’s fair or not is inappropriate. But what I am clear about is the legislative requirement that no Minister, including myself, should seek to direct TVNZ in relation to their coverage of news items, and we certainly haven’t done that. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Once again, we’re listening.
Reuben Davidson: Did Minister Mark Mitchell or anyone on his behalf raise One News coverage of 26 February 2026 on rising gang numbers with him or any member of his office, and if so, when?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, yes, I think he did raise it with me. We were together and we weren’t happy with the coverage, but that happens on a regular basis. We’re quite often not happy with particular coverage, but that’s neither here nor there. Sometimes we’re right; sometimes we’re wrong. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just—once again—that’s the fourth warning.
Reuben Davidson: Did the Prime Minister or his office raise One News coverage of 26 February 2026 concerning rising gang numbers with him or any member of his office, and if so, when?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, again, I’m in constant conversation with the Prime Minister and he did grumble about that story. What we grumbled about was the fact that on the day that we had announced that there were 49,000 fewer victims of crime in this country, there was a story that ignored that entirely and talked about something else. We weren’t happy about it—that’s life.
Reuben Davidson: When did he inform the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister’s office of his discussion with Andrew Barclay on Sunday, 1 March?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I don’t recall informing him at all. That probably came up after it came up in the public setting. I didn’t think it was a matter that I needed to bother the Prime Minister with.
Reuben Davidson: Has the Minister, or those acting on his behalf, at all times complied with the non-interference and editorial content of TVNZ as required by law?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Absolutely.
Reuben Davidson: Would it be appropriate for the chair of TVNZ to raise the issue of One News media coverage with the Minister?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I don’t think it would be appropriate for the chair to interfere with decisions that TVNZ made about their coverage. In terms of mentioning it to me in the context of a board focusing on improving levels of trust and the issue that’s been raised, I don’t have a particularly strong view. He probably shouldn’t have, but it’s certainly not a major issue.
Reuben Davidson: Does he still have confidence in the man he appointed as chair of TVNZ, Andrew Barclay, after he discussed One News editorial coverage with the Minister, contrary to the law?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, I do have confidence in the chair. I think he’s doing a great job. As I said, the Government’s primary interest in TVNZ members of the board is that the board is focused on the financial sustainability of TVNZ; secondly, that it’s growing its audiences; thirdly, that it’s producing great local content; and fourthly, that it continues to work on improving overall levels of trust. Now, as everybody’s conscious of all around the world, particularly since COVID, there have been drops in trust in media generally, and that’s an issue. We would expect the board to be focused on the overall effort to improve those levels of trust.
Hon Shane Jones: Point of order.
SPEAKER: Point of order, the honourable—
Hon Shane Jones: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: Wait till I finish. Point of order, the Hon Shane Jones.
Hon Shane Jones: Of that last question, Standing Order 390 makes it perfectly clear inferences or allegations of wrongdoing based on a faulty interpretation of law—that’s not a question fit for this House, certainly when he’s seeking to demean a steadfast, proud New Zealander who happens to be the chair of that board.
SPEAKER: Thank you for that.
Tourism and Hospitality
Question No. 5
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) (14:30) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent reports has she seen on tourism’s contribution to the economy?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality) (14:30): Data released this week shows New Zealand’s tourism sector continues to grow, driving billions of dollars into our economy. The tourism satellite account shows total tourism expenditure in New Zealand is at $46.6 billion for the year ending March 2025. This is an increase of $1.5 billion, or 3.3 percent, compared to March 2024. This data also shows that one in nine people is now employed in the tourism and hospitality industry, with total tourism employment increasing to over 325,000 people. These results highlight exactly why tourism is a key part of our Government’s plan to fix the basics and build the future.
Joseph Mooney: What other reports has she seen on international tourism into New Zealand?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The latest international visitor survey, which was released this week, shows international visitors returning to New Zealand in droves, with visitor spend on the up. This data shows international tourism contributed $12.5 billion to New Zealand’s economy for the year ending December 2025, up 3 percent on the previous year. These results highlight why the work we are doing to boost our tourism and hospitality sector is so important. More international visitors means more customers for our businesses, which means more jobs are being created across our country.
Joseph Mooney: How does more international visitors support economic growth?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As the country’s second-highest export earner, tourism and hospitality has a key role in New Zealand’s economic growth. Our overall median spend per visitor is up 3 percent, at $2,248, and the median daily spend is up 8 percent, at $309. This means visitors are spending more on our accommodation, our cafes, our local businesses, of course providing a significant boost to the economy. More spending means more jobs in our communities. Increased visitor spending also flows directly into our regions, supporting local jobs and creating opportunities for communities and businesses up and down the country.
Joseph Mooney: What commentary has she seen on these reports?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Rebecca Ingram has said, “Significant effort has been injected into stimulating demand and getting New Zealand tourism back on the map” and, “Tourism businesses love what they do. This information shows that this passion translates to more jobs, valuable export earnings, and continued growth.” She also said, “This summer we have seen changes to our visa settings for China, which has made a real difference, and we’ve seen quite considerable activity to stimulate demand.” Mike Hosking said, this morning, “I think the tourism stuff this week is the best story of the week so far. Tourism is back.” The strength of our tourism industry is clear to see. As a Government, we are committed to ensuring a thriving tourism industry in New Zealand.
Energy
Question No. 6
SCOTT WILLIS (Green) (14:33) to the Minister for Energy: Did he model how the exposure to global liquefied natural gas markets would affect electricity prices for households in his proposal to build a liquefied natural gas terminal; and, if so, what did the modelling show?
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister for Energy) (14:34): Yes. Independent modelling shows that a liquefied natural gas (LNG) importation facility will reduce forward prices by at least $10 per megawatt hour, reducing the average Kiwi’s power bill by $50.
Scott Willis: How can the Minister have confidence that an LNG terminal is the lowest-cost option for Kiwi households when renewable options were excluded so early on?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, as I answered in responses to question No. 2 today on similar questions, I outlined and noted that we did consider a range of options when making the decision to build an LNG terminal, but none of those other options could be delivered within the time, nor would they create the amount of electricity and power required to cover the gap that we have in the electricity market, and that’s why we’ve landed on the decision for LNG. But it is not a case of doing just LNG; we are also a Government that is supporting a significant build out of renewable generation across this country. Actually, in the last 18 months, under this Government, we have had the most amount of renewable generation in the entirety of the last decade, and so we are doing everything we can. It’s an “and, and” conversation, and LNG and renewables are part of the solution.
Scott Willis: Is it fair that Kiwi households will pay an extra levy on their power bills to subsidise industrial LNG users and infrastructure which would not be commercially viable otherwise?
Hon SIMON WATTS: I reject the premise in that question because that is factually not correct. Kiwi power bills for both households and businesses will reduce as a result of the LNG importation terminal because the simple reality is that when you don’t have fuel to make electricity, our prices spike, and that’s what we inherited as a result of the banning of oil and gas. That’s why prices spiked in 2024. We did not have and we do not have sufficient fuel to make electricity, hence the decision to create the capacity to import that. Having more options versus less options gives you more resilience. More resilience reduces the volatility in the prices that Kiwi households and businesses pay and, as a result, that sees downward pressure.
Scott Willis: Does he expect that the electricity generators and retailers who buy LNG fuel will pass on the cost of LNG to consumers, and, if so, how much would costs for households rise if there was a 50 percent spike in LNG prices, as has happened this week?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, first and foremost, the counterfactual is we do not have gas and we do not have, today, the capability to import fuel. The reality is that when you don’t have gas, our prices spike, and that is the reality and the problem statement that we are looking to resolve. By importing gas, we resolve that problem. The way in which gas is priced is done over the long-run price. These contracts are contracted and are done over a long period of time, generally. They are not always purchased in the context of the spot price, and the reality is that irrespective of what the spot price does, when you look at the long-run price of LNG prices at the moment, even today they are still consistent with the long-run average. The spot price today is actually down from where it was on Monday, but it’s still significantly below the peaks of the Ukraine crisis.
Scott Willis: Does he stand by this statement of the Prime Minister that “I do think that energy independence is a good thing, and that’s what this Government is delivering.”; if so, how is tying New Zealanders’ power bills to imported fuels—which are vulnerable to supply disruption and price shocks, as demonstrated by the Iran conflict this week—delivering energy independence?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Yes, I do agree with the Prime Minister, but I think, as the member will appreciate—and I acknowledge his party are not the biggest fans of coal. But the reality of having another option in addition to coal, which is also subject to international price fluctuation, means that we have more options, and having more options other than just coal to make electricity in a dry year is a good thing. Having more options is better than having no options, and the scenario which inherited and we inherited on coming into Government was no options. That is not energy security, nor is it independence, but we want to resolve that problem, and we are.
Scott Willis: Supplementary. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just wait for a moment—just wait for a moment.
Scott Willis: Why is it that the Government is willing to be interventionist on the part of the fossil fuel industry, such as through having billion-dollar subsidies for LNG and $200 million for gas exploration, but it will not invest in a lowest-cost option that would reduce household power bills—like solar, which this Government has rejected?
Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, as I’ve answered in responses to prior questions, we have seen more renewable generation built in this country in the last 18 months than the entirety of the last decade. This is a Government that is making it easier and faster and cheaper to build all electricity generation in this country. Why? Because we need electricity to power our economy. One of the challenges that we inherited is that options were shut down. Banning oil and gas takes options off the table. No oil and gas means no power that can be produced in a dry year. Less options mean more expensive power bills for Kiwis. That’s a legacy that we inherited from your Government of the Greens and Labour. That’s a legacy we’re turning around.
Health
Question No. 7
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (14:40) to the Minister of Health: How many people have had a GP consult through the Government’s 24/7 online GP service since it was launched in July 2025?
Hon MATT DOOCEY (Associate Minister of Health) (14:40) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I’m advised that, of 22 February 2026, there’s been 70,754 funded consultations, for 56,498 individual users, provided by the online GP service. That means that tens of thousands of Kiwis have received care they otherwise could not have accessed, making a real difference in those people’s lives.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: How does that compare to the Government’s original claim that it would provide care to 1 million New Zealanders each year?
Hon Shane Jones: Feral, feral!
Hon MATT DOOCEY: It was never meant to be a silver bullet. It was to complement our primary care services. We announced it six months ago, and we’re looking to scale it up. We want to welcome those eight providers that are delivering care 24/7. That’s 60,000 Kiwis who have had extra access to primary care.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: What level can New Zealanders expect the service to be scaled to in the coming year?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: We are working with providers, and we will accept more providers in time. But I’d just like—
Hon Shane Jones: Feral Verrall!
Hon MATT DOOCEY: —to point out that, when we came into Government, only 75 percent of Kiwis could access their GP. That’s now gone up to 79.5 percent. Things are trending in the right direction.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Is it correct that, even if the service hits 100,000 users this year, it will only be operating at a 10th of the volumes that were originally promised?
Hon MATT DOOCEY: I refute that question. It was never—
Hon Shane Jones: Feral, feral!
Hon MATT DOOCEY: —promised. This was a service that was always about complementing GP practices. On this side of the House, we believe people should have choice, and we have given them choice to access online 24/7 care. It won’t be for everyone, but for those who choose to do it, they can access it in real time.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir. There’s been a bit of discussion in question time the last couple of weeks around the standard of contributions from members. Throughout that question, there was heckling from the Government benches that was making personally derogatory comments to my colleague who was asking questions. I won’t go into it in detail now, but, perhaps, if you could review the Hansard and the recordings and come back to the House and say whether you believe that to be appropriate.
SPEAKER: I will do that. I also noticed that, in my left ear, I was hearing a lot of commentary while the answer was being given as well. Question No. 8, Rawiri Waititi.
Hon Shane Jones: Toughen up!
SPEAKER: Those comments aren’t helpful at all.
Defence
Question No. 8
RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (14:44) to the Minister of Defence: Will she rule out sending any military support to the USA and Israel for their military strikes on Iran, which have led to the reported deaths of 1,097 civilians, including 181 children under the age of 10; if not, why not?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence) (14:44): We have not received any requests to contribute to the US and Israel’s military action. New Zealand is not central to the issues in the Middle East. Any decision would be one for joint Ministers or Cabinet, not for the Minister of Defence alone.
Rawiri Waititi: Why is the Minister refusing to categorically rule out supporting the illegal invasion of Iran when these strikes were not authorised by the UN Security Council and there was no evidence of an imminent threat to the USA?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I’m not going to repeat the answer I’ve just given; obviously, the member hasn’t taken that into account. We have not received any request to contribute to the US and Israel’s military action. New Zealand is not central to the issues in the Middle East. Any decision would be one for joint Ministers or Cabinet. I may be the Minister of Defence, but I’m neither joint Ministers nor Cabinet.
Rawiri Waititi: How can Aotearoa trust that this Government will stick to their word and keep Aotearoa out of this invasion when it was the National Party who advocated for New Zealand to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Because we’re a really sensible Government and not stupid.
Rawiri Waititi: Could have fooled me.
SPEAKER: Well don’t leave any speculation about how hard that might be. Just ask your question.
Rawiri Waititi: Does she agree with the Prime Minister that we have a responsibility to do everything we can to bolster the existing rules-based international order; if so, how will sending military support to aid this illegal invasion bolster the existing rules-based international order?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I’m not sure that the member has any understanding that I’ve just answered the question multiple times. We are not sending military support to deal with bolstering anything. What we are doing is sending military support with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade consular people to be able to get those New Zealanders and those from Pacific nations out of the Middle East, and our other Commonwealth friends as well, who want to come back to New Zealand. I would have thought that was pretty clear. It’s not quite the same. I can tell the member we don’t have the sort of equipment that’s being used in the Middle East.
Prime Minister
Question No. 9
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (14:47) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of the Government’s statements and actions?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (14:47) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes—in particular, today, our Government’s various efforts to get money into the country by making overseas investment easier and, indeed, welcoming it. We’ve seen the time taken to consent an overseas investment application drop by 60 percent, from 71 days down to 28.
Hon Shane Jones: Mining, mining!
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: We’ve seen, under the Active Investor Plus settings, 589 applications with a total value of $3.47 billion, already far exceeding expectations, and yet we don’t see that as enough. Tomorrow, legislation will come into force that will allow most overseas investments to be consented in just 15 days by introducing a new two-track system that puts the emphasis on risky investment and allows people who want to send money to our country harmlessly to be able to do so much more easily. Altogether, it is a symbol that this Government understands while we may be an island nation, we can’t be an island that puts up walls to the seas of capital and ideas that surround us. We’re open for business and we’re going to get wealthier for the whole country by doing so.
SPEAKER: Can I just suggest that the member three seats in from the cross benches on my right is not particularly helping the efforts of Ministers to answer the questions.
Cameron Luxton: Does he stand by removing the dual mandate of the Reserve Bank?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, yes, absolutely. Our Government has told the Reserve Bank to focus exclusively on controlling inflation, and the reason that we have done that is that we saw the pain that was caused when the Reserve Bank let go of its focus on inflation. Inflation hit 7.3 percent and it hit the poorest people, who depend on living week to week, the hardest. It was OK for people with lots of assets—their assets appreciate when the Government takes its eye off inflation, but we care about the opportunities of everyone in New Zealand to get ahead, and to do that you need a stable currency, so a dollar in your pocket today will be worth as close as possible to a dollar this time next year.
Cameron Luxton: Does he stand by reforming interest deductibility for landlords?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I absolutely stand by our policy of treating people in the property business exactly the same as every other business in the country. If you have an interest expense in any business, that is a legitimate expense to deduct from your income tax liability. None of this is complicated, but all of it is important. It’s not just that we want to be consistent in principles in our tax policy; it’s also that it has had real effects for those people who are trying to buy a home. A former Prime Minister said that we were removing interest deductibility from residential property to tilt the market towards first-home buyers. You know what happened? Rents went through the roof and first-home buyers had less to save a deposit. We actually have helped first-home buyers, who are now buying homes at record levels—I think at 28 percent of new purchases—because we’ve got rents going down in many regions and flat in others after we reduced unfair taxes on renting out residential property.
