Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Sitting date: 24 March 2026
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Start of Sitting Day
Karakia/Prayers
MAUREEN PUGH (Assistant 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.
Return of List Member
Daniel Peter Rosewarne—New Zealand Labour
SPEAKER (14:01): Members, I have received from the Electoral Commission a return declaring Daniel Peter Rosewarne to be elected a member of Parliament to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of the Hon Peeni Henare from his list seat.
I understand that Dan Rosewarne is present and wishes to take the Oath of Allegiance. Would he please come forward to the chair on my right.
Members Sworn
Daniel Peter Rosewarne
DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (14:02): I, Daniel Peter Rosewarne, swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III, His heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.
Visitors
Singapore—Speaker and Delegation
SPEAKER (14:02): I’m sure that members would want to welcome the Hon Seah Kian Peng, the Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore, who’s to my left, and his delegation, who are present in the gallery.
Speaker's Rulings
Right to Judge Time in Debate
SPEAKER (14:02): Members, last Tuesday I was challenged in the House on the Speaker’s right to judge time in a debate. The Speaker has always held that power to judge time in a debate, to curtail speeches, and to allow them to continue. The clocks in the Chamber are a guide to members, but Speakers determine when a member has used their allocated time. I would encourage people to follow the clock, though.
In 1895, Speaker O’Rorke ruled on this matter—some may have been there then; I’m not sure—and I direct members who are interested to Volume 89 of Hansard, at page 618. Speaker Mallard confirmed that position in Speaker’s ruling 54/1 in 2020.
Presentation
Petitions
SPEAKER (14:03): Three petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.
CLERK (14:03):
Petition of Hira requesting that the House require that date and time watermark stamps be placed into all future Parliament TV videos
petition of Shane Sharma requesting that the House urge the Government to introduce a minimum of three months’ paid parental leave dedicated specifically to fathers and supporting partners
petition of Sonya Oakes requesting that the House reform New Zealand’s murder and violent offending laws by introducing first-degree murder, increasing sentences for violent crimes, and removing or limiting sentencing discounts.
SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.
Papers
SPEAKER (14:04): Ministers have delivered seven papers for presentation.
CLERK (14:04):
2025 annual report of the Border Executive Board
2025-26 statement of intent for Tourism New Zealand
Government responses to:
the petition of Hapka
report of the Petitions Committee on the Petition of Shane Riddle
international treaties on the:
agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Croatia for the elimination of double taxation
agreement between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of Iceland for the elimination of double taxation
proposed policy additions to the Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: I present the 2025 annual report for the Commissioner for Parliamentary Services Standards. Those papers are published under the authority of the House.
Select Committee Reports
SPEAKER (14:04): Twenty-six select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.
CLERK (14:04):
Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the 2024-25 annual reviews of Crown Regional Holdings Ltd and the Takeovers Panel
reports of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the:
2024-25 annual review of the Ministry of Defence and the New Zealand Defence Force, and the
2024-25 annual review of the New Zealand Antarctic Institute
reports of the Governance and Administration Committee on the:
2024-25 annual review of Statistics New Zealand
2024-25 annual review of the Office of the Ombudsman
2024-25 annual review of the Public Service Commission
2024-25 annual review of the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Parliamentary Service, and on the
report of the Controller and Auditor-General, “Observations from our audits of councils’ 2024-34 long-term plans”
report of the Health Committee on the 2024-25 annual review of the Health Quality and Safety Commission New Zealand
reports of the Justice Committee on the:
2024-25 annual review of the Department of Corrections
2024-25 annual review of the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence, and on the
Serious Fraud Office Long-term Insights Briefing 2025
reports of the Petitions Committee on the:
petition of Aaron Clark
petition of Christian van der Pump
petition of Hakepa
petition of the Hon Marama Davidson, and on the
petition of Wendy Joy Baker
reports of the Primary Production Committee on the:
2024-25 annual review of Animal Control Products Ltd
2024-25 annual review of AsureQuality Ltd
2024-25 annual review of Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd
2024-25 annual review of Quotable Value Ltd, and on the
Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill
report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill
reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the:
Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill
Building and Construction Sector (Strengthening Occupational Licensing Regimes) Amendment Bill, and the
Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The long-term insights briefing and report of the Controller and Auditor-General are set down for consideration.
Bills
Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill
Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill
Fisheries Amendment Bill
Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill
Policing Amendment Bill
Regulatory Systems (Social Security) Amendment Bill (No 2)
Introduction
SPEAKER (14:06): The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of six bills.
CLERK (14:06):
Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill, introduction
Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill, introduction
Fisheries Amendment Bill, introduction
Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill, introduction
Policing Amendment Bill, introduction
Regulatory Systems (Social Security) Amendment Bill (No 2), introduction.
SPEAKER: The bills are set down for first reading.
Debates
Iranian Attacks—Collective Statement
Urgent Debate
SPEAKER (14:07): Members, I have received a letter from Vanushi Walters seeking to debate, under Standing Order 399, the Government signing on to a collective statement with 29 other countries condemning Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf and expressing deep concern about the escalating conflict. This is a particular case of recent occurrence, for which there is ministerial responsibility. The most difficult hurdle for urgent debate applications is whether they warrant setting aside the business of the House. The effects of the conflict in Iran are wide-ranging. The Government’s statement on the matter warrants attention of the House. Therefore, after oral questions, I will call on Vanushi Walters to move that the House takes note of a matter of urgent public importance.
Oral Questions to Ministers
Finance
Question No. 1
CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) (14:08) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has she made about targeted and temporary support for working families?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:08): Today, I announced that the Government would increase the in-work tax credit by $50 a week for up to a year starting on 1 April. This will provide extra financial support for low to middle income working families with dependent children as conflict in the Middle East continues to impact fuel prices and adds pressure to household budgets. This is temporary, targeted, and timely financial support.
Cameron Brewer: How is this support targeted?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: It focuses financial support on working families with limited choices, while avoiding large, untargeted measures that would be costly and inflationary. It reflects a judgment about where support can be delivered most quickly and effectively through existing systems. Inland Revenue estimates that around 143,000 working families with dependent children will get the extra $50 a week in full. A further 14,000 families will become newly eligible for the in-work tax credit and will receive the payment at an abated rate. The Government is very aware that almost all Kiwi businesses and families are feeling price pressures, but we also know that responding with large, untargeted spending could make things worse for Kiwis by increasing debt and further fuelling inflation.
Cameron Brewer: How is this support temporary?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the $50 a week increase in the in-work tax credit will last for one year—that is, until 31 March 2027—or until the prices of 91 octane petrol drops below $3 a litre for four consecutive weeks, whichever comes first. Since it is temporary, the cost is a one-off; if it runs for the full year, the estimated cost is $373 million, less if it finishes earlier. The cost will count against the Government’s operating allowance for the 2026 Budget, so it has already been factored into Treasury’s fiscal forecasts. As a result, it will not add to forecast debt or inflationary pressures.
Cameron Brewer: How is this support timely?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because it starts from 1 April—that is, from next Wednesday. Families already receiving the in-work tax credit won’t have to do anything. Inland Revenue will automatically deliver the increase. Families paid weekly will see the increase from 7 April 2026, and those paid fortnightly will see it from 14 April 2026. If people think they may be eligible or if they wish to change how often they receive their payments, they should call Inland Revenue or make contact through their myIR account.