Cameron Luxton: Does he stand by changes to pay equity?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: On behalf of the Prime Minister, absolutely. The Equal Pay Act 1972 remains in place. It is still possible to take an appeal if you suffer from sex-based discrimination, and that is something that our Government remains committed to. All three parties believe that all people should be treated with equal rights and free from discrimination. But what we don’t support is a bureaucratic, Byzantine set of rules that are overly complicated, overly expensive, and amount to setting wages by judges using crazy formulae in order to distribute money to places that it wouldn’t have otherwise gone. And I say to the people on the other side: if they don’t like it and they’re going to bring pay equity back, show us the money.
Cameron Luxton: Has he seen reports of anyone wanting to return the Reserve Bank to a dual mandate, remove interest deductibility from landlords, and/or turn the clock back on pay equity claims?
SPEAKER: It can’t be a question that’s designed to attack the Opposition, so the answer, of course, shall be cautious.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker, I have no such intention. I have not seen any such reports. If I did, I would assume that it was simply a bad dream—a nightmare never to be repeated—and that it couldn’t possibly happen in a country as pure and innocent as New Zealand. But just in case there was a small or remote possibility, we will be campaigning hard to make sure that the book on people’s shelves is the Edmonds Cookery Book, not “Barbara Edmonds’ Book Cookery”.
SPEAKER: Now, you don’t need to—sorry, you’re going to have to withdraw and apologise for that remark.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw, with great regret.
SPEAKER: You need to apologise.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw and apologise.
Defence
Question No. 10
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (14:53) to the Minister of Defence: What recent announcements has she made about the New Zealand Defence Force providing assistance to New Zealanders in the Middle East?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence) (14:53): Overnight, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I agreed to pre-deploy New Zealand consular staff and two C130Js to the region to be ready, when conditions allow, for any civilian evacuations. We cannot be sure when and how civilian evacuations might be possible, but we want to be ready if and when the conditions on the ground make them possible. Our New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) staff are playing a vital role in the situation, stepping up to assist New Zealanders in distress overseas. There are limits on how much we can say publicly for reasons of operational security.
Rima Nakhle: How does this assistance demonstrate the need for the New Zealand Defence Force to maintain a high level of readiness to help in situations like this?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: This situation illustrates that crises can emerge suddenly and in places where thousands of New Zealanders may require assistance. With over 3,000 New Zealanders already registered in the region and potentially thousands more unregistered, the ability to move many people quickly to safety relies on having aircraft like the C130J and skilled personnel ready to deploy.
Rima Nakhle: How does this demonstrate the need for New Zealand to invest in its defence capabilities?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The Defence Capability Plan 2025 is the Government’s multibillion-dollar plan for a modern, combat-capable New Zealand Defence Force that pulls its weight internationally and domestically. Situations such as the one we are seeing unfold in the Middle East demonstrate firsthand the requirement for our Defence Force to be both equipped with the kit they need and trained to be able to use it. The Government’s approach to defence, outlined in the plan, deliberately focuses on what we can and must do to rebuild the NZDF. We must invest very wisely in critical capability to ensure our personnel are combat-capable, interoperable, and ready to be of use to New Zealand wherever they are needed.
Rima Nakhle: How does the New Zealand Defence Force’s contribution complement the work being led by other agencies?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The deployment is part of the whole-of-Government effort. The NZDF’s airlift capabilities complement the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s consular leadership, with pre-deployed diplomatic staff and military air crew to prepare options for all contingencies. Our advice to New Zealanders is to leave only if it is safe and possible for them to do so. Where it is not safe to leave, shelter in place and call MFAT’s 24/7 consular call centre for support and advice.
Housing
Question No. 11
Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (14:56) to the Minister of Housing: Does he stand by his statement that “there are 7,000 more social houses in the country”; if so, how many of these additional houses were funded in Budgets 2024 and 2025?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (14:56): Yes. Since this Government came into office, over 7,000 net new social houses have been delivered. Of those, 308 were funded in Budgets 2024 and 2025, and, of course, we’ve funded lots more social and affordable homes that are under way. Finally, because Nicola Willis forgot to do it, can I say hello to Mr and Mrs Willis in the gallery.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: How are the front-line agencies supposed to find homes for what they claim are unprecedented levels of homeless people when his Government has only delivered 308 social houses in two years?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I think the member is conflating two different issues. If the member is referring to Housing First places, then we have made an explicit direction that they can look at renting homes from the private market, which essentially become social houses because they attract the extra subsidy required for that. It is not the case that the Housing First places we have funded most recently—and, indeed, that successive Governments have funded in the past—are required to be new social-housing builds. We made that decision because, as I hope the member will appreciate, we wanted to get people who were sleeping rough into homes as soon as we could.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir. While I appreciate the response, I did not ask about Housing First places. If I wanted to find out about that, I would have specifically asked about it. The question directly flowed from the primary. In the primary, the Minister answered that there had been 308 delivered out of those Budgets, and I asked how the front-line providers are supposed to find houses for homeless people when that’s all that they have delivered. I didn’t ask about Housing First.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I answered.
SPEAKER: He did answer that, and talking about that was part of “how do you find houses”, I would have thought.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: How can he expect to house the growing number of homeless when the pipeline of houses contracted or under construction has dropped from 8,863 in 2023 to just 1,513 today, a drop of 83 percent in just two years?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, a couple of points to be made in relation to that. Firstly, there are future Budgets to come, and the Government’s—[Interruption] Well, you fund these things over time, as the last Government did, as you would remember. There are Budgets to come. The second point I would make is that what I didn’t talk about in the primary answer is a lot of Māori affordable homes being delivered through iwi partnerships. I also didn’t talk about transitional housing places that are also available, and there are a range of other programmes designed to help people in need—
Hon Member: It’s not enough, otherwise homelessness wouldn’t be getting worse.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, well, homelessness went up between 2018 and 2023, at a time when you spent tens of billions of dollars on Kāinga Ora, so maybe check the facts—
Hon Member: I know the facts.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh OK, well here are the facts: between 2018 and 2023, people living in severe housing deprivation increased, at a time that tens of billions of dollars were spent by the Government on housing support. If it was a money problem, the previous people in charge of the Government books would have fixed it. The social housing wait-list between 2017 and 2023 quintupled, at a time when billions of dollars were spent on Kāinga Ora. I’ll put this Government’s record on social housing up against the lunatics opposite any day of the week.
SPEAKER: Withdraw the one comment there.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I assume you’re talking about “lunatics”. I withdraw and apologise.
SPEAKER: Well, OK, that’s not the way to do it. You simply stand, withdraw, and apologise.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I withdraw and apologise.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does the Minister stand by his statement that the social housing register is not an accurate measure of need and should not be referred to as a measure of success or otherwise, and, if so, why did he just do so in response to one of my colleagues?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Of course. I’ve made that point many times. But it is the measure we have, and it’s also a measure the previous Government used to work out as a proxy of need for people in need of social housing. It is not perfect, but it is the measure we have. It has been consistent across multiple Governments around the eligibility to get on to the measure; therefore, it enables comparison between different periods of time. Is it perfect? No. Is it what we have? Yes. Could it be improved? Absolutely. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet did a report under the previous Government recommending a series of improvements to it, some of which have been actioned, some of which are part of a longer-term programme. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve got.
Hon Tama Potaka: Can the Minister of Housing please confirm that the number on the social housing register in October 2023 was 2,543 and since then, to November 2025, has reduced to 19,505, and the emergency housing household numbers in October 2023 were 3,342, and that has now reduced to under 500?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I think the member meant 25,000 rather than 2,000 in his reference to the October 2023, but—
Hon Members: You kicked them off the list.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, that is not the case. Allegations like that are serious allegations. That is not correct. Eligibility for the social housing register is unchanged.
Hon Ginny Andersen: You changed the criteria.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, again, that is an allegation that is not—
Hon Ginny Andersen: Contribute to homelessness.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: That is an allegation—the member should be careful about throwing allegations like that. That is misleading the House. That is not correct. Eligibility for the social housing register is unchanged from the previous Government to today, which allows for comparisons. Is the measure perfect? No, it is not. Do we need to do more to fix housing in New Zealand? Yes, we do. Is the register going down? Yes, it is.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: No, you’re done. You got an extra one, actually.
ACC
Question No. 12
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (15:04) to the Minister for ACC: What recent announcements has he made regarding the Accident Compensation Corporation?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister for ACC) (15:04): Last week, I announced that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) is delivering its strongest rehabilitation performance in more than a decade. Supporting injured New Zealanders to recover and return to work and independence is a core purpose of ACC. For too long, too many New Zealanders have been left waiting for the support they needed to recover and get back to doing what they love. That is simply not acceptable. That’s why, alongside the Minister of Finance, I directed ACC to lift its performance and put rehabilitation back at the centre of everything it does.
Dr Hamish Campbell: What does this mean for New Zealanders who need ACC support?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well, by making rehabilitation the foremost priority, ACC will be better supporting people to get the right help at the right time. It’s not complicated: when the focus is on recovery, people get better outcomes, and we are already starting to see that flow through. I want to be clear: there is a lot more yet to do but, after years of decline, it’s encouraging to see some real progress being made.
Dr Hamish Campbell: What direction has he given ACC to enable these results?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: My direction to ACC has been clear and very deliberate. In the recent letter of expectation sent to ACC, I set out three priorities: (1) putting clients first by providing care that supports lasting recovery; (2) helping New Zealanders return to work and independence, which is a fundamental purpose of the scheme; and (3) resetting ACC by getting the organisation back to basics, with a clear focus on delivery and outcomes. When ACC is aligned to those priorities, it delivers better results for all New Zealanders.
Dr Hamish Campbell: What recent trends has he seen in performance?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: The long-term claims pool represents around 25,000 New Zealanders who have been on ACC for more than 12 months. Since 2017, this pool has grown dramatically; in fact, it has doubled, with growth exceeding 14 percent. Now, that growth reflected a system that was failing far too many people. Under this Government, that trend has been turned around, and, as of this week, growth has been reduced to below 1 percent. That’s very significant. It’s a significant shift and it matters, because behind every number is a real person. On this side of the House, we’re focused on fixing the basics and building the future; ensuring that ACC does its job properly is a key part of that.
Debates
Phone Call—TVNZ Board Chair to Minister for Media and Communications
Urgent Debate Declined
SPEAKER (15:07): Members, I’ve received a letter from Reuben Davidson seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 matters arising from a phone call received by the Minister for Media and Communications from the chair of the board of TVNZ, and the Minister’s subsequent actions. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The member speculates about several matters in his application that do not appear to be supported by authentication as provided, nor from questions and answers in the House today. The application is therefore declined.
Bills
Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill
Legislative Statement
Hon Dr SHANE RETI (Minister of Statistics) (15:08): I present a legislative statement on the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Can I ask members to leave the House quietly.
First Reading
Hon Dr SHANE RETI (Minister of Statistics) (15:08): I move, That the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 17 July 2026.
The Government is progressing a substantial work programme to address an issue of increasing importance to the quality of public and private decision making: how New Zealand gathers, produces, and communicates its most fundamental population and dwelling data and statistics.
The census is important to understanding who we are as a nation, and supporting New Zealand’s economic and social wellbeing. Government agencies, businesses, and communities use census data to support important decision making, planning, and research across all sectors of society. But the census needs to evolve to better meet these needs.
Over the last two censuses, there have been significant challenges with the traditional approach to census collection that relied heavily on all New Zealanders completing a census form. Declining response rates, coupled with rising costs and significant interruptions due to natural disasters, mean the traditional way of doing the census is simply no longer sustainable. Multiple Governments have been advised accordingly, and progressed along a pathway to a more modern census.
There is an opportunity to do things better. More than a decade of research and consultation across several Governments means we now know much more about how the data collected by Government agencies can be used for official statistics.
That is what the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill is about. It does three key things. First, the census bill enables the move to an annual census. In today’s world, people need information that is more meaningful, relevant, and timely. To that end, the census bill requires the Government Statistician to publish core census statistics about the previous financial year annually, beginning in 2030. This is a significant improvement.
More up-to-date data means smarter decisions, helping build a stronger, more productive economy, and more effective public services for all who need and use them. Stats New Zealand is ready to make this shift to a new census model. How we run the census is evolving. There is no longer a need to door-knock the whole country to carry out a census but the census will continue.
Second, the census bill clarifies when Stats New Zealand will need to consult the public and engage with Māori on census content and when census operations must be reviewed. As the new census approach means ongoing data collection and more frequent opportunities to update or change what information the census collects, the census bill will require the Government Statistician to consult regularly, at least once every three years. This is a practical way to ensure census decisions are informed by the needs of users and communities. Similarly, rather than reviewing census operations after each census, the census bill requires operations to be reviewed after the first modern census, three years after that, and then at least every fifth year after that.
Third, the census bill makes technical changes to support the new census approach. The most noteworthy is that the census bill will ensure local electoral boundary reviews continue to work as they do now. This makes the census bill an omnibus bill but these changes are necessary to ensure the law continues to operate pragmatically.
Though it is short, the census bill has potential constitutional implications. Currently, the completion of a census triggers a national electoral boundary review. These boundary reviews can only happen after each census. An annual census requires an adjusted approach to electoral boundary reviews to avoid annual boundary reviews, which would be impractical and unworkable. That is why the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill will propose adjustments to the electoral boundary review process so that future boundary reviews take place during every second electoral cycle, starting from 2030.
As members will know, the overall aim of electoral boundary reviews is to ensure everyone is fairly and equally represented in Parliament. The electoral bill does not change the underlying process for boundary reviews, nor the principles that sit behind that process. The purpose of the electoral bill is to ensure that in the future, the most recently available census continues to be the basis of boundary reviews but no longer the trigger for them.
I’ll briefly outline a few points, what it means to run a census using data already held by Government, and what is happening to make the census approach work for all New Zealand. The shift to an annual census is possible because the modernised census will be based on administrative data first; information already held by Government agencies. Every time someone uses a public service, they provide information that can be used to produce census data and statistics. Stats New Zealand already uses data from other Government agencies: what people pay tax that provides information about their income; when people pay tax; when someone has a child, gets married, or has a civil union, provides information about the make-up of families. When people enroll with their doctor or school, or update their details, this gives information about our population and where people live.
Privacy and the protection of people’s data is paramount and there is no change to Government’s commitment to keep data safe and secure. The data and statistics Act will continue to protect the privacy, security, and confidentiality of the data Stats New Zealand is entrusted with. Data collected for the census can never be used for regulatory or enforcement purposes. Admin data is the foundation of the new census model. In many cases, Government data can provide better information than we could collect on census night. Where that is not the case, work is already well under way to improve the quality of admin data and ensure that Stats New Zealand can get the data it needs when it needs it.
For most essential census population statistics, admin data can already provide high coverage, and we know there is a high level of consistency between census responses and the integrated admin data already available. We will still need to collect some data directly from New Zealanders. Admin data cannot give us everything we need. We will collect this additional data through a new annual census survey. This will run year-round and be completed by around 60,000 households per year.
Stats New Zealand will also work closely with smaller or harder to reach population groups such as iwi Māori, Pacific, disabled, ethnic, rainbow, and homeless and transient communities to ensure they have the data they need. Tailored solutions like targeted surveys, new data standards, and community collections will also be developed to reflect the experience of these communities and to help meet their data needs and support better outcomes.