Prime Minister
Question No. 2
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:11) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:11): Yes.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did his Government cancel plans to build a 70 million litre strategic diesel reserve?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Our Government is doing everything we can to increase storage across the fuel network across New Zealand. That is why when we came to power, we lifted the minimum stock holdings across diesel, across petrol, and across jet fuel as well. That’s what we did back in early 2025. We also updated the National Fuel Plan in the middle of 2024.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Is he aware that his Government cancelled plans to build a 70 million litre diesel strategic reserve in 2024?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’m well aware of the plans of Channel Infrastructure to expand diesel infrastructure and storage. Again, we are in constant dialogue with them on that.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Was Shane Jones correct when he advised Cabinet in 2024 that cancelling the strategic diesel reserve would “prolong our vulnerability to a diesel supply disruption until potentially 2028.”?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, that’s why I’m proud of the Associate Minister for Energy, responsible for fuel security, because he did take action, and the Cabinet did take action, to expand the minimum stock holdings across all three fuel types.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How will the Government ensure diesel supply security for critical sectors such as emergency services, food distribution, and public transport, in the event of a major and prolonged supply disruption, given that it cancelled plans to have a strategic reserve capacity in place by this year to do just that?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I can reassure the member that because the Government lifted minimum fuel stockholding requirements in early 2025, New Zealand is in a good position, with sufficient stock holdings of all three types of fuel at this point in time. We’ll talk about a National Fuel Plan, should a bunch of other scenarios eventuate, in due course.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: What would trigger a move from response level 1 to response level 2 on the Government’s fuel emergency response framework?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We’ve said that we’ll talk more about the National Fuel Plan escalation, and what triggers would enable us to move from different steps, later on.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why should New Zealanders have confidence in the Government’s response, when, weeks into the crisis, he can’t even say what would trigger a move from level 1 to level 2 and doesn’t seem to be aware that the Government cancelled plans to build a 70 million litre strategic diesel reserve?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Because what New Zealanders understand is that the poor spending during COVID under the last Government caused huge amounts of pain and suffering. They know that they have a Government that is balancing good economic management so we don’t run up debt and actually mortgage the future of our kids and our grandkids, while also making sure we have targeted, temporary, timely support for New Zealanders in need.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Would all of this anxiety about supplementary reserves be relevant if they hadn’t shut down Marsden Point?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: It was a critical piece of national infrastructure and that was a decision of a previous Government.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: That’s what happens when he’s desperate—he has to lie.
SPEAKER: Hang on, hey—your guy’s speaking.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: First of all, the question itself surely was out of order in that he said “they” shut down the Marsden Point refinery, when he wasn’t clear who he was referring to—but it certainly can’t have been the previous Government because the previous Government made no such decision. The Prime Minister has now asserted that the previous Government made that decision; it was a private business.
SPEAKER: Yes, that’s correct. The point is that the question itself wasn’t out of order because “they” wasn’t specified, but the response probably should be withdrawn.
Hon Chris Bishop: Supplementary?
SPEAKER: No, no.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: No, no, no—withdraw.
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I stand and withdraw.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: And apologise.
SPEAKER: No, sorry—hang on. The only person, Ms Woods, who gets offended in this House is me.
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: She wants your job.
SPEAKER: Yeah, well, that’s nothing new.
Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that rather than going ahead with the previously agreed plan, in April 2025—last year—Cabinet agreed that large diesel importers must hold an additional seven days’ supply onshore, thereby achieving the same resilience outcomes that were argued for?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, and, as I can say, that has stood New Zealand in very good stead. We do not have a fuel shortage in New Zealand at this point in time, and if you compare our stock holdings even to other countries, we have more days’ cover—which is a good thing—because of that decision we took.
Finance
Question No. 3
NANCY LU (National) (14:16) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:16): Last week, I saw a report from Fitch Ratings placing New Zealand’s AA+ long-term credit rating on a negative outlook. That revised outlook is a reminder of why fiscal discipline is so important. In a more volatile global environment, fiscal discipline is not an abstract concept; it directly affects the cost of borrowing for the Government, for businesses, and for households. If we get it wrong, New Zealanders pay the price through higher interest rates, higher debt servicing costs, and less room to respond to shocks. That is why this Government is taking a temporary, targeted, and timely approach to the current crisis, while making prudent decisions to get the books back in order. We remain committed to reducing spending as a proportion of GDP, returning to surplus, and bending the debt curve down.
Nancy Lu: How is the current situation in the Middle East affecting New Zealand’s economic outlook?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The conflict in the Middle East is already putting upward pressure on fuel prices, which is flowing through into transport costs, business costs, and household budgets. Last week’s GDP results show that the economy grew an average of 1.1 percent over the last six months, but these events add uncertainty to the forward outlook. That is why the Government’s approach is to remain calm, deliberate, and measured, supporting New Zealanders through the immediate impact while keeping a clear focus on long-term economic stability. We will protect New Zealand’s economic future.
Hon David Seymour: Did the Minister note in the Fitch Ratings report that fiscal consolidation could occur either by saving money and spending less or increasing taxes, and, if she did read that, which one did she think of at the time?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the Deputy Prime Minister asks a very good question because, yes, I can confirm that our Government is committed to achieving fiscal consolidation through better spending. I note that the Fitch report said that the Opposition would achieve fiscal consolidation through increased taxation. It seems that the Opposition is telling the Fitch Ratings agency more—
SPEAKER: That’s good—
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —than it’s prepared to tell New Zealanders.
SPEAKER: That’s not really—that’s an observation; it shouldn’t be part of an answer.
Nancy Lu: Has she seen comments that the Government will be receiving tax gains as a result of rising fuel prices?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes, I have, and while I acknowledge that this is a relevant question, it is the case that claims being made by some are simply not true. Fuel excise in New Zealand is a fixed number of cents per litre, not a percentage of the price, so when fuel prices rise, the Government does not receive additional revenue from that source. Any increase in GST on fuel is expected to be offset by a combination of reduced fuel demand and lower discretionary spending elsewhere as households adjust their budgets. I certainly have not been advised to expect windfall gains in the tax take as a result of this international price shock. I note that those who made big claims this morning have been walked back by their finance spokesperson subsequently. Perhaps next time, they should get that advice first.
SPEAKER: That’s once again an observation. We’ll stop having questions for the Government if they’re going to become attacks on the Opposition.
Nancy Lu: How does this response fit with the Government’s long-term fiscal strategy?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I agree that New Zealanders are already under pressure from higher costs, and the Government’s focus is on responding carefully to support them. Our approach is disciplined, balanced, and focused on both timely support and long-term economic strength. We will not sacrifice one for the other. We have a credible path back to surplus, and we are focused on bringing net core Crown debt down. The experience of recent shocks, like COVID, shows why rebuilding fiscal resilience matters. The better shape the Government’s books are in, the better position we are in to respond when shocks occur, particularly in an increasingly unstable world. That’s why careless spending is off the table. We will not load more debt on to the books that drives up inflation and risks making New Zealanders worse off.
Prime Minister
Question No. 4
CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (14:20) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?
[Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?]
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:20): Yes.
Chlöe Swarbrick: How many more New Zealanders have become unemployed under his Government’s economic plan since he became Prime Minister?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: As I’ve explained before, we inherited a situation with high inflation, high interest rates, an economy in slow-down, and, as a result, there has been rising levels of unemployment. The good news is that, in the last quarter, there were 15,000 new jobs created. Obviously, we want to see this economy continue to grow while we navigate this crisis. That is what will ultimately put people back into work.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Will the Prime Minister remove his new obligations and financial sanctions on nearly half a million beneficiaries—that is, over 40,000 more since he took office—in this fossil fuel crisis, or will he extend support as announced today to those beneficiaries so that they can afford to get to job interviews?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first leg of the question, no.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Why did he say that his Government would “provide support to those who need it most” if they were going to exclude almost half a million of the lowest-income New Zealanders on a benefit?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Beneficiaries are receiving, as of 1 April, a cost of living adjustment, reflecting, essentially, the cost of living, but the low and middle income working New Zealanders who wake up each and every day, who drive to work, who take their kids to school, and who are working incredibly hard are the ones who are hurt the most through this period.
Chlöe Swarbrick: How many parents of the 169,300 children living in material hardship will get the full $50 a week from his tax credit changes announced today?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, what we’ve announced today is support for low and middle income working New Zealanders. It’s 143,000 households.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Can he guarantee there will be no further front-line service cuts with his Government’s decision to fund today’s announcement from the current operating allowance?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: This Government has been very focused on improving front-line services, whether it has been hiring more nurses, hiring more doctors, hiring more corrections officers, or supporting our police in a much better way by making efficiencies and savings in the back office.
Finance
Question No. 5
Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (14:23) to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:23): In context, yes.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is GDP lower now than it was two years ago?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I can confirm that GDP is higher now than it was when that member’s party was in office.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is unemployment higher now than it was two years ago?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I can confirm that unemployment is higher now than we would both wish it to be and than it has been in the past. That is why our Government is so focused on growing the economy, creating the conditions in which businesses and firms can hire more people. Whether fast tracking projects, whether making it easier to run a business, through reductions in regulation, whether signing free-trade agreements with India, we are taking steps across the board to ensure that the conditions for job creation are improved in New Zealand.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Are business liquidations higher now than they were two years ago?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: As the member knows, there are a number of causes of business liquidations. I note that, in recent times, some of those liquidations have come about as a result of businesses having tax debts that linger from the COVID days.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is our economic outlook from Fitch better or worse than two years ago?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, as I outlined in the answer to my previous question, Fitch has certainly issued a reminder that fiscal prudence is more important for New Zealand now than ever, and I note that the approaches to achieving fiscal consolidation take two separate paths: one is through controlling our spending; one is through adding more taxes. Our Government has rejected the latter, and I invite the member to do the same.
Prime Minister
Question No. 6
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (14:25) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:25): Yes.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Can he confirm how many whānau are among the millions left out of his Government’s support package, including those on benefits, students, superannuants, and rural communities with no public transport; and does he consider that number acceptable?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: This is a package, as we’ve alluded, targeting 143,000 households across New Zealand of low and middle income working New Zealanders.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order to the Speaker. My question was specifically how many are left out.
SPEAKER: Yes, I know. That’s right, but all the Prime Minister needs to do is address it. He did address it with a very specific number.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Why has this package been described as “temporary” when our dependence on important fuel is permanent; and when these payments stop, what will have to structurally change to protect whānau from the next crisis?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Because we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the COVID period, we want targeted, temporary, and timely support for New Zealanders who need it the most.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does the Prime Minister accept that “harmonising” fuel standards is just a polite word for lowering them, and can he guarantee that harmonisation will never be used as a cover to allow dirty, high-sulphur fuel in Aotearoa?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What we’re interested in is making sure New Zealand has access to fuel supply, and by harmonising with Australia where it makes sense, that’s very smart because it means that we can actually secure alternative sources of crude if we need it in the future.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the decision to reject solar subsidies was made on the merits of the evidence and not because of sustained engagement between the energy Minister’s office and the power companies who would have the most to lose if households started to generate their own power?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the second leg of the question, I can confirm that that is not the case.
Energy
Question No. 7
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:27) to the Associate Minister for Energy: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?
Hon SHANE JONES (Associate Minister for Energy) (14:27): Yes, including that the last Labour Government made a reckless decision and approved the closure of Marsden Point.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why did he scrap the 70 million litre diesel safety buffer put in place by Labour in 2022 that would have set up an emergency diesel reserve this year to keep ambulances, fire trucks, and food distribution on the road in an emergency?
Hon SHANE JONES: Yes, I can confirm there was some doodling left on the side of a Cabinet paper by the former Minister. There was, however, no budget, no proposal that I could credibly take forward to my colleagues. Consequently, we’ve taken the option of putting the acid on the oil companies to secure 28 days. I also can confirm that the Opposition spokesperson did say without a domestic refinery in a closed border event, New Zealand would need to ration its diesel stocks to maintain critical services for a limited period, perhaps a few months. If you close down 700 million litres of storage, 70 million is a mere drop.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why did he tell Cabinet that the diesel reserve was too expensive when his own officials had told him it could be paid for by the existing tens of millions of dollars surplus in the fuel levy fund because of the changes of the law Labour had made?
Hon SHANE JONES: Yet again, we have evidence of this reckless approach towards fiscal management, this notion that somehow you can conjure money out of fresh air. Had the last Government not approved the closure of the refinery, the loss of 700 million litres of storage—we New Zealanders would have that if that woman had not closed the refinery.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Does he regret scrapping the emergency diesel reserve Labour put in place, given that at the time of making the decision, he told Cabinet it would “prolong our vulnerability to a diesel supply disruption until potentially 2028”?
Hon SHANE JONES: On matters as to who told Cabinet what, that member said, “We need to make an active decision. We have the option of maintaining a refinery capacity, but it requires an active decision by Government”. That Government made an active decision to close the refinery.
Hon Dr Megan Woods: Did he tell colleagues that officials advised him that by scrapping Labour’s emergency diesel reserve, diesel prices would be higher at the pump and it would take two years longer for New Zealand to have diesel security?
Hon SHANE JONES: Being the fair-minded individual I am, I ensured that my colleagues were aware of all information, including that that member had said, “the likelihood of a major fuel import disruption is small in the next 10 to 15 years”. Consequently, she closed the refinery.
Energy
Question No. 8
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (14:31) to the Associate Minister for Energy: What reports, if any, has he received regarding energy security?
Hon SHANE JONES (Associate Minister for Energy) (14:31): These are very serious matters and must be addressed in a very sober tone. I have received advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) confirming that fuel supply remains healthy, with strong stock levels across New Zealand. MBIE is now reporting the fuel stock and fuel shipment data two times a week. I say again, echoing the Minister of Finance’s contribution in public engagements: we have 50 days of petrol, 45 days of diesel, and 44 days of jet fuel.
Andy Foster: What is the Government doing to ensure New Zealand has a secure fuel supply?
Hon SHANE JONES: All Kiwis expect the lights to stay on, but they know that their prospects dimmed when the last Government approved of the closure of the refinery. We have activated the Fuel Sector Coordinating Entity; daily engagement with industry, business, garden-variety Kiwis; the Prime Minister and foreign affairs are actively engaging with the leaders of other countries so that every particular option is available. But I have to remind the House: we’re only doing this because Megan Woods approved of the closure of the refinery.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Every time, a lie. Stop lying.
SPEAKER: If that was the case—there was something said that the member took objection to—there are ways of dealing with that. But if the member persists with that, he won’t be staying in the House.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, sir. Earlier, you made the Prime Minister withdraw a comment of exactly the same nature. You’ve sat there and listened to Shane Jones lie to this House on repeated occasions. All I’m doing is pointing that out.
SPEAKER: You’re quite wrong. The first point is that when a question starts out talking about a previous Government’s activities and then refers to Cabinet papers, which are referred to in the response from Mr Jones, then I think you can only expect political answers to political questions. That’s long been the case here. Claims that someone is misleading the House in any particular way should be dealt with through other processes.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Regrettably, he didn’t say someone was “misleading the House”. He used that “lying” word—
SPEAKER: Yeah, well, I didn’t want to.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: —for which he should stand up and apologise, withdraw, and leave the House.