I acknowledge that some groups are concerned that the new census approach will not give them what they need. The Government takes these concerns seriously, but they are not new and were not necessarily addressed by previous censuses, nor can they be addressed by avoiding much-needed change.
The census must work for all New Zealand. A range of partners and groups will contribute to the planning of the next census—for example, through the establishment of new community design groups. The initial focus will be on planning for the next census, but other key statistics programmes will also benefit.
Delivering the first modern census is a considerable undertaking. Stats New Zealand needs time to prepare, and agencies need time to improve the quality of their data. To ensure the model is introduced as smoothly as possible, there will be a series of admin data releases over the next few years. This will demonstrate progress and will also help people become familiar with the changes and ensure they have the data they need between now and 2030.
Transitional population data will actually become available annually from later this year. Transitional dwellings data will become available from late 2027. From 2028, these data releases will become official statistics, suitable for use in critical planning and decision making, although there will not be formal census releases. This will lead to the first modern census release being published in 2030.
A modern New Zealand needs a modern census. Multiple Governments have progressed this pathway, and now the baton has passed to us. The census bill enables the shift to a more flexible, efficient, and resilient census that will deliver the more frequent, high-quality insights our country needs now and into the future. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (15:16): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to make a contribution on this side of the House. Labour will be supporting this at the first reading; however, I do want to raise that we are concerned at a number of the features that have been proposed—firstly, the reliability of the data.
The Minister has outlined the overall progress of the bill through the House. We are concerned specifically in terms of a number of the features that have been outlined, and I do want to go through that in this omnibus bill. We have heard it brings three Acts together.
The accuracy and the current way the census is done every five years is helpful for officials to go through different segments of the current census data. The Minister has outlined that there is going to be an annual census collection, and we would question the reliability of the data in terms of specifically talking to our vulnerable communities.
The Minister also outlined that the census will be modernised in the different methods that they are going to use and provide a number of opportunities in what the data presents. Labour would like to see, through the methodology, that it is scrutinised, hence our support to the select committee process.
In the regulatory impact statement, it outlined on page 3 the scale and pace of change. There are questions around the scale and pace of change. Will New Zealanders understand the purpose of the changes? How will communities such as iwi Māori, Pasifika, rural communities, our communities that need physical help in terms of impairments or vision—those types of features, in terms of the technicalities and financial ability of the data that has to be collected and how crucial that will be in terms of that methodology.
That’s what we question, but especially also the data quality. It is important that when the department of statistics, under this new bill into an Act, collects the methodology—how will they manoeuvre their collection methods into responding to those communities? The reason why I ask is there is a strong assumption that everyone understands English. If you are moving to a new system, has that been understood by New Zealanders? If you’re not going to collect the important data on a specific night, the new tools, will they be amended to the needs of our communities?
In the short term, what are the potential impacts of that policy? How crucial is the reliability, again, of that data? Those are the things that we want to ask through the process at select committee. Will the public be able to provide submissions that go through the features of the new bill?
Our reservations continue, in terms of the modernisation of this omnibus bill, that when surveys are being designed, is it going to receive the proper information that requires the accuracy to inform departments of the coming trends of policies that are going to be discussed by different agencies.
The timing of the next census is going to miss 2028 and going to be introduced in 2030. Will it be designed effectively? It does have constitutional changes in the next bill, the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill will also be covered in terms of what is being introduced.
It’s important when you talk—and I continue to raise this through the House, because I come from a community who wants to understand the different laws and why things move so fast. It is important that when the data has been collected from communities up and down Aotearoa—our public from different vulnerable and minority communities—do they understand the change? What is the purpose, and why is it happening so fast? Whilst Labour supports it to the first reading, we are going to continue to ask questions to the Government. Thank you.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (15:21): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to speak on this first reading. The Greens do acknowledge there’s a big challenge about long-term decline in census response rates making it increasingly difficult to gather information. I’d like to congratulate the staff who once found me at the Tōtaranui campsite and got me to fill in the form in situ; that was excellent. The ones that failed to find where we lived in the Wairarapa because we didn’t have a bridge at the time—less successful, but we got the forms and filled them in anyway.
We’re not opposed to the concept of an admin-first census approach in principle, and we do think there are some opportunities for statistical improvement in the yearly census attribute surveys. I mean, we do need real evidence, whether it’s for looking at health outcomes and health planning, not only the infrastructure of hospitals but actual primary healthcare as well. We do need the data. In particular, the Greens support resourcing the collection of insightful, high-quality information about our population and, of course, the environment—though that’s not the census’s role—and the dwelling data is of vital importance to the Green Party. The Government and Statistics New Zealand are not wrong when you say that the country is less willing to participate. There’s been increased spending, but responses from Māori and Pasifika didn’t increase markedly in the last census.
However, there are some limitations in the current form of the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill. We won’t support it, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be constructive at select committee. I mean, it’s almost a line call. Do you support it and try and improve it at select committee or do you oppose it? We have got enough reasons to oppose it at this first reading.
In particular, we want to see the following points addressed: improved coverage of harder to reach communities. Some kind of minimum coverage of those harder to reach populations, specifically iwi Māori, Pacific, disabled, ethnic, rainbow, transient, and homeless people. Of course, it’s somewhat ironic that those are just the people that the Electoral Amendment Act somewhat disenfranchised. Here we are hoping that we’re going to get more information but not seeing the funding. I mean, it could be because you’re not reporting back until July from the Justice Committee. It could be we’re pleasantly surprised by some Budget allocations in May that will adequately fund agencies to collect the data that we need, instead of expecting more and more in existing baselines when inflation is eroding those numbers.
The other area that we have considerable concerns with is Māori data sovereignty. Te Kāhui Raraunga, an independent body established in 2019, has concerns about the Government’s approach. They agree that Māori have worked with Stats New Zealand to improve the national census, which has lifted the quality of iwi affiliation information from very poor in 2018 to moderate in 2023. Will we see any continuing improvement in the admin-first census approach? The Māori descent population is a key input into the setting of electoral boundaries, and it’s interesting to see that this bill is now somewhat separate, although temporarily followed by the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill.
We do have those concerns. We look forward to a robust select committee process through the Justice Committee, and we want to see some safeguards against the misuse of admin-first data. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (15:26): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Two millennia ago, a young family had to travel across the desert to complete a census. That was a burden on a family that day. Many years later, we have continued to modernise the census and this Minister of Statistics is carrying on that proud tradition. I support this bill.
Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (15:27): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First as the spokesperson for data and statistics and this Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill. We live in a digital age. Accumulation is significantly easier to do than in the days of yore when statisticians had images of the man with a quill in the room right at the top next to us, next to his candle, making all the calculations. I think we’ve moved on a little bit from there. As the Minister of Statistics has said, the census needs to evolve.
We need tailored solutions to meet, for example, the needs of Māori and harder to reach communities. That is why it’s important that we modernise the practice regarding the collection of census data, as at the moment it takes far too long, and we need more important and evolved data collection.
The data collection through an admin data - first system will save us more time and money in the long term, while still providing us with the relevant data we need to make decisions around important things like infrastructure and resource allocation. The bill will make the Government more efficient, leaner, and smarter in the statistics area that we gather. We look forward to strengthened data collection and statistical analysis as we take advantage of new technologies, Minister. We commend this bill to the House.
HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato) (15:28): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. E tū ana ahau ki te waha i ngā kōrero mā Te Pāti Māori i te rangi nei, e whakahē ana i tēnei o ngā pire mō ngā tatauranga me te kohikohi i ngā tatauranga ki te census.
E whakahē ana mātou, Te Pāti Māori, i tēnei pire nā runga anō i te mea kāre anō kia kohia, kia haere ki te rapu, te kimi i ngā tatauranga e pēhia nei ngā hapori Māori i roto i ngā rohe Māori.
[Thank you, Mr Speaker; indeed, greetings to us all in the House. I stand to give voice to comments on behalf of the Māori Party today, in opposition to this particular bill regarding statistics and the collection of statistics via the census.
We, the Māori Party, oppose this bill due to the fact that statistics have yet to be collected, sought, and found regarding statistics of the oppression of Māori communities in Māori areas.]
Te Pāti Māori opposes this bill. This bill amends the Data and Statistics Act 2022. Some of the points are: require the publication of census data and statistics each year, move to the next census from 2028 to 2030, and clarify the census obligations of the Government statistics under a modern admin data - first census approach.
Some of the points: any changes to data collection—and the reasoning why we oppose this bill—and representation will intersect with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and Te Pāti Māori urges that all proposed changes must be developed in partnership with tangata whenua. Data sovereignty must be upheld, and iwi, hapu, and Māori organisations must be included and properly resourced to contribute to any new arrangements. Although Māori organisations such as Te Kāhui Raraunga have been consulted with, this does not amount to true partnership. It is well-established fact that administrative data has and will continue to undercount Māori, and many of our people don’t engage with the systems and Government that collects this data due to the lack of trust within these institutions.
Another reason why there are major concerns around moving the data census to 2030 is because this will have huge impact on the electoral law boundaries with the seats and representations that we’ll have in Parliament, and we want to make sure that that doesn’t affect Māori representation within the Māori seats, in the electorate seats that Māori have. So not just on a census and statistics view but also in view of democracy and making sure that Māori have voice.
Some of the kōrero o ngā a Kirikowhai me te ohu o Te Kāhui Raraunga i roto i ngāna kōrero a Te Kāhui Raraunga [messages of Kirikōwhai and Te Kāhui Raraunga, that is, in her words and the words of Te Kāhui Raraunga]—Data Iwi Leaders Group lead technician Kirikowhai Mikaere says her organisation was involved in some of the consultation behind the changes, but she still has many concerns about how it will go ahead: ”Administrative data, we know, doesn’t necessarily have the robust coverage for some key variables for iwi Māori - in particular for iwi affiliation variable, the Māori descent variable, and te reo Māori.” Another kaupapa kōrero is ”One of the concerns of moving to a system that relies on the combination of administrative data and smaller annual surveys, is that it might roll back the progress we’ve made and negatively impact the quality of Māori data.” I just want to acknowledge the many mahi that Kirikowhai and Te Kāhui Raraunga have done within collecting Māori data.
These are some of our major concerns that we have as Te Pāti Māori in making sure that there’s true partnership in the decision making within this bill and within collecting data and within collecting statistics, but most of all, and another huge important point, is that it reflects here in our democracy that we have in representation of Māori voices in Parliament. Nō reira, tēnā rā tātou.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (15:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I’ve shared previously in this House, I’m a bit of a traditionalist, and so this idea is an interesting one for me, but when you look at the facts, the 2018 census: a budget of around $126 million; the 2023 census: budget of $230 million—unsurprisingly, it cost $324 million under that Government. It’s time to review the way we collect this data and bring it into the modern age, and, therefore, I commend the bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (15:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is an important matter. I mean, I think many people have focused on the historical importance of the census in their contributions today, and I do think that it is important to consider how long we have been collecting data in the census for and how significant that has been. Many in this House may have looked back at censuses past in order to ascertain a small amount of information about their ancestors in this country and also other countries. I recall in a previous census there was an option that your data would be released at a certain point in the future, or you could tick a box to allow that, and I imagined my descendants having nothing else better to do but to go and look up my census data and, you know, look at the life I was leading in the early ”noughties”. I perhaps—[Interruption] early 2000s. I mean, perhaps that was slightly naive, but I do think it points to a slight sadness that is probably reflected around the House—and probably on the Government benches too—that we are looking at something which will make a significant change to the way that we collect historical data.
It is something that the Labour Party has committed to supporting to select committee. I think that there’ll be important questions at select committee for the officials, and I think we’ll be very interested to hear submissions from members of the public who may agree or may not agree with this move. It is clear that there have been some issues with the census in terms of moving from a paper-based model into one that’s online and more attuned with the times. There have been a few issues with that, and, yes, it is expensive, but it is—I’m not a statistician, but I do see the move to administrative data as a little bit like moving to polling as opposed to having a general election: sometimes it might be right, sometimes it might be wrong; do we really know for sure? That is the concern, I suppose, with this: what are we missing by just looking at administrative data?
We did have the Minister of Statistics in front of the Governance and Administration Committee, and we did talk about these issues around the census, and officials as well. There are concerns around, especially, data surrounding homelessness and vulnerable communities, but also, I have to say, there are a number of people who you wouldn’t put into that category who may not be connected with other Government collection of data statistics. People who may not be going to the Ministry of Social Development, who may not be going to the doctor—how are we going to ensure that our full population is recognised through administrative data?
These are genuine questions, and I don’t think this is generally something that is overly politicised. I’m sure the Government would like to have a consensus within political parties around this collection of data, because, as we know, so many decisions of the Government depend on where we see the statistics and what information we collect about our population. So this does have a huge amount of impact.
I am concerned that there might be people who are now recorded in the existing census model who may not be recorded in this new model—would really appreciate the select committee process to, hopefully, allay some of those concerns, although I am a little bit surprised to see the Justice Committee is dealing with this bill. I’m sure members of the Governance and Administration Committee will be slightly disappointed not to be able to delve into this issue when we’re involved in so much of the—
Hon James Meager: They need more work!
CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah, well, that may be the case, but when we’re involved in so much scrutiny on the issue—but no doubt the Minister will be able to update us on what’s been happening with this bill at annual review and after Estimates as well.
We will support this bill, but with some, probably, sadness and trepidation and also wanting some assurances that the statistical data in New Zealand will not be left in a worse place and we won’t be turning our back on something that we’ve all participated in, that many of our ancestors who have been in New Zealand and around the world have participated in and that has provided, until now, the best way that we can see the needs and see what our entire population looks at and get really important information from that.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (15:38): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m really excited about the future ahead with the changes that we’re going to be making under this bill, the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill. I thank the Minister of Statistics, Dr Shane Reti, for driving this forward. When quality data is collected more regularly, essentially what it means is that we can provide better outcomes with more knowledge. So, looking forward to discussing this on the Justice Committee, and I commend this bill to the House.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (15:39): Kia orana, Mr Speaker. First of all, I’d like to thank the Minister for his engagement on this bill and the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill. I do think that we’ll get a much better bill and, ultimately, legislation out of that; so thank you, Dr Reti, for your engagement on this. We’re not going to agree on everything all the time, but I do think, on something as important as statistics and how we approach the census question, it’s really good that we try to get as much agreement as we can. Also, I think we have a framework where we can robustly challenge what’s going on, and I do think the select committee process will be really, really important, particularly the advice we get. Data, statistics, and census might seem very dry indeed, but I hope there will be a number of people out there who are expert in this area and will give their advice to us. There is always a danger when we get into a niche area that a department kind of takes an approach and, once it arrives on a particular approach, it doesn’t test it objectively enough. That’s what the select committee process is for.
It has been identified that we are concerned—there are two things that I would say are main concerns. One is: will this new method capture everyone? There is always, with any data-collection method, natural bias. Obviously, an admin data - first approach has a bias towards people who are administered—that is to say, if you have a connection with the health system, Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Social Development, or any other Government agency, you’re going to be touching the system and you’ll be recorded. Whereas there is a cohort of people—and the Minister, in his first reading speech, identified them—who aren’t touched by the State in the same way. They live on the edges, and they might not have much to do with the State at all. Whilst there will be some work, and it has been undertaken already, to try and capture the homeless or rural communities or Māori communities that might live and not see State agencies a great deal at all, we’ve got to make sure that that really, really works.
The other concern is that the next counting day or whatever we want to call it—the reference date—will actually be in 2030 or later, and that’s a long time away. We’re pushing out our, the nation, being in possession of reliable information about who we are to beyond seven years past the last census date. That’s a long time, and every year that passes, data becomes less reliable. When we come to say where shall we build a school or a hospital, or where do we think we need to have a new piece of infrastructure or transport infrastructure going, we’re going to be grasping in the dark more and more. That is actually a concern. Whilst, once this is in place, the aim is to have this rolling data so that we don’t have this huge hope for accuracy once every five years, but we have a high degree of accuracy in June every year, this lag is actually a matter of considerable concern.