SPEAKER: Well, good. I have offered to vacate the seat on your behalf, anytime, but—
Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: He couldn’t stay awake that long.
SPEAKER: I’m speaking. I’ve given the particular person a clear instruction; I expect it to be followed.
Andy Foster: What contingency measures are in place to mitigate potential fuel shortages?
Hon SHANE JONES: The Government finds itself in a position where it has to move with a great deal of alacrity as a consequence of the last Government approving the closure of the refinery. And I invite the opposite side of the House to consult the dictionary to acquaint themselves with the proper meaning of the word “approval”.
SPEAKER: Yeah, no, that’s not something that you can actually do. They ask the questions.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Come on, amateur!
Hon SHANE JONES: E hoki ki te kāinga, puhia ngā kurī, puhia i roto o Taranaki.
[Go home, shoot the dogs, shoot them in Taranaki.]
SPEAKER: Oh, hang on.
Hon SHANE JONES: Now, the Minister of Finance has outlined a support package. We also are dealing with contingency measures that are actively being developed. But the priority now is to broaden and work on the supply of energy. Sadly, the supply considerations were compromised when that woman approved—
SPEAKER: No, hang on—no, no. Mr Jones, the Hon Shane Jones, he knows very well that a Cabinet decision is not ascribed to any one particular person, so I’d invite him to withdraw that last part of his answer.
Hon SHANE JONES: Sir, I was referring to Cabinet chaired by Jacinda Ardern.
SPEAKER: No, no, sorry. I’ve asked you to do something—
Hon SHANE JONES: I withdraw and apologise.
Rawiri Waititi: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The comments also made by that member in te reo Māori were also offensive. You can go back into Hansard and get one of your translators to translate, but I think he should withdraw and apologise for those comments that he made to the co-leader of Te Pāti Māori Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
SPEAKER: Well, I’m not sufficiently proficient in the language to have actually understood what was said very quickly. I’ll invite the Minister to consider withdrawing the remarks if they were in any way intended to be offensive.
Rawiri Waititi: Point of order, Mr Speaker—speaking to the point of order. Would you like me to translate it for you?
SPEAKER: Well, you need to be—why don’t we deal with this easily; take a bit of time. I’d ask the translators to now translate and I’ll listen to it here. [Speaker listens to translation through earpiece] Well, I think it would be appropriate for the Minister to withdraw the comment. I think it would be appropriate to withdraw the comment.
Hon SHANE JONES: Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear what you said.
SPEAKER: Well, I said I think it would be appropriate to withdraw the comment.
Hon SHANE JONES: Yeah, point of order. I just want to clarify what the translator said, because I couldn’t get my machine to work in time.
SPEAKER: Good, well, I’m not repeating it. So put your ear back on and we’ll ask the translator to do it one more time.
Hon SHANE JONES: Oh, well, in the interests of making democracy efficient, I apologise if I’ve upset the tender mercies of Taranaki.
SPEAKER: And withdraw. Sorry, I don’t like being particularly pedantic, but simply withdraw and apologise.
Hon SHANE JONES: I withdraw and apologise, sir.
SPEAKER: Thank you. We’ll move on to—
Andy Foster: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: Yeah, we were going to but we’ve taken a bit of time.
Health
Question No. 9
Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (14:38) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement that his policies will help Kiwis “get better access to care”; if so, does he agree that cost remains a barrier to timely care?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Health) (14:38) on behalf of the Minister of Health: Yes, in the context it was made, I stand by that comment. Access remains the number one barrier to timely care. The share of New Zealanders who said they could see a GP or nurse when they needed to, fell to 75.6 percent in 2023. However, at the end of that year, a new Government was elected, and with our strong focus on improving access to healthcare, by last year, 79.5 percent of New Zealanders said they felt that they could access a GP or nurse when they needed to. None the less, we recognise that ongoing global events are placing real pressure on household budgets and that’s why our Government continues to prioritise support to those with the greatest need, and we are actively considering a range of measures in order to ensure that front-line staff and patients are supported.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Is it correct that the last two years has seen the highest ever number of Kiwis unable to afford to see their GP, even before New Zealanders were hit with soaring fuel prices?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I can only repeat what has just been said: that, actually, if you ask New Zealanders, the proportion who feel they’re able to see a GP when they’d like to—
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: 600,000 can’t afford to.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —has actually improved significantly. The member’s saying, “Well, 600,000 can’t.”, but, I mean, that’s about 20 percent of people who can’t, but, of course, when she was the Minister, it was 25 percent who can’t. So we acknowledge that there is a problem, but we’re actually fixing it and making it better and we’ve taken real initiative. We put another—if I recall—$160 million into GPs last year. We have done very common-sensical things like saying you can get prescriptions that last longer so people don’t have to constantly go back and bother their GP for things that they don’t need to see their GP again. Who knows? Perhaps we could even volunteer the member to return to general practice to help the problem herself.
SPEAKER: No—no. That’s all right.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: As a hospital specialist. Is it correct that ambulance fees have gone up 30 percent in the last year before the fuel crisis hit both patients and providers?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: That may well be the case, but I just hasten to add that ambulances are private organisations. There is a lot of pressure on costs right through the New Zealand economy. Our Government invests heavily in contracts with ambulance services in order that they can provide services, but we also do something else: we spend taxpayer money carefully so that we don’t add to inflation and interest rate hikes that make it all the harder for New Zealanders to get by. When that member talks—
SPEAKER: Good—concise.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —about spending more money, New Zealanders remember what the consequences of it were.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Is it correct that this Government reintroduced prescription fees two years before New Zealanders went into this cost of living crisis?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Yes, it appears that the member can use a calendar.
Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Is it correct that the home-care workforce was already struggling before the fuel crisis forced these low-paid workers to have to pay out of their own pocket to cover skyrocketing petrol prices?
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: It is certainly true that New Zealanders up and down this country are facing serious challenges, and the origins of that are in the inflation that came from wasteful and careless spending that drove interest rates and a recession. There is no question about that; we all know that. The question is: what is this Government doing about it? Just in the last few hours, it has announced that those who face the greatest and most acute challenges with the cost of living are going to get an extra $50 a week to help absorb the pressure of this crisis, and we’re doing it in a way that is targeted, that is temporary, and that is timely. That is the right way to carefully use taxpayers’ money, because if you don’t—and the people over there have lived experience of doing this—you set off inflation, you set off interest rates, and all New Zealanders struggle all the worse.
Transport
Question No. 10
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa) (14:43) to the Minister of Transport: What announcements has he made about supporting the delivery of public electric vehicle chargers in New Zealand?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (14:43): Yesterday, the Government announced—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just give the Minister a chance. This could be quite an electrifying answer.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yesterday, the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Energy and I announced the number of electric vehicle public chargers will more than double thanks to $52.7 million in zero-interest loans from ChargeNet and Meridian. Half the chargers will be spread across Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin—
Hon Ginny Andersen: Is this just for your car?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —and half in the regions. Yes, well, unlike many other members, I actually do drive an electric vehicle last time I looked. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just a moment.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: New Zealand currently has over 1,800 public charge points. Combined with the investment we announced yesterday, the national total will be around 4,500. We’re well on our way to the target of 10,000 by 2030. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just a moment. Just about everybody having a view on that has got to stop. Once in a while, perhaps, but not continuously.
Mike Butterick: Why is this announcement important for Kiwi drivers?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Many New Zealanders have thought about buying an electric vehicle, even before the current fuel challenges, but research shows that the lack of public chargers is holding back many people from making the switch. Kiwis are already making the shift to electric vehicles, and they don’t need taxpayer subsidies in order to do so—
Tamatha Paul: Yes, they do—
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, they do! They do, she says. Tamatha Paul’s telling New Zealanders that they’re too stupid to work out that electricity being cheaper than petrol means that electric vehicles are a good option. If Tamatha Paul wants to say that taxpayers should subsidise wealthy people to buy Teslas, that’s fine. We won’t support that.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order.
Mike Butterick: Supplementary? [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Just a moment. There’s a question being asked—
Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Wait on. Hold on. All points of order are heard in silence.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Mr Speaker, if Government members are going to mischaracterise the statements of the Opposition, I would ask the leave of the House for an additional supplementary question to actually put to the Minister what it is that we were saying.
SPEAKER: Well, he’s not in a position to grant that, but if the member seeks leave, the House may consider it.
Chlöe Swarbrick: I seek leave of the House for an additional question for the Green Party.
Hon Members:No.
SPEAKER: Let’s just do this right, shall we? Everyone quiet, and we’ll do it properly. Seek leave.
Chlöe Swarbrick: I seek leave of the House for an additional question for the Green Party—
Hon Paul Goldsmith: No.
Chlöe Swarbrick: —of Aotearoa New Zealand.
SPEAKER: Right—who said no at that point? Who spoke?
Hon Paul Goldsmith: It was me.
Question time interrupted.
Withdrawal from Chamber
Hon Paul Goldsmith
SPEAKER (14:46): Well, then I’d have to ask the member to leave the House. I’m just trying to reasonably have order here.
Hon Paul Goldsmith withdrew from the Chamber.
Oral Questions to Ministers
Transport
Question No. 10
Question time resumed.
SPEAKER: We’ll have it again: one more time.
Chlöe Swarbrick: I seek leave of the House for an additional supplementary question for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.
SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection?
Hon Members:Yes.
Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: A point of order—and all points of order are heard in silence.
Hon David Seymour: Mr Speaker, can I kindly and humbly submit that the order of the House would be helped if certain members did not frequently use points of order to debate political points? [Interruption] That’s actually the problem.
SPEAKER: Thank you for that advice.
Mike Butterick: Supplementary?
SPEAKER: Last one.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa) (14:47): Why has the Government chosen concessionary loans to deliver these chargers?
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (14:47): Well, what used to happen, under the previous regime of Government support for electric vehicle (EV) chargers was they’d be simple grants delivered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Instead, we have taken an approach of concessionary loans to bring forward private investment by lowering the cost of capital. This is essentially akin to the Ultra-fast Broadband model that rolled out between 2008 and 2016. It is much better value for money for the taxpayer; it provides a long-term pipeline of EV chargers rather than one-off dollops of grant funding being invested; and it will help accelerate the already existing EV charging infrastructure being built around the country.
Economic Growth
Question No. 11
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (14:48) to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she stand by her statement that “every one of those choices comes with a price – and that price is paid by hard working Kiwis?”
Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister for Economic Growth) (14:48): Once again in answering a question from this member, I would wish to quote my full statement, which was from a recent speech to the New Zealand Economics Forum, and which said, “Others may argue for higher taxes and more spending. But every one of those choices comes with a price - and that price is paid by hard working Kiwis.” Since the member asked a primary question about a quote, I think I should make it very clear that I was talking about the policies of the Opposition.
Hon Ginny Andersen: Was it part of her economic plan for 70 percent of workers in New Zealand to receive a pay rise that failed to keep up with inflation just last year?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The Government’s plan is to grow the economy, to create more jobs, and to provide more opportunities for New Zealanders to have higher incomes. That includes our plans to fast track major developments and projects. It includes our plans to lift the literacy and numeracy achievement of young people so that they can get better jobs. It includes our plans to reduce regulation. It includes our Investment Boost tax policy to encourage investment and higher wage growth.
Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she continue to claim that her economic plan is working when her Government is failing to create the conditions for jobs, and those jobs that do exist are failing to keep up with the cost of living?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because our Government is resolutely focused on growing the economy, and the alternative prescription is clear: it is a set of policies advocated by that member, which would oppose fast-track developments and the thousands of jobs that they are creating; it is to oppose the Investment Boost tax credit, which Treasury says will aid investment and income growth; it is to oppose structured literacy and numeracy—
SPEAKER: Good. Just come to what the Government is doing.
Hon Ginny Andersen: When she says “that price is being paid by hard working Kiwis”, is she including pensioners, who are now skipping meals because they can’t afford to buy food?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In reference to my full quote, yes, absolutely, because it is the case that the income tax reductions that this Government delivered directly benefited superannnuitants, whose superannuation level is pegged to the after-tax average wage, and who therefore have had greater increases in their superannuation payment as a result of the tax relief package our Government delivered, which she opposed.
Hon Ginny Andersen: Are the workers at McCain vegetable processing factory, the latest closure in New Zealand, also paying the price for her economic plan?
Hon NICOLA WILLIS: No.
Prime Minister
Question No. 12
Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) (14:51) to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i ngā kōrero me ngā mahi katoa a tōna Kāwanatanga?
[Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions?]
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:51): Yes.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he agree with the International Energy Agency, who says, “Demand restraint is one of the emergency response measures all member countries are required to have ready as a contingency”, and, if so, can he name the options his Government is considering to make public transport more accessible, thereby reducing demand?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: In answer to the first part of the question, our National Fuel Plan, which we’ll talk to shortly, addresses those concerns, should there be a change in our fuel supply.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think that free public transport would mean there are more or less New Zealanders using public transport?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What I think is important is that we get relief and help to 143,000 families and households of working New Zealanders of low and moderate incomes as quickly as possible, and that’s what this Government is doing.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he think that reversing his Government’s cuts to school bus services would result in more or less children using the bus to go to school?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, as I’ve said to the member, the best way we can help support families who are doing it tough is to make sure that we give them direct relief through $50 a week, for 143,000 low and middle income New Zealanders. It’s up to them, then, to have that cash, to be able to deploy it as their household budget demands.
Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that officials have advised that broad, untargeted subsidies, like making public transport completely free, would not necessarily increase uptake and is not the most effective use of public transport money?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, I can. I guess this is the difference in approach between this Government and the previous Government: we believe in targeted, timely, temporary support for those who need it most, whilst also making sure that we manage our economy well so that we don’t run up huge amounts of inflation, interest rates, and debt and actually mortgage the future of our kids and grandkids.
Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would ask the Minister to table that advice for all of the House to be able to reflect up on it, given it was just brought into these questions.
SPEAKER: That’s right, but unless he’s got it right in front of him, he doesn’t have to table it. It has long been the rule.
Hon Marama Davidson: Does he accept that encouraging people to get on public transport with free fares would help people come into the office and travel into our cities and town centres, where they’ll spend money at local businesses and keep the economy going?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: As I’ve said to the member, we can’t repeat the mistakes of COVID. It’s very important we’ve got clear criteria and a lens by which we make supportive decisions for New Zealanders in need. That’s what we’ve done today with our package for low and middle income working New Zealanders.
Hon Marama Davidson: What does he think is more financially responsible: his Government’s plans to spend $56 billion on building roads; or providing free public transport, to the tune of $143 million, to lower household costs, reduce congestion, and save fuel for those who need it?
Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: What’s really important is not to run up $88 billion worth of new taxes and $44 billion in more borrowing, as is proposed by that member’s party.
SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions. Those members who have to leave should do so very quickly and quietly before I call on the honourable Vanushi Walters.
Debates
Iranian Attacks—Collective Statement
Urgent Debate
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (14:55): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House debate a matter of urgent importance, being the Government signing on to a collective statement with 29 other countries in condemning Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf and expressing deep concern about the escalating conflict.
I want to start by acknowledging the Iranian people and our Iranian community here in New Zealand, many of whom will be here in Parliament this evening to mark Nowruz. I want to acknowledge those in the region who are directly and personally impacted by the destruction that we’re seeing play out in the Middle East, and especially those who have lost family members. There are people at the end of every military decision, and we must not forget that.
I also want to acknowledge the impact the war is having on New Zealanders, as concern grows in relation to managing the cost of petrol, gas, diesel, and other commodities in the coming months. What is most appalling, is that we could have been better prepared to navigate this crisis. The Government could have supported an uptake in electric vehicles (EVs); they didn’t. The Government could have made significant investments in renewables; they didn’t. They could have ensured we have an increased diesel storage capacity; they chose to delay it.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Mr Speaker, you’ve granted an urgent debate on what you’ve deemed to be an urgent matter. The discussion, as begun by that member, is not related to this at all. It’s about other measures that have no connection with the status in the Middle East, and, frankly, should you report back to order, this debate should be stopped.
SPEAKER: Look, I was about to come to that. The member needs to stick fairly tightly within the bounds of the motion that’s been agreed today.
VANUSHI WALTERS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would first say, then, that we do condemn Iran’s attacks on commercial ships in the Gulf, but the Government have made a clear promise in this statement that puts New Zealand at risk in expressing New Zealand’s readiness to assist in opening the Strait of Hormuz. This promise is one that feeds expectation on the global stage, in the context of the most serious of events: a war.
The Prime Minister himself said yesterday that this was a decision made without discussion nor debate. It was also made without briefings to the Opposition, and it appears to have been made without advice about international law nor overreaching security and cost considerations. Much like the statement the Prime Minister made several weeks ago now, in terms of any action being justified in Iran, it appears that the Prime Minister is now trying to walk this statement back—just a little—but here’s the problem: the world has already taken note because the words of the statement are clear.
And if we look at US commentary, that’s what we’re hearing. With NATO Secretary Mark Rutte speaking about countries, including New Zealand, saying that countries are working, essentially, to implement Trump’s vision. That’s present tense. We’re now under a spectre of expectation. This is a further expression of the unprincipled, irresponsible, and unclear foreign policy we’ve seen expressed by the Government in recent months.
Now today, many across the world are feeling a sense of relief at the postponement of the threat that the US would attack Iranian energy facilities, resulting in potential acts of reprisal from Iran. We hope that this results in conversations toward peace and restoration of negotiations. However, we don’t know what will happen in four to five days or beyond.
The Government has now placed New Zealanders in a lose-lose situation. The expectation that we are working with the UN on the issues with the Strait carries with it serious implications for our potential complicity in breaches of international law, with the associated costs and risks of committing Defence personnel and Defence resources. A promise made on the global stage and then reneged on also has consequences. This clearly hasn’t been well-thought-through, if thought through at all.
In terms of the failure to consider international law, the war began with the US and Israel breaching the UN Charter. If the US wants New Zealand to support a mission where vessels are accompanied through the Strait without the consent of Iran, they will also need to put boots on the ground on the coast. The choke point is about 34 kilometres wide, so troops would need to eliminate drone and missile risks on land. In this scenario, it could be argued that a supporting force is complicit in continuing a breach of the UN Charter.
The second issue is that Trump’s expression of how the Strait could be secured includes potential breaches of international humanitarian law, with the bombing of civilian infrastructure—we risk being seen as complicit on that front. The risks to our Defence Force if placed within the region are very real. Neither this nor how much the expected presence would cost appear to have been considered.
Another concern is the risks attached to asymmetric warfare. Europol and others have warned of an increased terror threat since the attacks. We would expect that the Government have had a comprehensive assessment about the risks of joining this statement, and of following through with the commitment made to our national security and the security of New Zealanders across the world. That doesn’t appear to be the case.
So where to from here? Well, we note that the UN Secretary-General has suggested that they could be involved in negotiating some sort of brokered corridor, as they did in the Black Sea to allow the transport of grain in the context of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict. We hope that Trump’s announcement will mean a return to negotiations that involve the UN, and ultimately that this leads to peace as well as an Iranian regime that upholds human rights. But we can’t depend on that happening, and at a time when the Government should be focused on providing immediate support for New Zealanders, they have voluntarily placed us under a spectre of expectation.
The Government’s actions have been irresponsible, unprincipled, and do a disservice to New Zealand’s independent approach to foreign affairs.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs) (15:03): No wonder that member ran out of thoughts and there was two minutes and 56 seconds left to go before she called it quits. It reminds me of that famous line “I shot an arrow into the air; whither it landed I knew not where.” First of all, in breath one, she said our policy was clear, and, in breath two, she said it wasn’t clear. How on earth can the Labour Party think that that’s a spokesperson on a huge issue called foreign affairs? It is disastrous for New Zealand that someone could be the spokesperson on foreign affairs, such a critical matter, and has no idea what on earth is going on.
So let’s start dealing with the argument that the Government’s approach to this is wrong.
Hon Kieran McAnulty: If you can speak without mumbling!
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I beg your pardon? Oh, OK. Oh, this is the language specialist here from the Wairarapa. Ha, ha! He’s the expert on diction. The fact that he’s not even trained or educated properly or anything else but knows a bit about horse betting—it’s his only qualification—never stops him from saying something, though, does it? Did I stumble on any part there?
Hon Kieran McAnulty: I didn’t understand you, sorry.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Ah, very well done.
The point is that countless current academics and former leaders of the Labour Party and New Zealand ambassadors have all made their comments—amazing, isn’t it!—with no restraint whatsoever. They’ve never been briefed and have talked to no Foreign Minister from anywhere for the last 30 years, but there they go, blathering on, just like that member did then.
They lament that the New Zealand Government is not currently placing an emphasis on mindless moral posturing and vacuous virtue signalling and that we’re doing something wrong. I will say it very slowly for that man who is partially deaf: they lament that the New Zealand Government does not currently place an emphasis on mindless moral posturing and vacuous virtue signalling. You get that? We will never do that. Our focus is on dealing with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be, and on getting the best possible outcomes for New Zealanders.
We have been criticised for not taking a stronger position and also for being, and I quote, “US lapdogs”. This one we don’t quite understand, because, unlike Australia, New Zealand has not expressed explicit support for the US attacks on Iran. Instead, we acknowledged those US attacks and said we understood the reasons behind them, without ourselves endorsing them.
Now, I know that’s a subtle position to take, but if you’ve got any serious training in the law, words matter. We have been criticised for not delivering a swift and definitive legal ruling accepted by the whole world. Isn’t it amazing. Breathtaking arrogance over there. They think that all around the world, the 198 countries are watching what they’re going to say next, by opining once and for all as to whether we consider this action or other legal action in international law. We don’t quite understand how it helps New Zealanders to have their Government rush out an international legal conclusion on the conflict, but there we go. We will focus on the economic impacts of the war. The members opposite can focus on their puerile academic arguments, but that is one of the worst performances I have ever seen in foreign affairs in my short time in this House.