There is the wider concern that’s been expressed amongst some communities, particularly smaller communities for whom there is a risk, even in a large survey like the 60,000 people survey that’s contemplated, that they won’t be accurately captured. The Rotuman language, for example, as a first language—it’s a few hundred people in New Zealand—will that be captured in the census as an important Pasifika language? It’s conceivable that, in 60,000 people, you won’t find one of them, so it’s not a language that exists in New Zealand on that census, when we know that it is. There are those kinds of questions that come up, but as our spokesperson has said, we want to take this to select community, have a good examination of it, and the Justice Committee is excited by the concept of data and statistics.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (15:44): Excellent. It’s with great pleasure I stand to rise in support of the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill. Of course, the census and kind of collecting data on a population level is very, very, very important. It dictates where the Government puts a lot of their resources—whether that be transport, whether that be health, whether that be education. We use our census data. We need to know where people are; we need to know what we have. This is a very, very important bill.
Of course, we have relied on the traditional method of census—a traditional, paper-based method—so it’s great that we’re going to be moving to this new method, because despite escalating costs, we have been getting data that is getting poorer and poorer. I once had a scientific colleague who had the saying, “We don’t waste pure thoughts on impure data”. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Data and Statistics (Census) 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 20
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Referral to Select Committee
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono) (15:46): The question is, That the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Justice Committee.
Instruction to Select Committee
Hon Dr SHANE RETI (Minister of Statistics) (15:47): I move, That the Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 17 July 2026.
Motion agreed to.
Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill
Legislative Statement
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (15:47): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Electoral (District Boundaries) 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.
First Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (15:47): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 6 July 2026.
The Government is progressing a substantial work programme to modernise the census, as we have just heard. This includes shifting towards annual publication of census statistics, rather than every five years, and making greater use of administrative data when producing the census. As part of this, the next census will be moved from 2028 until 2030. This shift is about making sure that people get the information they need to make more timely and more informed decisions. These changes are being progressed as part of a separate Data and Statistics (Census) Amendment Bill that members may well be very familiar with. The census provides essential information to Government agencies, businesses, and communities about who we are, and it is central to planning, decision making, and developing insights about New Zealanders’ economic and social wellbeing.
It also plays a part in the core democratic process of setting the country’s electoral boundaries. As members will know, each five-yearly census automatically triggers a boundary review, where the independent Representation Commission draws up electoral boundaries. The overall aim of this process is to ensure that everyone is fairly and equally represented. This is arguably an understated but very significant feature of New Zealand’s democratic system. The shift towards annual publication of census data means that it is necessary to amend the Electoral Act 1993. If the Act is not changed, boundary reviews will be legally triggered on an annual basis, resulting in an impractical and unworkable boundary review system, not to mention quite a lot of consternation for members in the House.
Although many features of the boundary review system are highly technical, the policy behind the bill is relatively straightforward. It provides that the Representation Commission must complete a boundary review during every second electoral cycle, starting from 2030. This change will ensure that New Zealand’s electoral boundaries continue to be adjusted regularly and in a manner logically connected to New Zealand’s electoral cycle. To ensure that this process runs smoothly, the bill will do three things: it requires the Representation Commission to finalise boundary reviews 12 months before Parliament’s expiry, it requires the commission to appoint a chairperson two years before Parliament’s expiry, and it requires that electoral boundaries must be based on the most recently available census results.
The bill does not make changes to that underlying process for boundary reviews or the principles that sit behind that process. For example, the commission will still be required to follow the same statutory formula for calculating the electoral populations and there will still be strict rules about how many people can be in each electoral district. These are important policy settings that ensure our electoral boundaries are representative; routinely adjusted; and, most importantly of all, fair.
The bill would amend provisions in the Electoral Act that are reserved or entrenched. This means that some provisions in this bill can only be passed if they receive a 75 percent majority at committee of the whole House. The Minister of Statistics and myself, on behalf of the Minister of Justice, have consulted with the political party leaders of all parties represented in this House, seeking cross-party support on these proposals. I want to thank all of those party leaders and their representatives for their constructive engagement on this bill to date. I look forward to hearing what members of the public, stakeholders, and the select committee have to say as the bill progresses through the House.
In conclusion, the boundary review process is central to the operation of New Zealand’s democracy. The changes to the census require sensible, targeted changes to ensure New Zealanders continue to be equally represented and can trust that matters related to their representation in this House are routinely calculated. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (15:52): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do want to note that these two bills, which are related—although not strictly associated at the present time—are both very important bills. There’s a danger that we look at them as if they’re administrative. In one sense, they are. This Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill, in particular, looks administrative. But as the Minister for Hunting and Fishing just pointed out, it’s actually touching on a constitutional foundation stone that is so important that it’s one of the reserved provisions—or, to use slightly looser language, one of the entrenched provisions—in our Electoral Act. That requires 75 percent support to proceed through all stages of this House. Obviously, something like this, we’re not going to be playing politics around it. If it’s the right thing to do, we’ll absolutely be doing it.
It is, in some ways, a strange thing that we have elections on a three-yearly cycle and representation reviews on a five-yearly cycle. It can lead to some kind of strange circumstances where, when the two cycles are running together, on one part you could have a long lead-in time for boundary changes, and on another one, you can have a very short lead-in time for boundary changes, which are equally important on both occasions. So that, to us, does seem a sensible reason to do it.
Having said that, we want to also have a good look at the provisions dealing with the Representation Commission. We want to make sure that the timelines imposed by this legislation—essentially, proposing that the Representation Commission call its first meeting two years out, and then resolves within 12 months—are an appropriate length of time. We also want to make sure that all of those other provisions around representation are properly reflected.
In terms of the process itself, that is pretty well established by now. There are some tweaks around the membership of the Representation Commission. I think it’s important that we have a good look at that. The other thing is, of course, how it impacts on Māori electorates and the Māori roll. That’s something, again, which deserves very close examination. So I would implore members of the public—both those who have specialist knowledge in this area and those who have a more general view of what’s going on—that they do submit on this bill, because it’s an important part of our constitutional infrastructure.
As has been noted, it’s tied with the census legislation. Whilst members of the Governance and Administration Committee may think that we’re an expansionist committee in the Justice Committee, I think it is appropriate that they be heard together, because that’s the other thing to note: that in terms of the electoral boundary reviews, we need a high degree of confidence that the information we’re getting from data and Statistics New Zealand is accurate. That’s why these two bills are aligned together. But at the same time, we need to hear from statisticians and people who are experts in the area of data research that that’s an effective way to go about it.
So, in short, we’re happy to see this go to select committee, make sure that it’s actually going to work, and essentially make sure that what we do see coming out of the representation process are electorates which properly reflect their populations, with a process which is fair to all parties, and essentially done in a way which is both timely and effective. That’s the job that the Justice Committee has together before it, and I look forward to embarking upon that journey together.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (15:56): Tēnā koe. I rise to speak to this first reading of the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill. I rise with a number of concerns; some of which have been expressed. Thank you for engaging first with the leaders and then with our spokesperson regarding statistics, Mr Hernandez. I want to raise some of the issues.
Now, if we’re going to have an administrative census, rather than the five-yearly one, then obviously we do have to decouple the boundary reviews from that process. We are not convinced that there are good reasons to have chosen every second election, rather than a couple of other possibilities. One is every election. You tie it in so peoples’ expectations are—as well as checking their enrolment details, they know that there’s going to be an opportunity to look at the boundaries.
The counter to that is, of course, there are some communities that are popping in and out of electorates. For example, the Ashhurst community that may look to Palmerston North in many ways, but is actually currently in Rangitīkei and will become part of the glorious Wairarapa electorate, where they are very welcome. But we do need to make sure, above all, that our electorates have similar weights. I am concerned that over what would be, basically, a six-yearly adjustment, places like Tauranga and Hamilton are growing really, really fast, and so are the changes in the number of people living in the Māori electorates. So I am concerned.
I think it’s also interesting to reflect on what is casually called the “entrenchment provision”, where, to get these bills through, there has to be 75 percent agreement. The Māori seats that were first created in the 1860s, their existence is not entrenched at this level. That’s the sort of reason that my colleague Hūhana Lyndon is introducing a bill to say, “Look, that is part of how this country runs. It should not be tampered with unless you’ve got a 75 percent majority.”
The other issue that has potentially made a really big difference to the coming election are the changes to electoral enrolment, and the fact that that now has to be done 13 days earlier. That is a really big change but that didn’t need 75 percent majority; in my view it should have done. The electoral review panel—I’m not quite sure I agree with them but it was the other option—instead of doing it three-yearly with every election, recommended sticking to the five-yearly frequency, although I have to say aligning it with the electoral cycle does make more sense, just not skipping it out.
We also have considerable concerns about the not being able to have updates before the 2029 election. We think it’s surprising that the statistics were not able to be gathered in time for that. I would also like to quote from the previous very interesting article and comment in Newsroom where Len Cook, the previous Government Statistician—first of all, he does somewhat rail against ditching the regular censuses but also he talks about how changing statistical mesh blocks will now be a much bigger statistical area, and he goes into things that are beyond my mathematical knowledge, like multidimensional cross-tabulations of people, which sounds a way of actually getting data that will be a good basis for decisions.
I think it would be well worth the Justice Committee actually asking the previous statistician to come in and speak to the committee; hopefully he will anyway. Thank you, my time has expired.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (16:02): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s good to be standing and having another contribution on behalf of this side of the House and the ACT Party on reforms and improvements being made to a census and electoral system. You know, these boundary reviews should be lining up with a parliamentary term; it makes complete sense. When we’re doing a census—unlike that family that I spoke about earlier in this contribution who travelled across Judea to get to Bethlehem to be counted in the census—Tauranga and Mount Maunganui are having a boundary change. I can inform the good people of Judea in Tauranga, and Bethlehem in Tauranga, that their boundaries are not changing.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (16:02): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of what is a common-sense bill. It’s a common-sense bill because of the bill that we’ve been considering just before this—the other one which is going to change the way in which we collect our census—and, currently, of course, the boundary reviews are very much tied to the census, which happens every five years, which of course doesn’t align with the time frame that we have for a three-year electoral cycle. That might become four years, but it still doesn’t align with that.
That means what we have now is a census which will be collected in a different way. That census will be able to be collected every year, and so it makes it possible—much, much more possible, but does make it possible—to be able to align the new electoral boundaries with census data, because that census data will be collected annually rather than every five years. To me, that is just a common-sense approach.
But I just wanted to reflect just very, very quickly on why we’ve got ourselves in this situation because there’s been a number of people—and I’ve got a history background in terms of one of my degrees. The census is an important piece of historical data; yes, it is. It’s something which we’ve collected for a very, very long period of time. But it’s become more and more expensive and more and more difficult to collect because more and more people are less inclined to cooperate, which means that the quality of the data then becomes poorer.
I just wanted to alert you to, as part of the Governance and Administration Committee—which is obviously going to be slightly sidestepped with this piece of legislation—we did have a really good discussion yesterday as part of the long-term insights briefing from the Public Service Commission, and that was all about integrity; all about integrity of the Public Service and the level of trust in the public sector. I think that is one of the reasons that’s being put down when we’ve also had the Department of Statistics in front of us. They put that down; a lowering level of trust—and this is across the Western world—in Governments is one of the reasons that less people participate in the census and it becomes harder to get that census data and it becomes more expensive to get that census data.
Integrity, censuses, and elections, in this case, all go together. I think that this is a common-sense approach and I commend this bill to the House.
RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (16:05): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on this particular bill and can absolutely, categorically say that Te Pāti Māori do not support this bill. It is another form of voter suppression in terms of a Māori representation in this House.
It doesn’t allow for the boundary changes in the Māori seats. What it does is it restricts the ability to have our Māori seats counted. Now, let me just paint the picture for you: the Māori electorates are the biggest electorates in the country. They usually have between five and 10 general electorates inside of them. The Te Tai Tonga one is absolutely—as we know, is the biggest electorate in the Southern Hemisphere. So what you’ve got is that in order to make up general electorates, you need 69,000 people. In order to make up the Māori electorates you need 75,000 people, right? You need 75,000 people, absolutely. Well, there are general electorates here that are made up of 69,000 people but Māori are expected to have 75,000, right? Across seven seats, that’s another 35,000 people we have to find in order to participate, right?
Since 2023, there’s been 14,000 more Māori enrolled on the Māori roll. That’s 303,000 Māori on the Māori roll. Māori on the Māori roll now out-populate Māori on the general roll. There is an eighth seat waiting there right now, and if this House had adopted my member’s bill in the first term, we wouldn’t have this problem because of my member’s bill; it said that those boundaries should be changed every election.
Now, there’s a judicial process at the moment in regard to that particular decision because they took that decision based on 2024 data. After the hīkoi, absolutely, there is a huge influx of Māori on the Māori roll and there is an eighth seat right there. On current trajectory, by 2029, Māori will have nine to 10 seats, if we take the trajectory of the increased membership on the Māori roll.
I just have to look at 70 percent of te iwi Māori are 40 years and younger; 50 percent of that number are 25 years and younger. You’ll have 38,000 rangatahi enrolling onto the Māori roll, come this next election. These are some of the numbers that are not considered in this particular bill.
We absolutely, categorically, can hand-on-heart say we do not support this bill. Why? Because of voter suppression for Māori. It did the same in the Electoral Amendment Act that you move. Seventy-five percent of this House have to agree to this. Now, I turn to these other parties—to the other parties here in this House—and the Māori MPs in those parties: who, in this House and the parties, would support this to ensure that the 75 percent threshold is met?
If you support this bill that suppresses Māori vote—and I’m talking to every party in this House—then you have a cheek to stand in the Māori seats; the absolute cheek. You have an absolute cheek to stand in the Māori seats if you support this bill, because this bill continues to suppress Māori voters. We are the fastest-growing, maturing voter in this country’s democracy; in this country’s democracy.
What will happen here is this is the biggest threat to those backbenchers in National who will see this as their last term in Government because Māori will be deciding who the next Prime Minister is. Māori will be deciding who the next Prime Minister is. It will be the Māori electorates; all the numbers are telling you this.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can the member come back to this bill?
RAWIRI WAITITI: It is absolutely to do with this particular issue, Madam Speaker: these boundary changes—
Stuart Smith: Can you speak up a bit?
RAWIRI WAITITI: —do affect the numbers. Get a hearing aid! This is the position of Te Pāti Māori, and you’ve got to take all the numbers in order to participate in this conversation. You cannot just take it from this [picks up a paper]—it’s tied to the statistics stuff and the data stuff that you just talked about in the last bill. It’s tied to this one; it’s all part of the same agenda. That is to make sure you suppress Māori voters, and that is to make sure that Māori are not deciding who the next Prime Minister is come 7 November, but I can assure you that all Māori will start to migrate on to that Māori roll and they will be making the decisions come 7 November. Kia ora tātou.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (16:10): Thank you, Madam Speaker. On a lighter note, I’d like to take the opportunity to welcome the 5,200-odd voters that will be joining the wonderful Whanganui electorate at this year’s election. When we think about new people moving boundaries, moving electorates, needing to understand what electorate they are part of, and connecting with it, having two terms in an electorate before there’s another boundary change and anything there happens makes sense. I think, therefore I commend this bill to the House.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (16:10): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. This bill is important, as we’ve mentioned, and it is a good change to make sure there’s an alignment from the five-yearly review that previously existed and tied to the census date. The main reason why this is a good idea is it means that representation reviews, when they occur, and various dates associated with them will be set at regular and predictable interval periods—and that’s really important—rather than depending on where a five-year census is and where the three-year electoral cycle is. Aligning those two different cycles is a good move.
We have had an element of caution in looking at this bill. The new proposed approach to the census, as a concept of a reference date rather than a census day, is that this will be used as part of the electoral approach, but those two bills are quite different and distinct. It’s important to note that we do have some concerns about the way that the census will be changed, the efficacy of the new census approach, and its ability to capture all New Zealanders. We know that this is especially the case for some of those hard-to-reach populations by the fact that, sometimes, it’s difficult to capture that data. For a small country like New Zealand, it’s really important that we do have accurate data in order to have the most inclusive democracy we possibly can. It’s also important to have that detailed information because that is the one source where we get information such as homelessness. When we’re having ongoing debates about that issue, it is actually the source of the census that enables us to have very accurate information. We’re quite reluctant to not fully fund the census and not have it operating in a way where we get good quality data about what is actually going on in New Zealand.
As has already been mentioned, this bill changes entrenched provisions in the Electoral Act, and that is the reason why we need more than half of the House to be supporting it. Those specific changes include amending the definition of “general election population” and section 35. Both of those are reserved for provisions that require a 75 percent majority of all members in this House to pass.
We heard from the previous speaker, Rawiri Waititi, that there are some boundary changes happening this election, and we know it’s really important that New Zealanders are clear about what’s happening there. In my own area, we have a large part of Newlands coming into the Hutt South area, and I know that there are a number of public servants who have lost their jobs over the previous years, so we’ll be connecting with those people and talking to them about the kind of future they could see under a Labour Government.
This bill also makes two-term reviews work, and there are a number of other provisions. The Representation Commission is required to complete each review no later, I think, than 12 months before the expiry of a parliamentary term in which a review is due. This bill also replaces the definition of “counting day” with “reference date”, which defaults to 30 June of each year. It also extends the deadline for the commission to report and publish the names and boundaries of electoral districts by four months for the first periodic division after commencement—from the 12 months to eight months before the parliamentary term expires.
We think this is a good, practical change, and it’s important that there is alignment, instead of having two different cycles. That is the key reason why we support this bill, and I commend it to the House.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (16:15): It’s a great pleasure to rise to speak on the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill in this first reading. The purpose of this bill is to align the policy setting in the Electoral Act with the Government’s work to modernise the census—the census, of course, being every five years. We’re changing that every year. The electoral boundary changes are tied to the census. We don’t want to end up doing it every year, so this tidies up that part. It makes the logical link between the boundary reviews and the electoral cycle. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (16:15): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like colleagues on the side of the House—some of this side of the House—I rise to commend this bill through to its next stage. A number of people have referenced the connection between the two bills, and I do think that’s an important thing to speak to, but I just did want to start by reflecting on where I live. I’m one of the West Auckland - based MPs, and there’s been significant change in terms of boundaries for that side of Auckland as we head towards the election.
I think what was interesting for me as I’ve been engaging with parts of the community in Waitakere is just how long it takes for a community to understand that the boundaries have changed. There certainly isn’t at all, really, a sense of the significance of that for part of the electorate, so I think having more of a methodology to when it happens and letting it embed makes a lot of sense. I do think we just need to be cautious of the fact that should we ever move to a four-year term, we may want to revisit whether the two-term cycle is the best way for us to invoke boundary changes.
I’ll just comment on the sister bill as well, because I agree with the Hon Dr Duncan Webb that it makes sense for both bills to come to the Justice Committee. It’s really through the resolution of the issues with the first bill that will open the door for this one to be able to pass. In October 2025, there was a paper produced that, essentially, looked at how well the administrative data does against the census data. It was a bit of an experimental test to see how well it compares, and the results were not too bad. However, they did point to second-layer data as being a potential issue. When people respond to the higher-level categories, that was fairly accurate, but those second-level categories are quite difficult to get right.
I have the privilege of being the patron to deafblind Aotearoa, and one of the things they commented on frequently at their meetings is how difficult it is to source data on the issues of the deafblind community, because often it isn’t even collected well in the census as it is. The move from some parts of our community is to going more granular, and I do think that this may cause concern for some of them.
In another personal reflection for me in terms of self-identification versus administrative identity, I recall registering my children at the local GP and writing down both “New Zealand European” and, actually, “Other Asian”, which for those who tick that category frequently will know what I mean. The very helpful administrative assistant there said to me, “No, you need to choose one, and you need to choose what your children look like.” I think we do need to acknowledge that there are layers within administration that can filter how data plays out and how we see it as well, so I hope we do view this, in some ways, as an experiment because, of course, it is important that we get our data right.
As the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has said, these are bills of real constitutional significance and, of course, one of our reserved provisions. I did just want to note to Government members that we are absolutely going into this, examining the questions, being open to supporting the bill, and we’d gently encourage Government members to be open to, at some stage, exploring other reserved provisions, including the vote of ageing—the voting age; ha, ha! “The vote of ageing”; the age for voting; there we go; we got there; the age for voting—which is another one of the few restricted provisions. I think, sometimes, having the entrenched provisions there means that we can disregard those questions, so please do, at some stage, turn your minds there.
It’s also constitutionally significant, because, while local boundaries are important to local identity and choosing your MP, they’re also important to macro democracy. As we’ve seen in several parliaments, depending on who wins those electoral seats, it can result in an overhung Parliament, as it did in 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, and, of course, this one as well. So huge constitutional significance.
I look forward to robust discussions as we invite the views of submitters to the wonderful and diligent Justice Committee. Thank you.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (16:20): It’s a pleasure to support this bill and to take the opportunity, as my colleague Carl Bates did, to welcome the 4,100 constituents that are moving from the Upper Harbour electorate to the great electorate of Northcote: welcome. I have doorknocked every street in that new part, and I can confirm it’s very diverse and very supportive of the current coalition Government. So thank you, Madam Speaker.
This bill provides practical, sensible, well-needed, and timely changes to the Electoral Act. I support this bill in the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (District Boundaries) 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 20
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Referral to Select Committee
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (16:23): The question is, That the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Justice Committee.
Instruction to Select Committee
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (16:24): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 6 July 2026.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 6 July 2026 be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 53
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 13; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Social Security (Accident Compensation and Calculation of Weekly Income) Amendment Bill
Third Reading
Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Hunting and Fishing) (16:25): on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: I move, That the Social Security (Accident Compensation and Calculation of Weekly Income) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
As mentioned previously in these debates, in October 2025, the High Court found that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) was operating outside of existing legislative authority when reassessing a person’s entitlement to supplementary assistance after they receive a backdated ACC payment for a past period. This decision would have meant that individuals who received backdated ACC payments were better off than those who were receiving those same payments at the time their entitlement from MSD was being assessed. These decisions highlight inconsistencies between legislation and longstanding policy, but they do not reflect the principles of a targeted welfare system that provides assistance based on need. They also create inequities across ACC recipients in the welfare system.
This bill responds to these decisions by enacting several key changes to charge income against the period it best represents and to treat people as non-beneficiary when their backdated ACC payment reduces their benefit entitlement to zero. These changes align legislation with longstanding policy intent, removing the potential for interpretations of the law that go further than that policy intent and creates inequities. They will ensure that income continues to be charged accurately against a person’s entitlement and that ACC recipients continue to receive targeted and equitable support.
I would like to acknowledge everyone who took the time to submit on this bill, and the Social Services and Community Committee’s membership who reported back on what they heard. I’m pleased to advise that, as a result of this consultation, the House has agreed to make some changes to the bill.
I want to assure the House that this bill confers no new impact on clients or on MSD’s practice. What it does is it clarifies in legislation the longstanding policy practice of MSD, both its intent and practice.
It has always been the welfare system’s longstanding principle that welfare support is targeted to those who need, where those needs have not been met by other sources, such as ACC compensation. MSD does this currently when a person’s income reduces their main benefit to zero by considering the person a non-beneficiary, removing or reducing their eligibility for some supplementary assistance. If this happens for a past period, MSD may determine an overpayment has occurred and that a debt should be established. For a person who is in this scenario due to a backdated ACC payment, MSD may, with that person’s agreement, seek a refund from ACC for any financial assistance that was overpaid for the past period that their ACC payment relates to.
As mentioned last year, the High Court found that MSD is operating outside of its, at the time, existing legislative authority when reassessing a person’s entitlement to supplementary assistance after they receive a backdated ACC payment for a past period. That decision creates inequities between ACC recipients based on when they received their ACC payment relative to their assessment for welfare support.
This bill addresses that High Court decision by amending the Social Security Act 2018 so that when a person receives a backdated ACC payment, MSD must review specified supplementary assistance granted for that past period and treat the person as a non-beneficiary if their specified benefit reduced to zero. MSD may make changes to the person’s entitlement as part of this review. This is an important amendment to ensure that ACC recipients continue to be treated equitably and that support remains targeted to those whose needs have not been met by other sources, such as ACC compensation.
Charging income against this period it best represents has been a longstanding policy in the welfare system across subsequent and consequential Governments. It ensures that a person’s income is charged accurately against their entitlement, and this is important as people can receive income that relates to different periods for many, many reasons. MSD currently does this by charging income over the period that it best represents, which is generally the period that the person earned or became entitled to the income, or, when this is unidentifiable, the period it was received, and in doing so, MSD may find that overpayments have occurred and a recoverable debt should be established.
As I mentioned earlier, in 2024 the Social Security Appeal Authority found that MSD did not consider all the relevant factors when exercising its discretion to determine the correct period to charge income. This decision impacts the way all income is treated in the welfare system, and it does not align with the principles of how income is charged in the welfare system in practice.
This bill amends the Social Security Act so that when calculating a person’s weekly income which includes ACC income, MSD must determine the period the income relates to based only on the extent to which that person earned or became entitled to it in that period, and if this is not possible, MSD must determine the appropriate period to charge that income, having regard to the period for which it was received, acquired, paid, provided, or supplied. This is an important change to ensure that income continues to be charged accurately for the many people who receive income that relates to different periods.
This bill enacts changes with prospective and retrospective effect. This is not standard, and we acknowledge that. However, it addresses the important public interest for this longstanding policy intent to be accurately reflected in the law and to mitigate any flow-on financial and operational impacts. I want to reassure members of this House and the public that this retrospective legislation does not interfere with previous or ongoing litigation.
As a result of the select committee process, we have proposed a change to the bill. Currently, the savings provision in the bill only captures individuals who have lodged an appeal with the Social Security Appeal Authority or courts prior to the date of its introduction. We have proposed to now capture individuals who have made an application to MSD for a review of a decision by a benefits review committee that has not yet been decided before the date of introduction. This ensures that all individuals who are actively seeking a review of their decision prior to the introduction of this bill will be treated in accordance with the decision of the appeal authority and the High Court.
In conclusion—and at my own peril—I would like to thank Labour and Willie Jackson for his collegiality on this bill. With that, I’d like to commend it to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (16:32): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I first of all thank the Minister for Social Development and Employment, too, for the making a real attempt, we thought, to find a way through this bill where we could perhaps have supported the Government, but by the end of the select committee process, it was made very clear to us that that could not be the case. So it was with disappointment that we were unable to find a way through, because having a bipartisan approach on something on this is, I think, incredibly important, but it just wasn’t to be.
We had a couple of meetings with the Minister where we put up some options in terms of where we should go, particularly with regard to some of the people who were being hurt by this bill, and, I have to say that she was particularly sympathetic to some of the examples that we were giving. But it seems that her officials found it all just too impossible, and I’m not sure why they find it so impossible sometimes to actually work things through, given these are officials who work with both National and Labour Governments through the years. But it was with some disappointment that we were not able to reach a resolution, because we have people who are suffering because of this legislation.
I will say that through the select committee process, as short as it was, there was a lot of unanimity in terms of the select committee. Even the ACT people were showing some humanity, and so I was quite taken by that.
Cameron Luxton: I don’t know why you’d be shocked—you must have your eyes closed most of the time.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Now and then, they shock us, but we were united in our view in terms of the unfairness of this bill.
Glen Bennett: Right.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, absolutely.
Labour agrees, though, that the closing of a double-dipping loophole in welfare is important, because we, like everyone, know that Kiwis must feel confident in our welfare system and, obviously, don’t end up resenting institutions, and so we support ensuring that all Kiwis have faith in the process. We get it. We hear them out there in terms of there being that response about people rorting the system, and so we support the values at play because those values matter very much to us in Labour.
But it’s important to say today that we will not only be voting against this bill but we denounce this bill—we denounce what’s happening, at the end of the day. It’s unacceptable to drop debt on to our sickest and our most disabled Kiwis all because ACC can’t process claims fast enough, and my colleague Camilla Belich will give some numbers with regard to that because there were a lot of questions about that. These people—they’re not criminals; they’re Kiwis who are forced on to welfare because ACC are taking so long in terms of processing their claims. To now turn around and dump those sick and injured Kiwis with huge debt without building into that policy isn’t welfare; it’s actually cruelty.
It’s not just our sick and disabled being hit here; it’s also the victims of terrible crimes who are about to get debt dumped on them. These are Kiwis who, through no fault of their own, have been victims of terrible crimes and who have had to go on welfare while their sensitive claims are being heard. Turning around and now dumping debt on those people is unfair and is something, certainly, that our party—Labour—will not tolerate, and, certainly, we received a lot of advice from community law groups and people out there who made it very clear that we shouldn’t tolerate it. We were never going to tolerate it, but we needed to go through the process.
We pushed for an amendment that would give the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) the discretion to wipe the debt if the enforcement would cause hardship, alongside writing it off for sensitive claims, and, as I said at the start of my kōrero today, MSD found it impossible to write in a discretion clause. I’m not sure why they found it impossible, because there are lots of smart lawyers—there’s a number of them here—and I’m sure you could have written in something with regard to not causing precedent, or put some rules in around it, but, apparently, it was impossible to write in a discretion clause.
Many people would have agreed to taking welfare while their claim was being heard without realising that they were going to have to pay it back. Now, for those Kiwis who are wealthy enough to pay it back, they should pay it back. There will also be those who simply are in no position to pay this debt back, and enforcing it, obviously, could cause serious hardship. So in those cases, surely, there should be a discretion to write the debt off. I felt that our Social Services and Community Committee understood that, but it was let down by officials who were unable to come up with a discretion clause.
The Government have refused to accept the amendment. Instead of a policy that had some sort of flexibility when dealing with the disabled and those hurt by serious crime, it seems they want a punishment model in order to claw back funds from the poorest amongst us, and that’s not justice. That actually amounts to punishment, and I have to say that that is the difference between, I suppose, the two groups in Parliament today.
There’s a difference between Labour and National on this issue. We stand for a flexible social policy that helps, whereas, sadly, National and this coalition Government simply want to stick and to bash those who can’t fight back. That’s the feeling and that’s the response we’re getting from people and the communities out there. It’s not the claimant’s fault that ACC takes so long to process those claims.
For those fortunate enough to have the money to pay it back, they should, but those who are desperate to begin with won’t be helped by loading up debts on them now. I take into account some of the amendments from Te Pāti Māori and Oriini Kaipara, who was talking, quite rightly, about principles—Treaty principles—talking about partnership, talking about consultation with Māori, who are, without doubt, going to be the most affected here. Those amendments, of course, were thrown out, but it is only right and only just to put those types of arguments up.
We wanted to be helpful with this bill. We accept the need and we hear the constant kōrero of double-dipping, which is offensive to a lot of the people out there when they hear that, and the importance of the welfare system to be seen as fair for all those paying into it—we get all the arguments. I think after we traversed it and went through it, it is the wrong type of branding. National’s solution to claw back funds from our sickest and poorest alongside those hurt by violent crime is just, without doubt, a bridge too far. The policy will end up hurting people who can’t afford any more pain, to simply enforce a principle.