We have also had outright scaremongering from our critics, who said the Government is rushing to contribute military forces to this conflict. [Interruption] That is what that spokesperson said. Are you listening? What absolute crap. What absolute nonsense. New Zealand is not a party to this conflict, and we have absolutely no intention of joining it. At the same time, the whole world is affected by it, and the New Zealand Government is doing absolutely everything we can to protect and safeguard our citizens.
When it comes to the issue of trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, we have again been accused by the scaremongers that we’re about to get our military forces over there. What utter nonsense. I got stopped on the way here, on the tiles, by all these journalists and promptly informed by them, and I’m thinking, “What planet are these people on?” Now, I know how they were misinformed—because they said so. Here we go—we’ve been accused by the scaremongers of being about to get our military forces over there. What utter nonsense.
We want to see the Strait of Hormuz open. Over the weekend, New Zealand joined a statement with 21 other countries, emphasising the importance of getting ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz so that fuel and goods can be transported freely. Is that an innocent purpose?
Hon Judith Collins: Oh, I think it is.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, it is. How can it be distorted and perverted in the way that the Labour Party spokesperson on foreign affairs—for the time being—did today? Attacks on fuel tankers and energy structures in the Middle East are leading directly to higher fuel prices for Kiwis. We have for decades stood for the freedom of navigation, down though decades and decades, across both political parties—before a real party turned up, of course! We have for decades stood up for freedom of navigation in the Middle East and through the Indo-Pacific. We stand alongside international partners in supporting the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial shipping. We are committed to working with partners to try and address one of the consequences of this conflict, which has huge implications for us, our partners, and the global economy. That is not the same as saying we are definitely going to contribute. I say it slowly again: that is not the same as saying that New Zealand is definitely going to contribute.
If we receive a request or if an international coalition was established in the future to safeguard commercial shipping, any possible contribution will be a matter for—guess who!—the Cabinet, first of all, to determine, based on careful consideration of New Zealand’s interests. That’s what we intend to do. Pray tell me, what would you do? Could the next speaker get up and tell us what you’re going to do? All of you—all of you who are so expert—have never been engaged with, or never talked to, one Foreign Minister and know nothing about anything in the world, but think, unlike us, that you’re qualified. I have spoken to the Foreign Ministers of all those countries in the Middle East. They understand our position. One of them said to me, “You know, Mr Peters, this is all happening. Go figure.” I understand their frustration. To have people here say that they’re on their side is just alarming in the extreme. More generally, we want to see all parties to the conflict acting responsibly, with restraint, and moving toward a negotiated solution.
We hold grave concerns about the complex humanitarian consequences for the people in the affected countries. For example, attacks against civilian energy and water infrastructure is deeply troubling. Further intensification of this conflict would have severe, wide-ranging, and longstanding consequences, and international law must be upheld. That’s always been our position.
We have also been rightly focused on the direct impacts on New Zealanders in the region. We’ve had three—no, two—planes up there. We’ve had a whole lot of people up there. We’ve had 100 people working around the clock here, and guess what! We’ve moved them and bused them and did all sorts of things, but the two planes came back empty—that’s for the third time—frustrating though it is, but at least we were prepared and have done our best, just in case. We are the ones who said to them, “Get out and get out now.”, and we’re still saying it: “If things should go wrong, there could be a crisis we cannot help you with.” Our posts in the regional crisis response centre continue to support New Zealanders in the region seeking assistance. A response team is in the region to support this effort. It’s costing us a lot, but that’s the standard of performance that you can expect from the New Zealand civil service when they’re focused on their right job.
Now, a large proportion of New Zealand trade transits through, or originates from, the Middle East region. Trade negotiations and agreements mean New Zealand security and economic interests are increasingly linked to the Middle East, but it’s too early to assess the scale of the impacts.
I’m not going to use up my full time, because, frankly, I think I’ve made out the case—
Hon Phil Twyford: He’s run out of ideas.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, OK. Well, I’m going to fill it out, then.
Hon Phil Twyford: He’s run out of ideas.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no. I was going to mention our Pacific cousins, because we know that when it comes to transport and supply, they will be at the end of the chain line, even worse than us. We are trying to think of plans now even as we speak, if that should happen, for how we can possibly help. Unlike the other Governments in the past with no experience, we prepare for a rainy day—or, in this case, a disaster like this.
Hon Phil Twyford: Aren’t you off-topic?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Beg your pardon?
Hon Phil Twyford: Aren’t you off-topic?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, actually, the Pacific and its supply of energy as a consequence of the disaster is right on topic.
Hon Phil Twyford: You criticised our speaker for being off-topic; now you are.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no, no—no, no, no, no, she didn’t begin there. Now, I can say, look, if you’re the architect of a plan to build 100,000 homes and you build less than 1,000, then you’d talk that sort of trash, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I just want to say, Mr Twyford, in this situation, guess what’s important? It’s a thing called experience.
Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) (15:13): I get five minutes—OK.
I’m just sitting in here listening to insults and snaps and barbs being traded and personal insults being made; it always leaves out the actual human people’s realities who are at the centre of the violence of an illegal war, and those real lives and the harm on them is quickly forgotten in a tit-for-tat political debate. I abhor that.
Aotearoa has a longstanding pride and history in honouring the sanctity of life—and not just the sanctity of some lives but the sanctity of all life. So, yes, I acknowledge that this statement that has been put out by the Government to condemn in the strongest terms the recent attacks by Iran, absolutely, is heinous in what it has left out. How can we pretend to normalise not just the illegal attack by the US and Israel on Iran but the fact that we are going to normalise and tolerate powerful men playing war games and then not call that out and then try and normalise it as if it’s OK?
Even if the current Minister of Foreign Affairs is trying to say “Oh, no, no, we are just protecting our words and our language and being mindful”, actually, the impact of not calling that out is normalising war games being played by men in power and impacting and violating and creating chaos and destruction upon people who had absolutely no part in any of the decisions made.
The United States’ illegal and unprovoked war in Iran deserved a statement from the Prime Minister, just as we have seen a statement from the Prime Minister on the attack by Iran. We didn’t even get a statement, despite, for example, the 100 schoolgirls lost, civilians lost in targeting by the US. No statement whatsoever on those real lives—and there are so many more lives than just those who were lost to us.
The Greens absolutely will continue to be consistent in wanting us to at least be honest about whose lives are being honoured here and whose lives are being said to have value here. We posed to the Prime Minister some solutions that he could even take up—for example, a blanket extension to visas for all those whose lives have been impacted and who have people here in Aotearoa experiencing that fear and insecurity right now. There was no leadership to take up that offer. In fact, he has had to correct himself at least twice because he doesn’t even know what his own ministries are doing to provide some practical support to the very people who are living under stress and fear right now.
I do deplore the lack of leadership that has not given the same sort of attention that this statement gives to the attacks by Iran—that’s a quote. This statement is giving attention to only one lot of attacks, and it ignores the fact that the original sin of the illegal and unprovoked war was actually caused by the US and by Israel. That has been clearly put by independent scholars in foreign and international and human rights law across the world. Mr President in the USA has even had his own war table members resign because they themselves know that this decision was made unilaterally—there was no provocation; there was no chat with the UN Security Council even—and that it would only lead to further destruction and chaos.
We are clear and put our line on the table—please, Mr Prime Minister, offer up some actual leadership, and offer a statement condemning also the illegal and unprovoked attacks.
Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (15:18): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to participate in this debate. I’d like to talk about the way that people are being affected at home by this conflict, but I want to first respond to some of the amoral tripe that I’ve heard from the other side of the House.