The reality is, and we’ve had this said in the House many times, court decisions have to be respected—have to be respected. The courts are not wrong to realise that people are getting hurt. That was the principle of the court’s findings. It was very clear that they saw that groups of people were not going to be in a position to be able to pay back debts. We had to, rather than look at changing totally what was happening with the court, find a way through. We felt that we were able to attach a level of flexibility that the coalition Government were not interested in embracing.
You can’t criminalise people. You can’t chase solo mothers who are just busy looking after their tamariki and whānau. You actually have to stand by them and provide a welfare system that helps, heals, and grows self-resilience. You’ve got to help individuals stand on their own two feet; you can’t constantly go after them. Sadly, that’s what we’re doing with the passing of this legislation.
For us—and we’ve said it many times—National stands for a welfare system that punches down and makes people too fearful to ask for help in the first place; our Labour Party does not. We will continue to support the people in the communities, and we absolutely oppose this bill. Kia ora tātou.
RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (16:42): Almost 40,000 people have been unlawfully burdened with debts as a result of a practice that has carried on by both National and Labour Governments through decades. You would be mistaken, if you heard the Minister’s contributions at the third reading, for thinking this was some boring bill that is just simply entrenching existing practice, because what has the Minister refused to acknowledge? That out of those almost 40,000 people, those that have had the largest debts to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) while waiting for support from ACC include survivors of sexual violence. They include survivors of abuse in care. They include people who have had to deal with traumatic head injuries. Yet we’ve got a Government that has refused to acknowledge this—that has refused to acknowledge and honour the dignity of people who have been failed by a system that does not believe sexual violence survivors; that does not recognise that unlike someone who may have had an injury from a rugby game, sexual violence survivors often have to go through a lengthy, often retraumatising process to get their ACC claims. The longer that process is, the larger the debt, the larger the penalty, the larger the punishment that was found to be unlawful by the High Court.
Instead of taking a moment to look at themselves in the mirror and recognise that this unlawful practice was wrong, what did the Government do? Introduce a bill in urgency, rush it through the select committee with a one-week period, refuse to hear members of the public, and only invite a handful of organisations—not even engage during the select committee process with ACC. We had to seek a briefing outside of the select committee process of this bill to even find out and have a glimpse of who this bill is affecting. The Minister in charge of this bill has even refused to openly acknowledge that out of the glimpse of information that we received from the select committee, the sample that was given to us on those ACC claims, the large majority often were sexual violence survivors.
How can this be a bill about fairness and equity when it entrenches a practice that puts some of our most injured and traumatised people in large debts? This Government may be making it legal, but it does not make it right. This is why we need a Government that actually looks after people who are injured, sexual violence survivors, and abuse in care survivors, as opposed to pretending that burdening them with large debts after going through a traumatising process is about fairness and equity.
The ACC system is not built with fairness or equity to begin with. We’ve been told for decades about the inequities that exist in gender and ethnic lines, or how somebody who gets injured at a sports game gets support really readily, while people who have birth injuries, people who have survived sexual violence, often have to endure a lengthy and traumatising process to get the support that they need, only to find that they will have huge debts that come from the recouping and the clawback of support that they needed at the time, like the disability allowance, temporary additional support, and the accommodation supplement. These supports are not there because people just want them; they are there because people need them to survive.
If you heard the speech from the Minister, you would be none the wiser about any of this, because she has refused to acknowledge the lived realities of the very same people this bill is affecting and the unlawful practice that this bill is legalising.
I am shocked that in the first reading, we had members from the Opposition, in fact, calling people out as if they were engaging in double-dipping as opposed to acknowledging that they were people that were simply trying to make ends meet. We deserve so much better than this process. The people who fought at the High Court to get this outcome deserve so much better.
I want to give a shout-out to Community Law Centres Aotearoa and welfare advocates across the country who managed to fight at the High Court level and win and prove that this practice was unlawful. But their point wasn’t just about recognising that the Government was out of step with the law. The point was to prove that this practice was harming people. People don’t go through a lengthy High Court process with sexual violence survivors simply to make a point. They go through this process to seek a level of justice. When I hear members of the Government talk about this bill as if it brings any level of equity, all I see is people who are completely out of touch, who are completely out of their depth, and who are refusing to engage with the substance of the bill.
I know that there were members of the Government side in the select committee who I could tell understood—understood the harm that this bill was causing. I know that there were members of the Government who understood the unfairness of this bill. I could see members of the Government nodding when we were getting told openly about the harm that this policy causes in sexual violence survivors. I know that they’re not ignorant to the harm that this bill is causing, and it is not too late for members and parties in the Government who know that the current bill, as it is, is unfair and it harms people who need our support.
I want to acknowledge the countless sexual violence survivors who took their time to write to the select committee, despite having only two days to do so. I acknowledge that putting yourself out in the public record in this way can be retraumatising, but I acknowledge that no one would do it if they didn’t feel strongly about this bill and they didn’t feel strongly about sexual violence.
People who put themselves forward recognised that the current practice, legal or otherwise, was wrong. To make people go through sometimes years-long battles to get the rehabilitation and the counselling that they need to recover from sexual violence or abuse in care, only to be slapped with sometimes tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt that either comes out of your ACC back payments or gets put as a weekly repayment that comes out of your weekly income is wrong and it undermines people’s ability to survive.
To pretend that this is about equity ignores that the support that someone receives from MSD cannot be compared to the support you receive from ACC when it comes to rehabilitation. I know many members of the Government side know this quite clearly because of the constituency work they do or because they have seen the submissions from experts on this bill. They surely must know that this is wrong, but then I ask: “Why support this nonetheless if you know that some of the people most impacted are people who have undergone some of the most serious and deepest trauma anyone could ever do in their whole lifetime?”
Under the committee of the whole House stage, we indeed also tried to put amendments to minimise the harm that this bill was causing, to exclude sexual violence survivors and abuse in care survivors, people who were victims of crimes, people who would be put into hardship as a result of this. I simply don’t buy it and I know put the blame on officials for ruling these out of scope. If the Minister genuinely believed that sexual violence survivors and abuse in care survivors or victims of crime should be excluded from this bill, she could have sought out-of-scope amendments through the Business Committee. There are tools available to Ministers to try and put out-of-scope amendments when they realise and they have evidence in front of them of the inequities and the harm that this bill is causing. It did not have to be this way.
This is a horrendous and gruesome practice that has gone on for far too long. To pretend that this is just a simple tidy up ignores the harm that has been caused for decades—the harm that has been entrenched that prevents survivors of sexual violence from coming forward and seeking support. Because I can see why people would feel like coming forward to ask for support would only result in you being financially undermined. This is why the Greens are going to continue to fight for a welfare system that leaves everyone better off, that allows people to live in dignity, and an ACC system that becomes an agency of comprehensive care—that believes sexual violence survivors.
It is not too late for Government parties to vote this down. I know they know that this is wrong. I know they know that sexual violence survivors are most inequitably harmed by this bill. I urge them to not pretend that this is just tidying-up existing practice that was found unlawful. They know this practice causes harm to people who need our support. The Green Party will be fighting every step of the way to abolish this practice and restore dignity to survivors.
Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT) (16:53): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Social Security (Accident Compensation and Calculation of Weekly Income) Amendment Bill in its third reading.
That speech that we just heard, one point the member Ricardo Menéndez March was making was about how it’s being rushed. Yes, it’s a very important issue. We have to, otherwise we will not be doing justice to those who are going to be affected, because, as days go by, there will be more and more people—those who will be affected. So we want to make sure that the impact of this—that the policy is there, but the way it is intended to deliver; if it is not delivering, we want to minimise the impact of that.
The second point the member makes is about that somehow some people should be excluded from the intention of the policy. The member thinks that it’s OK if the policy doesn’t deliver on its intent. No, on this side, we are not that irresponsible. We are responsible members of Parliament here. And if we see, we identify, we have seen that the policy has been interpreted differently, so it is our responsibility to fix it, and we are fixing through this legislation. So that’s why this is an important bill. Already, the Minister has spoken about the background to this bill and already described what this bill does, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. We support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (16:54): I rise as spokesperson for ACC for New Zealand First. I ironically thought, having taught politics at university, that this is the type of bill that could be included in a stage 3 politics course, because it is not easy. I think we’d be fair to say that our party has wrestled with some of the issues here quite a lot.
So, first of all, I’d just like to say I admire the thought and consideration of all parties on this bill. It’s a shame that we were not able to reach consensus. I heard from our colleagues that it’s a targeted welfare system, no impacts on claimants, clients will not get less under this amendment, and we take them at their word. We also saw that the Amendment Paper 528 that came through today from the Minister for Social Development and Employment has a number of things in it that we supported.
We want to ensure that any complainants to ACC are not unfairly disadvantaged—that’s where we stand. I also heard from the honourable Camilla Belich that sensitive claims made up 65 percent of the proportion of people that will be under this amendment; and of those, also 70 percent were women. I also heard that the Ministry of Social Development had discretion to look at these cases, and we support that.
I just want to end with these things: New Zealand First’s primary principles in trying to judge this are justice and fairness. We would like to say that New Zealand First do not want any undue hardship or material hardship as a result of these changes; however, we support this bill.
ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (16:56): I rise on behalf of Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Pāti Māori to once again oppose this bill. From the outset, our position has been very clear: this bill will deepen hardship for survivors of abuse, for survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and for those who suffer most in all of Aotearoa. We also oppose this bill because it represents a profound breach of justice, fairness, and the Crown’s obligations to protect the wellbeing of whānau under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
But the way in which the Government has chosen to respond raises serious questions about fairness, proportionality, and trust in the system. The accident compensation scheme was built on a simple promise, and that is: if you are injured, the State will stand beside you, not on top of you. It was never meant to be a system where people often, years later, find themselves caught in administrative recalculations that could reopen settled matters or create new uncertainty about their financial position. That is the risk many submitters warned us about.
We know now that the practical effect of this bill could fall hardest on those most vulnerable around our country and almost 37,500 will be affected. Who are they? Well, we asked repeatedly, and the answers always fell short of satisfactory. It was only yesterday that we learnt through ACC—who managed to collate 50 current claims to try to give us a clear picture of who will be affected most by this bill—65 percent of that sample size are sensitive claims of a serious nature, including sexual abuse and violence. This bill will also impact those recovering from injury, largely Māori, people navigating multiple systems at once and those who simply trusted that when a matter was resolved, it was resolved.
For Māori, those risks are not abstract. Māori are over-represented in injury statistics, over-represented among those experiencing economic hardship, and over-represented among those navigating both ACC and income support systems at the same time. When policy settings shift in ways that create complexity or potential debt, it is our communities who tend to feel that pressure first and most sharply. That is why many of us argued that if legislative change was required, it should have been clearly prospective in affect, not retrospective, providing certainty for the future, rather than revisiting the past. It is about making mokopuna decisions and being a good tipuna today. Protect our future.
But the reality before us today is that this bill proceeds largely unchanged. That is really disappointing, because good lawmaking should not only fix illegal interpretation; it should also protect the integrity of the social contract between the State and the people it serves; and, in particular, Māori, as partners to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. If people believe that decisions affecting their entitlements can be revisited years later, confidence in the system—confidence in the system—begins to erode. It’s eroded. Nāwai i hē kātahi ka tino hē kē atu—from bad to worse. That is a saying that is being said right across the motu amongst Māori who fear this bill is going to impact them the most.
For the people I represent in Tāmaki Makaurau, the question is always simple: will this change make life more stable for whānau navigating injury, hardship, trauma, PTSD; or will it add another layer of uncertainty? Too many submitters told us that it risks the latter. Despite those concerns, the Government has chosen to move forward with minimal change.
For our part, we will continue to advocate for Māori, for the vulnerable communities, and for a system that treats people with dignity, treats people with mana, protects them from unnecessary hardship, and honours the founding principle of ACC that when someone is injured in Aotearoa, the community stands behind them. Those principles matter. For the people of Tāmaki Makaurau and for Māori communities across the motu and for every New Zealander who believes that fairness should remain at the heart of our social support systems, Te Pāti Māori strongly opposes this bill.
MIKE DAVIDSON (Green) (17:01): Kia ora e te Pīka. I rise on behalf of the Green Party in total opposition to this bill, a bill that will just cause more harm coming from a Government that clearly does not care about the most vulnerable in our society. This bill is absolutely a disgrace.
What we have seen from the High Court was a decision that showed that a policy that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) was implementing was incorrect. Just because they had been implementing it doesn’t mean it was right; it doesn’t mean it was just. When they looked at the cost it would force on them, of around $63 million, their decision was “We’re just going to change legislation so that we can get that money.” That is terrible, especially when you look at who this actually affects.
The people impacted by the decisions that are going to be made in this House today are some of the most vulnerable people in society. From a representative view of the submissions from ACC that they had a look at, it was clear that of the close to 40,000 people affected, 65 percent of them were sensitive claims—survivors of sexual violence, survivors of abuse in State care—and 70 percent of them were women. Like, do we not care about who we are hurting when we make these decisions?
All we hear is “Oh, we’ve got to stop the double-dipping. We’ve got to fix the inequities.” All you are doing is entrenching inequities by hurting the most vulnerable—people who were waiting sometimes years and years and years for the ACC claim to be accepted and, while they were waiting, they were having to live on a benefit and they were having to get supplementary allowances just to survive. And then MSD wants to claw that back, which we know is against the legislation.
But this Government does not care, and so they tried to rush it through in urgency, but at least we managed to get a concession, so they took it to the Social Services and Community Committee where they had a week, and then the public only had two days to submit. What did we see? Close to 900 people making submissions; of those submissions, only two people—two submitters—supported this bill. But yet this Government ignores that and they ignore all the people that put their heart on paper to explain the trauma that they had been through, how they’ve been retraumatised by this.
We know that there’s parties within the Government coalition that are sympathetic, but yet they still vote in favour of this bill—this bill that will retraumatise people, that will put people into debt for probably a lot of their life. These people have been through so much and yet, right now, we have a Government that is clearly showing that they just don’t care.
I wasn’t fortunate enough to be on the Social Services and Community Committee, so I had a look at a few of the submissions. I just want to quickly read one, and it was just a snapshot. It was from a victim. “Whilst waiting an ACC ruling as a single woman, I was made to try and survive on an amount from WINZ that paid my rent and left me with $30 for food and healthcare. I became severely depressed, having never relied on WINZ before, and I had no support. Eventually, money came through, but in no way did it cover my costs and trauma that I had been through. I have been a hard, professional worker my whole life, and this changed my life and caused severe trauma to me. And once I got my payment, it was pittance, and I was just trying to pay back loans.” This bill is disgraceful and I oppose it.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (17:06): The problem I have with the Green Party is that when you’re outraged about everything, you’re really outraged about nothing. Every single person should get, and will get, everything they are entitled to; they just won’t get it twice. But every single person will get what they’re entitled to, as they should. We have an amazing welfare system. I support this bill and commend it to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (17:07): I want to take issue with the statement made by the last speaker, Tim Costley. It really concerns me that despite all of the time in this House, talking about this, the comprehension is so low about the nature of what we’re doing today. So I am going to start at the beginning.
If you have somebody who breaks their arm—if Tim Costley breaks his arm, then the accident compensation scheme kicks in without fault, and Tim Costley will receive 80 percent of his earnings; he will also receive household help because that will be helpful for him in his recovery; he will receive physio; he will receive taxis to and fro, as he needs them; there will be rehabilitation that he gets.
If a woman is sexually assaulted and she goes through a process, that takes longer because it is hard to ascertain whether that is the cause of her breakdown, then she will not receive ACC compensation for the, say, five years that it takes for that claim to be sorted out, but the accident will still, then, be accepted as happening. What ACC will do is they will talk to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), and they will take any benefit she’s got during that time off her. That will come out of the 80 percent of her earnings. Then they will return the rest of the money to her because the main benefit recognises any double-dipping risk. It says, “No main benefit and earnings.”, that’s the double-dip. But the law deals with that already. So what ACC will return to her is the remainder after any risk of double-dipping. What then happens is that MSD treat what she has got left as a windfall income, and they take everything that they have given that woman during that time away from her, including any rehab costs, including any of the energy costs that she has spent. All those things are taken away from her. They are not taken away from Mr Costley. He’s given those things if he’s broken his arm. But they’re taken away from the woman who suffers the sexual assault. She pays for her own rehabilitation.
The only people who benefit out of this are the State. The State doesn’t have to pay in its ACC scheme all the additional payments that that woman should have received up until the time her claim is accepted. There is an injustice there. It is not equal treatment of people; it is lesser treatment of many. It is an injustice, and that was the rule that we were following when the High Court looked at the situation and said, “That wasn’t the intention of the legislature. That’s not what the words say. The words say you can take the main benefit. They don’t say you can claw back all this other money.” As a result, the Government decided to legislate to say all the money taken—let’s say stolen—from those people, because it was unlawful; any of that money that has taken: “No, it’s OK. We’re going to make it retroactively lawful.”
So that is what we are doing today retrospectively. We’re also changing the law today. We’re not just reiterating it; we’re changing it because we’re not keeping the law as it was. We’re moving to a state of saying that if you don’t have your claim accepted for a number of years, you will actually have to pay all of these other benefits. Tim Costley won’t. If he breaks his arm tomorrow, he’ll still be in a better position than the woman who puts in a claim for sexual assault.
Now, we don’t know how many people are affected. What we know from what we meagrely got out of the select committee and afterwards because we had to report before we got this information, is information with a sample of 50 of these people—50 of the people they looked at at ACC last year. That’s where the figure of 65 percent of these people being sexual assault victims comes from. That was in that figure. Seventy percent of those people from last year who miss out, they were women. There are also lots of people out there who are affected beyond that, but we don’t know who they are because we didn’t bother to find out.
We also never found out whether ACC had any justification for not paying the money that they would have paid, if they had not been in default, across to MSD in compensation to them to recognise the fact that there was this group of people who missed out big time. Why is ACC not funding this? Why doesn’t ACC simply take the money that it’s saved, look at the amount that the beneficiary who is having that claim made is liable for, make an assessment about whether in fact they would have paid more out on ACC, and knock the knocker with the MSD. Those sorts of arrangements, they’re not beyond us. Before I hear one more person stand up and say, “We’re just confirming the way we’ve always done things.”, I ask this House what they’re here for. If we’re just here to confirm whatever we are told without question—and without the fundamental question, which is, “Is this just?”—“Is it just?”
I take the point that you can’t get upset about everything. But, remember, the Labour Party started in a position of supporting this bill because of what it was told. It was just awake on the job. It found out what was going on. It found out that there was an injustice afoot and it wasn’t prepared to tolerate it. It is not our job to simply create the status quo, regardless. Why otherwise are we here? We have this precious job where we get to actually change the world a little bit. It is not that hard to stand up for something that is just or moral. It is our job. In fact, today, what we have is a Government that is asleep on its watch, not doing a thing for the money they earn today. It doesn’t seem to worry it that the people impacted are not double dippers, that the premise they started on is not true. That is why Mr Costley can get up and say, “It’s as simple as two lines. We don’t want double-dipping, and the Greens are just barking all the time.” Neither of those things are true. This is something where we join our colleagues and the Greens and the Māori Party and say this is not a reasonable law.
Labour put up a very good amendment. It wasn’t our work; it was based on the work of submitters. It was the submitters who’ve lived and breathed these cases for years. They told us that ACC have a discretion so that fairness is at the heart of the decisions that they make. We took that on board and we created an amendment and we made sure sexual assault victims were in there, first and foremost, because we knew this was important. This Government declined to take it seriously. Well, the problem with that is damage will be done to a whole lot of workers out there. So next time someone from the Government gets up and tells us that they care about workers, I urge the public to think, “How much do they care about workers in this country? How much do they care about people?—full stop.”
If this is the way that they are treating them, if they would rather just go along with a custom of practice regardless of whether it makes any sense or, importantly, is just—that is the centre of our jobs. That is why we are here, that is why we come to this Parliament, and it’s important that we lead morally and justly. And this law—it’s another good reason to change the Government this November. It’s extremely important we do. Thank you,
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (17:17): Well, this bill is about fairness. This bill clarifies the law for those on ACC payments and their welfare entitlements, to make sure the process is fair for everyone. There are cohorts of people out there that are on ACC and get welfare and vice versa. They’re on welfare and then they end up going on ACC. The current situation, as interpreted by the courts, is those who receive lump-sum payments are treated more generously than the former, which are those on ACC and welfare. So the Government has a duty to fix this. This is what this bill does. I commend it to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (17:18): Tēnā rawa atu koe e te Māngai o te Whare, heoi anō tātou katoa. E tū ana awau ki te whakahē i tēnei pire mō Te Pāti Reipa.
[Greetings to you the Speaker of the House, and to all. I stand to object to this bill on behalf of the Labour Party.]
The member opposite just talked about fairness, and we all know fairness is too subjective of a term. This is not about fairness; this is about justice. If this was simply about targeting people who “are ripping off the system”, kei te pai, but this is absolutely going to impact on people who have engaged with these services in good faith.
We all know somebody who has sat in ACC purgatory: who’s had their injury, gone through the process, and is waiting on their claim. So, while they’re waiting, let’s talk about what happens and what this bill is actually going to do—even though my colleague Helen explained it so brilliantly. So they’ll go to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and they’ll get on a benefit while they wait. During that time, they will often miss out on the support ACC should or would have been providing them: the rehab, the physio, the therapy, the travel—all real costs associated with their injury that is having a major impact on their life. Sometimes months or even years later, ACC accepts the claim. Happy days! Then they pay back. They make a back payment of about 80 percent of lost earnings. ACC then reimburses MSD for the main benefit paid during their period. That makes sense. Nobody disputes the principle that somebody should not be paid twice for the same income period. But what happens next is the problem. MSD treats the remainder of that back payment as income and seeks to recover it as debt, even though that is often needed for the rehab and living costs that person, themselves, has had to carry, which, as I know personally, often means the treatment is not accessed, not only because of affordability but, in fact, because of accessibility.
Some of the whānau I’m talking about—with all credit to services like ACC who do try to be accessible; providing mobile services, that doesn’t always cut it if you live in the likes of Pōtaka and Wharekāhika—who we know have been cut off, literally, from the outside world for a couple of months—so accessibility to these services in the first place, to then understand if you’re following the correct procedure, is an issue in itself. Therefore, people who have overcome those barriers, and have finally received the support, in good faith, understanding that they followed the correct procedure, that they have been acting lawfully, now, are going to get a bill saying, “Guess what! Surprise, surprise. You’ve just exhaled, you’ve just experienced relief knowing that you can meet your expenses—sorry about it— you’ve got to pay it all back.” At a time when we know the number one issue in Aotearoa is the cost of living, this Government is choosing to retrospectively burden people.
We’ve heard in the House, it’s not just about broken arms and sprained ankles; 65 percent of the cases heard in select committee were sensitive cases, survivors of, for example, abuse in State care. Have they not been through enough? Can we not actually let them get on with healing their physical, mental, and spiritual wounds that now we’re going to retrospectively punish them for behaving in a manner they didn’t even understand was unlawful; behaving in a manner they believed they were following correct process? That’s why Labour did propose, did enter into this in good faith, and had a kōrero about it to see if, in fact, this was merely about people intentionally taking advantage of this service. We found that that was not the case, and we found that, in fact, it is going to be whānau who acted in good faith that are going to be seriously burdened by this.
As I said, these whānau have enough to deal with. Let’s let them get on with recovering spiritually, physically, and mentally and moving forward. This Government needs to take the advice of ACC and have a “hmm” and really think about what they’re doing. E te Māngai o te Whare, mō Te Pāti Reipa me ngā whānau katoa e mātakitaki mai ana, kāore rawa atu ahau e whakaae ki tēnei pire. [Mr Speaker, on behalf of the Labour Party and all the families watching, I absolutely do not assent to this bill.]
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (17:23): Sometimes, some decisions that we have to make are very hard decisions to make, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be made. Yet, listening to people on the other side, I can acknowledge this is one of those difficult decisions. But there’s a situation where in two groups of people, one group is being treated more generously than the other. Is that fair? When they want to talk about fairness, when they want to say that we don’t care about workers, what about those that are not being treated as generously as the other group? That’s not fair. And for a Green Party member to get up and say we shouldn’t be tidying up just because it was found unlawful, well, typical of the Green Party to not care what’s lawful or not. This is a hard decision, but it’s the right decision, and it’s a decision that needs to be made. I commend this bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:24): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a really complicated matter, but I think I have time to probably go through the background of how we arrived in this place. In October 2025, there was a successful court case that was taken by the Community Law Centres Aotearoa representing claimants who had had been made to pay their supplementary payments back when they had received ACC. Now, they were successful, meaning that the law, as it was currently being applied by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), was not correct. The policy of MSD was not being implemented correctly, and so this is why we are here today in the House. The Government decided, I think, around about 17 February—probably decided before that, but the House and the Opposition parties were informed on that date—that they wanted to change the law, and that change would mean that the people who had received MSD supplementary payments and then, subsequently, often a long time later, ACC payments, would, again, have to go into debt or find a way of paying back those particular promises. This is something that we thought about really hard in Labour.
One of the things that, when we were first presented with this bill, we were very concerned about was the fact the initial proposal by the Government was to bring this bill to Parliament and to place it under urgency and to have the bill go through all stages of urgency in one day, and we hadn’t had enough time to look at what the implications would be; we hadn’t had enough time to speak with people who are affected, with people who represent those who are affected. So we were able to negotiate with the Government—and I thank the Government for their good-faith interactions with us in this respect—to have a short select committee process of around a week. That was extremely important, as we’ve come to see, because we received 860 submissions, even though there were only 2½ days for people to actually put submissions in. That really indicated to us, and was a first, kind of, warning sign that this might be a little bit more complicated than it had originally been portrayed.
I think one of the things that we learnt through the select committee process—and I thank the members of that committee who, from all accounts, from across the House, participated diligently in that committee, although it was for a short time—is that this isn’t simply a matter of people being paid twice. That is not correct. This isn’t about the main benefit. This isn’t about—and we’ve heard it quoted before in the House—it’s not a situation, I’m now convinced of, of double-dipping. It is a situation where you actually have people who have received payments for things like the disability allowance, who have received payments, like the winter energy payment, who’ve actually had to use those payments to live. If they had received ACC during that time, and all of these people that we’re talking about should have been receiving ACC, because they’ve received backdated pay, then other forms of compensation rehabilitation would have been available to them. So we’re actually talking about people who are being asked to pay back money, which, in many cases, is a lower amount than what they would have received if they’d been on ACC at the time.
So this is an injustice of this bill. Regardless of the asking of the repayment and the damage it might cause to vulnerable people, this is an issue which still hasn’t been resolved. It means that many of the claims from those on the other side of the House are not 100 percent correct because you are looking at a situation where people did not, and have not, and we have not heard from ACC or the Government that they will be reimbursing MSD, so that the claim, the cost of those supplementary payments, are going directly onto claimants. That is an unfairness and, unfortunately, is not being able to be resolved through this process.
One thing that was really positive from the select committee process was the fact that the Government agreed to extend the number of people who were excluded from having to repay under this bill. Initially, it was people who had filed formal claims, but now it’s been extended to people who have raised complaints with MSD. Without that select committee process that we argued for—and we voted for this bill to select committee because we wanted to hear from people who would be facing that injustice—that may not have happened. I think that shows the select committee process was worthwhile, even though it was short, and that small change is something that we voted for as an amendment when the Minister put that to the committee of the whole House.
Unfortunately, as others have said, we were unable to reach a point where we were assured that when situations of severe injustice, severe hardship, would occur as a result of this legislation, that we would not be confident that MSD would have the discretion to make sure that they didn’t enforce a payment. Now, these people are not people, as many have said, who have done anything wrong. These are people who have acted in good faith, they’ve legally received MSD assistance; they’ve then, legally, again, and with showing good faith, received assistance because they’ve been injured from ACC. They have done nothing wrong here, but, at the same time, they are being given a debt that many may never be able to repay.
Another thing that was very, very important that we were able to ascertain at the select committee is who we are actually talking about here. We are talking about mainly women—70 percent women out of the group that ACC looked at as a sample group, and 65 percent of them have sensitive claims. Those are claims where people have been subject to sexual abuse, assault, rape—horrific crimes. These are our most vulnerable people who have had such terrible experiences, and our deeply felt, genuine concern is that it is not right for those people to have that struggle to finally get ACC coverage for that sensitive claim and for us to then say to them, when they’ve done nothing wrong, even when there is an assessment that it would cause undue hardship, that yes, we’re going to put you in debt—despite the hardship that you have faced in your life, we’re going to put you in debt again.
It’s a serious matter, and we know that people are watching. I received an email about the committee stage this morning from a sensitive claimant. She watched four hours of this debate, and I want to acknowledge her and those other people, like her, who have actually taken time to watch this debate and acknowledge the fact that this is such an important thing. I want to apologise for the fact that we are unable to fully address the fact that their concerns and their personal situations cannot be amended by this Act. We did try hard to get that discretion in place. We did put forward, in good faith, these amendments, and, unfortunately, we are unable to get that agreement from the other side of the House.
This is something that will be ongoing. I’ve been informed that there is already a petition that has been started, and that petition will be coming to the House, so there is an opportunity for people to support that petition and to provide advocacy in this situation if they so want to. This is a situation where we know that there will be hardship caused by this. This is a situation, really, where there are no winners, and it’s a really sad day, I think, for the House.
Another issue that I just wanted to quickly raise was the fact that I don’t think there has been enough opportunity, because of this truncated process, to actually think about the possible indirect discriminatory aspects of this bill. I’ve read the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet from the Attorney-General. I mentioned this in the committee stage as well. She did not have, I don’t think, the information that we now have about the demographics of people that are affected under this bill—and still we have imperfect data on this. We don’t have data on ethnicity. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an aspect of ethnicity that has shown up in the people who’ll be affected here as well.
The reason I raise that is because that’s a protected characteristic, and that is a protected characteristic under our human rights legislation. I do think that this could be considered to be a case of indirect discrimination, where you do have a policy that appears to apply to everyone, but, actually, the statistics that we do have show that the people it’s applying to are women with sensitive claims who have been subject to sexual abuse. As my colleague says, many of these are women; a significant number of them are older women, as well.
There’s not much more to say on this bill. Labour doesn’t support it. It’s a very sad day when we are faced with evidence that something that we have control over in this House will produce more hardship and we’re unable to find a way through that. I’m not going to blame any particular person or party for this, but it is a really serious matter, and it’s a sad day that we haven’t been able to properly acknowledge this terrible, hard situation that will eventuate for many of these people. Thank you.
CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) (17:34): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It falls to me as the last speaker on this debate to thank the Social Services and Community Committee, who did recommend by majority that the bill proceed without amendment. I want to also acknowledge Minister Louise Upston and her leadership in the Ministry of Social Development space. I also want to acknowledge our ACC Minister and his leadership in the ACC portfolio. As he articulated at question time today, ACC is delivering its strongest rehabilitation performance in over a decade and getting New Zealanders back to work and independent faster. I commend the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Social Security (Accident Compensation and Calculation of Weekly Income) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 53
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 13; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 3 March.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour) (17:36): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to resume this debate and make a contribution on the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill. I had to check myself saying that, because it’s kind of back to front, isn’t it?—quite noticeable that the name has been changed. A little bit small-minded and somewhat petty, as they say, but nevertheless, for those of us who are used to saying it the other way round, here we find ourselves today.
Now, I want to just reiterate, because this is an interrupted debate, that obviously Labour won’t be supporting this bill, for various reasons—for various good reasons. I’m going to focus on three particular things in relation to this Government’s approach to health, which I think this bill sums up quite nicely.
The first one is, quite obviously, the bill mistakes measurement for improvement, and that’s not an easy mistake to make, but yet here we are. This Government is yet again making the mistake of saying that if you simply measure something, then somehow you’re going to improve the system. No one disagrees with the fact that performance should be visible—I think we can all agree to that—but simply writing targets into law isn’t going to do anything to create capacity.
We know that emergency departments, they’re not under pressure because these targets up until this point haven’t been legal. That’s an absurdity. They’re under pressure because there’s not enough staff: there’s not enough doctors, there’s not enough nurses, there’s not enough allied professionals—there’s not enough staff in general, and there’s certainly not enough primary care upstream. Those things matter.
We know that when people can’t afford to see their GP, they delay their care, they get sicker and sicker, they end up in hospitals, and those emergency departments start to overflow. Instead of taking the opportunity that this Government has to do something about that—to address those underlying causes, to address the things that are actually going wrong and need attention and fixing those shortages—the Government’s answer is just to lock those targets into legislation. That is such a lazy shortcut. It’s backwards—it’s literally backwards—and it’s taking the health system backwards.
Now, on this side of the House, Labour certainly is very vocal about the fact that everybody, we believe, should be able to get the healthcare that they need, when they need it, close to home. It should be without the cost, without the wait times. That is incredibly important. If you don’t address that foundation to the health system, it’s barking mad to think you can simply attach a number to it, write it into an Act, and suddenly it will be fixed.
What’s especially egregious with this bill is that most of the submitters—I didn’t have the pleasure of being on the select committee, so I didn’t witness the process firsthand, but certainly in talking with colleagues and seeing the reports, the submitters warned that legislating targets poses risks. It risks that the numbers get gamed—gaming the numbers. It risks that what actually happens is that care just gets narrowed—narrowed down to what is actually measured. We saw that last time National tried this. You know, we saw that happening in hospitals. We saw loads of people going into particular hospitals when it was coming time to report at the end of a reporting section, and people would suddenly get their cataracts fixed. Heaps of people were able to do simple things like get cataracts fixed, but the knees and hips and all sorts of other things weren’t being attended to because that particular DHB just needed to get those measures up and meet those targets.
We also know it means it risks that the system just starts ignoring things like equity and prevention—and that still matters. This Government can’t just say that things that are fundamentally important to decent outcomes simply don’t matter, because if you just legislate some targets, somehow it’ll all be fixed. Ultimately, it just distorts service delivery, and that is a real shame.
The second point I want to make is that the bill tightens control of the workforce—and it does—while weakening the workforce voice. Why does this legislation feel the need to emphasise—to even bother emphasising—Public Service neutrality? You know, what does that even mean? What are they trying to get at there? Doctors, nurses, and allied professionals speaking out, when they do speak out—and they do and they should do—about unsafe staffing, about cuts, about what is the lived reality inside the hospitals that they are working in, that’s not political mischief. It’s not a bad thing; it’s professional responsibility. For many of those professionals, they actually have a professional responsibility towards advocating for patient safety, and this Government thinks that they can just do something to make that go away. That’s absurd.
If legislation starts constraining those professionals who we trust to run our health system, and if they start constraining their ability to advocate for patient safety, then we have got a massive problem. At the very moment when we know that morale is incredibly fragile—because it is; we see it all the time—there’s media and those of us who are out and about in our constituencies and we’re talking to people, we hear it all the time. You only have to go door knocking in any suburb, in any electorate, and one of the first things people talk about is how stressed and worried they are about the health system and how they have a family member or they are themselves someone who works in the health system and that they’re really, really worried.
At a time when that morale is so low, this bill also repeals the Health Charter, which removes the principles that the sector put together that were designed to actually support the collaboration and the shared values that make the system work properly. You cannot, absolutely cannot, rebuild that strained system—and it is a strained system—simply by silencing the very people that are holding that system together. That’s bonkers.
Wages, as we know, make up about 70 percent of the operating costs. So, by definition, workforce stability is the system. Anything you’re doing to undermine that is a risk to the care that people receive. Instead of rebuilding that trust, this bill centralises bargaining leverage, which is a mistake and it won’t work. It then tells staff, who they’re not listening to, who they’re putting under more strain by taking control and silencing their voice, “Hey, while you’re at it, simply hit those targets.” That’s not leadership; it is control without support.
The third thing that we really don’t like about this bill on this side of the House is it not only centralises power but it centralises power and quietly opens up the door to privatisation. When you’re doorknocking and you’re talking to real people, that is the second most common thing: they mention the fact that they’re worried about the health system, they’re worried about accessing the health system, they’re worried about the staff that work in the health system, and they’re worried that this Government is setting it all up because that is what they want to achieve ultimately—and that is absolutely fundamentally not what they should be doing.
It explicitly adds an objective to work with private providers. It allows the Minister to hand-pick board members. It allows the director-general to actually sit in on board meetings, not to protect independents, mind you, but just simply to reflect Government priorities. It scraps the audit requirements for the health plan, and it downgrades Māori leadership to advisory roles only. Even just saying that last part out loud should signal to everybody that that is absolutely, fundamentally the wrong direction. Piece by piece, this bill shifts power upwards and it shifts it outwards. Anything that we’re doing on purpose—that this Government is doing on purpose—to fundamentally undermine that partnership is a step in the wrong direction. It’s a step that I think lots of people could be quite rightly concerned about towards privatisation and away from public provision.
We know that under Christopher Luxon and this National Government, it’s already getting harder and harder and more expensive to see a GP. It’s getting harder and harder and more expensive to see a nurse and to access care, and we know that when people delay that care, hospitals become overstretched.
Dr Hamish Campbell: That is not true—that is not true!
Hon Simon Watts: Misinformation.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: If this Government—and I note that they’ve got more to say at the moment than what they’ve contributed thus far in this debate—were actually serious about doing anything about that and improving health outcomes, why aren’t they focusing on making it cheaper to do that? No, they’re leaving it to the Labour Party. That’s why we’ve prioritised three free GP visits for everybody every year through the Medicard, because if you don’t address the underlying causes of what’s holding the health system up, then you’re not doing your job and you’re wasting your time here. Why aren’t they investing in the infrastructure that the health system needs? Why aren’t they worried about prevention and actually doing something to prevent the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff? No, instead, we’re here today and we’re talking about legislating targets.
We’re not opposed to health targets. Obviously, they have a place. Some health targets work, but not these ones. These ones are useless health targets. They’re not only doing the wrong thing, they’re choosing the wrong health targets to do the wrong thing. If they were interested in health reform and better care, they’d be doing that. But no, they’re just simply interested in better optics.
Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (17:47): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise in support of the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill in the second reading. We are putting more money into health, contrary to what we’ve just heard and the scaremongering that’s going on. This bill is putting patients first, contrary to what the previous Government did. This Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill is about shifting the focus from bureaucracy to delivery, ensuring every New Zealander has timely access to quality healthcare. We’re mandating health targets that ensure focus remains on what matters: reducing emergency wait times, improving cancer management, increasing childhood immunisations—that all went backwards under their Government. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): This call is a split call—Glen Bennett.
GLEN BENNETT (Labour) (17:48): I rise to oppose the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill. I find it so interesting that every time a National Party backbencher gets up, they say that this Government has put more money into health than any other Government. Well, that kind of happens with every Government because as the population rises, we always put more money in. But if it’s per population, we’ve got to consider, “Is that correct?” We need to pay attention.
Now, I don’t know if people remember the 1990s when the National Government was in power. I do. I remember that. I remember marching on Parliament here with the Hīkoi of Hope, and it was tens of thousands of people from around the country marching from all ends and corners. I’m challenging that National coalition Government about their treatment of beneficiaries, their treatment of those in their health system, their treatment of those in public housing—in fact, the sell-off of public housing. But I do remember because I had to access the health service back in the 1990s. I don’t know if people remember when National was in power, but they had the hospital user charges. So, you know, the welfare State had been created back in the 1930s, it was free healthcare for all; then along comes a National Government and they put in these healthcare user charges. So when I had to go to the hospital, I had to pay a fee to go into there. Looking at this legislation and looking at what they’re trying to do, yet again, I feel like it is a National-led Government who is meddling and messing with our health system without consideration for the people actually at the coalface who are doing the work, whether it comes to our emergency department doctors and nurses, whether it comes to our cancer care specialists, whether it comes to those who are out in the public health nurses doing their thing.
As my colleague Dr Tracey McLellan said, yes, we’ve got to be ambitious. We’ve got to have targets. We’ve got to get somewhere. But, at the same time, if you’re not taking the workforce with you, if you’re not finding a way through, with the morale and the buy-in and then having the resources and having the collaboration, then I think that something is wrong. That’s why I’m speaking against this piece of legislation.
As we look at what is going on here and we try to understand—you know, if you want to fix the system, if you want to fix the numbers, you don’t just put blanket numbers in place there through legislation, because that is the heavy hammer of this place. What does it mean if you do that and then you don’t actually engage with those health services and find a way through? It damages morale. It damages those who are doing the hard yards and doing the long hours.
We can’t support this legislation, as many of my colleagues have spoken about, because fundamentally I believe that legislation isn’t the silver bullet that will fix us and get our wait-lists down, that will get our rates of immunisation up. There’s got to be a way through where we’re working in collaboration.
With a straight face, I stand here and also want to talk about Te Tiriti and the requirements of that. As I look through the bill, and as I was trying to find my little bit of notes that I had, this does weaken our partnerships and iwi partnerships, which are something that has been worked on so hard for so long. In fact, it undoes some of the work that has been done around Māori and iwi representatives at the table.
Why is this important? Because so often it is our most vulnerable. As Government members kind of cackle and laugh—our most high-needs users are actually our Māori populations, who are suspicious and who don’t necessarily trust our health professionals, so we need representatives at the table.
Statistics do not lie, and so we need to be aware and know that as we undo and take away some of those expectations, some of those powers of our Māori advisory groups, that actually takes away trust and actually yet again adds to the statistics which we should be embarrassed about and we should be ashamed about. We need to make sure that we have a strong public health service, and that iwi and that Māori are at the table, making sure that they are represented.
TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (17:53): National are fixing the basics and building the future. Health is really important to the Kāpiti Coast. We have one of the highest numbers of over-65s, which puts some extra health demands. That’s why things like the new breast cancer clinic in Waikanae was so important, and getting that extra funding for our health shuttle. That’s why these targets make a meaningful difference, because it means that residents that I meet have got their specialist appointment faster, their elective surgery, their cancer appointment, they’ve got through the emergency department quicker. That’s what building the future looks like. I commend the bill to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (17:53): Ki te whakaaro ahau mō ngā hōhipera ka hoki ngā mahara ki te wā i tipu ai au, i te wā i tū tētahi o ngā pakeke ki te tuku karakia. I tuku inoi atu rātou mō ngā mea e noho taumaha ana i roto i ngā hōhipera. I tēnei rā ko taku kōkā tēnā e noho taumaha ana ki roto i te hōhipera o Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. Nā reira ki a koe e te kōkā Aunty Polly, tēnei au e tuku aroha atu ki a koe. Mā te Atua tonu koe e manaaki e tiaki.
[When I think about hospitals, I’m reminded of the time I grew up, when an elder would stand and recite a prayer. They would pray for those who are ailing in hospitals. Today, my aunt is the one who is ailing in the Gisborne Hospital. To you, Aunty Polly, I send my love and ask for God to care for you.]
I stand to oppose this bill on behalf of the Labour Party. Before we get bogged down into analysing the 30-second contributions given by members opposite—and that’s being generous—I want to take some time to reflect on why these changes matter, and that is because from an ao Māori perspective, we took a long time to get here. In pre-colonial times, Māori had economic and health systems already running. Over successive years, these have been disestablished to the point where we find ourselves addressing some of the needs they have actually addressed across the House, but we are still not hitting the target. That’s why the inclusion and the powers given to people like the iwi Māori partnership boards matter, and making sure they remain whole and are not diluted matters.
In 1840, Māori were told by the Crown, “Kei te pai koutou [You are fine]. We’re going to afford you the same rights and we will look after you.” Well, that hasn’t happened—that hasn’t happened. Not only that, but we weren’t allowed to do it ourselves. In 1907, the Tohunga Suppression Act—that took away not only a massive impact on the way we address health in whānau Māori and hapū Māori and Māori communities, but that actually had a very damaging impact on the health of practitioners.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, I had the privilege of studying with a woman from Rangitukia. As we were studying the impact of the Tohunga Suppression Act, she said, “Now I know what’s wrong with me.” There had been no mention of her talents and her gifts and the value which they have to heal whānau. That not only had a massive impact on our societal ways of addressing health; it had an impact on her health.
When you look at things like Te Aka Whai Ora—and we had practitioners who were finally able to utilise their tikanga Māori abilities in a mainstream system, not just for Māori but for everyone—that impact was massive. That’s why any little things that people think are little tweaks and amendments—that’s why they matter.
It hasn’t just been a three-year Government term that’s got us here; it’s been hundreds of years and generations of people whose health has been sacrificed by the decisions made and given 15 seconds of consideration in this House. That’s why Labour will not stand for it. That’s why, whānau, keep your eyes on the prize. Register. Vote. Make this a one-term Government, because all your concerns about your hauora are falling on deaf ears.
We heard a doctor—no less—from across the House talk about how “Oh, we’ve put more money into this than anyone.” What good is money if it’s landing in the wrong places? That’s why the dilution of the role and of the mana being given to iwi Māori partnership boards is so dangerous. What iwi Māori partnership boards represent is direct connection to community, and they need to be able to give direct influence to the health services that we deliver to communities across Aotearoa. With all due respect to the census, they don’t always get into the far reach. In fact, I was asked to work on a project to address that very fact that they don’t always get into the most isolated communities.
The other issue is if we take the broad stroke into what general needs are, that’s where whānau miss out. For example, right now in Tairāwhiti, we don’t do chemotherapy. We don’t really do a lot of cancer care. A lot of whānau will either travel to Hastings or they’ll go to Hamilton. I know for a fact that whānau’s lives are shortened because of it, because my own father-in-law said to my husband, “What will that mean? Oh, it’ll mean so many trips to Hamilton. That’s not how I want to spend my last days.”
If you’re talking about money going to the right places, you can thank Labour, actually, because it was Labour who had the courage to establish Te Aka Whai Ora. It was Labour who had the courage to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnerships. That’s why people will be thanking Labour when this Government is gone on 7 November this year.
Back to the point—by the way, members opposite had ample time to make points. This is actually the opposite of what the National Party preaches, and that was that they would give mana and authority to iwi Māori partnership boards. What this bill does is dilute that. It’s another method that this Government is using to slowly but surely chip away at all the positive mahi that has been done in iwi-Crown partnerships and relations. This is another damaging effect that this Government is having on it and another thing that we’re going to have to clean up when Labour comes back into Government.
Heoi anō rā ki a koutou katoa ngā kaimahi e mahi ana i roto i ngā Hauora katoa puta noa i Aotearoa, tēnā koutou e manaaki, e tiaki ana i ngā tūroro katoa o te motu.
[To all the people working in the health sector throughout the country, thank you all for caring and nursing all the patients of the country.]
I do not commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 10 March 2026. Kia pai te mutunga wiki—have a good weekend.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 6.01 p.m.
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