Some people are so blinded by their hatred of Israel, and perhaps the type of people that live there, and their hatred of America that they can’t see the moral dimension of this conflict. They can’t seem to see that the Irani regime is the most evil around in the world today. Mahsa Amini may be the most famous victim of the regime, but she is far from the only woman to suffer at their hands. This is a regime that was machine-gunning its own people by the tens of thousands just a few weeks ago. It is a regime that has carried out acts of terror as close to home as on the soil of our only ally Australia. Yet we get this moral equivalency between that regime and America and Israel.
What is their answer? To leave them alone, to wait until they have nuclear weapons, to wait until they’ve oppressed more of their own people, and to wait until they achieve their stated aim of a second Holocaust in Israel. Is that their answer, as they stand in Geneva and O’Rourke, and talk so nicely about international law and the protections that apparently it offers even to the most evil dictators on the planet. That is not the real world, but it is a world that we’ve lived in many times before.
There were people about 80 years ago who said that maybe Mr Hitler could be worked with and seen sense with—if only we could keep the economy preserved during that time. There were people who thought that the Soviet Union just had a slightly different system of economics and politics—actually, there’s some people over there who still think that way—and maybe we could work with them until Ronald Reagan came along and gave them a name, the evil empire. Even today, there are people, sadly—and I see one of them is in this House—who think that Mr Putin’s really quite a nice bloke, if only he wasn’t provoked by that nasty NATO, aka our allies.
There is a moral clarity missing from this debate. There is a lack of understanding of how evil this regime is that prevents people from looking at it in the most reasonable terms. We should, of course, want a de-escalation of the conflict. We should of course want a resumption of trade through the Strait of Hormuz. We should of course be prepared to stand with our allies, as we always have as a country, to help ensure that that de-escalation and return to trade happens as swiftly as possible, because New Zealanders are hurting.
I say to the people on the other side that they can’t have it both ways. They want to complain about the suffering that New Zealanders are facing, but they don’t want to do anything about it. I mean, as for Christopher “Bambi” Hipkins, who I now call “No-eye deer”, who said he literally has no idea what should be done about it, well, this Government does. We are taking action on the domestic front and going abroad to build our relationships with our friends around the world. We are prepared if it is safe and necessary, and the Government agrees to play our part in ensuring that that de-escalation to trade occurs.
The difference with this side of the House is that we do it with a moral clarity that would never allow us to somehow compare the situation in the Middle East today with the situation in Ukraine. To somehow believe that President Zelenskyy, a democratically elected person celebrated by his nation is somehow the same as the Ayatollah, whom no one will mourn—nor his son. We are taking a balanced and sensible approach as a Government, but we know exactly what is good and what is evil in this world, and we’re not afraid to say it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence) (15:23): Well thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, you’ve granted a debate today in relation to the joint statement from leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Denmark, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Romania, Bahrain, Lithuania, Australia, UAE, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Panama, and North Macedonia in relation to the Strait of Hormuz. This is in relation to the blocking of the strait to commercial shipping and the attacks on commercial vessels—unarmed commercial vessels—in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces. There are mines now in the strait.
This is not something that will just disappear, because, as I heard one member say before, we should hope that the Iranian regime will become committed to human rights. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Really? Well, hopefully there will be, at some stage, some leaders of Iran who will be committed to human rights, but I’m not feeling that vibe at the moment—47 years of oppression of its own people, 30,000 Iranians who happened to wish to protest their Government murdered in January this year, and there’s not a peep from the human rights proponents on the other side.
We hear the message, “Let’s commit to international law.” Well, I give you, then, international law on the law of the sea and the rights for this country and other countries to be able to have commercial shipping, and we call on Iran to comply with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2817. This country might be extremely important in the world—it might be—but my take is that we are a good country known for taking principled stances. One of those is that New Zealand must be able to get the benefit of the oil coming through those straits.
I also think it is important for us not to go around picking fights we don’t actually have to, because I can tell those members on the other side who has to fight those fights; it’s actually our Defence Force. Frankly, I’m not putting them forward if we don’t have to do something, because it’s their lives while people on the other side are talking from their very, very excited position of holier than thou—how dare they say our people are going there.
By the way, if the member from the Labour Party Vanushi Walters, who’s actually a very pleasant person, by the way, I quite like her—when she doesn’t even pronounce Mark Rutte’s name correctly. For goodness’ sake, get these things right. If you’re going to start quoting the secretary-general of NATO, for goodness’ sake, give the man his name, don’t just make it up, and then say he said we’re doing all this. What we’re doing is we’ve signed a statement saying we want freedom of navigation. We have not been asked to provide anything. If we were to provide anything, what would you like me to do? Would you like me to find some stealth bombers? I don’t have any of those. How about an aircraft carrier? We don’t have any of those. We don’t have any of those sorts of things, but we do have some very well-qualified people involved in demining. That might be at the right time, at the right place, and at the right request—who knows. It also depends: is it in New Zealand’s best interest? These are always decisions for Cabinet.
Let’s just get real here. No one’s hanging around, waiting for New Zealand to say, “Oh, yeah, we’ll send our stealth bombers, our aircraft carriers, our submarines, our—what else? What would you like us to send?” We finally got the second frigate on the water a week ago. We haven’t had two frigates on the water since 2019, although someone then said to me from defence—I think it was probably 2017—“Minister—oh God.” Come on, team! We haven’t got that, but we do have to get these straits open, as we and many other countries are right to do so. I don’t really see that the world is shivering in its boots by New Zealand joining with Trinidad and Tobago to say, “Actually we want the oil through.”
RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (15:28): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I find it intriguing, listening to some of the kōrero today and the absolute disregard for the lives of people that have been lost in this illegal invasion in Iran. We’ve just heard from the Minister of Defence, Judith Collins, talking about whether we could send people over there. We can’t even send anybody over there; we’ve got a naval frigate underneath the ocean at the moment in the Pacific that needs to be dealt with. We had one of the speakers today talk about the most evil regime in Iran. Those of you that would have read The Lancet scientific journal would know that it reported that USA sanctions on other countries between 1971 and 2021 have murdered over 38 million people. Let that sink in—38 million people. Over 1,500 people have been killed by the USA in Israel’s illegal bombing campaign on Iran and almost 20,000 have been injured.
The victims’ ages range from eight months to 88 years old. Two hundred women are amongst those killed; 168 children were killed in a girls’ elementary school in Minab; 55 health workers were wounded and 11 killed, including four physicians, two nurses, and three emergency workers.
This is who our country supports. This particular letter reminds me of a rugby game. You get punched in the face, and then you retaliate. Who gets the yellow card? The guy who retaliated. Who gets the red card? The guy who retaliated. That’s the situation we’re in at the moment with this conflict. If you go and illegally invade a country, they then retaliate, then we condemn them. We condemn them for retaliating. We condemn them for closing off the Strait of Hormuz because we’re going to lose our access to their crude oil.
This is hypocrisy. I didn’t call anybody a hypocrite, Mr Speaker, but this is hypocrisy. These strikes have had a huge human toll, and this is not something we should gloss over. Where was the letter of condemnation? Where was the statement of condemnation from Aotearoa when the United States and Israel started this illegal invasion by killing thousands? We all know that this illegal invasion has directly led to fuel prices reaching over $4 in some parts of Aotearoa, yet the Prime Minister has refused to condemn the aggressors in this conflict. Instead, our Government signed a letter condemning Iran for retaliating. Where is the consistency from this Government? You cannot condemn one without the other. I quote from today: “Operation Epic Fury and its resulting fallout is hurting Kiwis”. This is what Nicola Willis said today at 12.30 p.m. when the Government announced its support package that ignores millions of New Zealanders—“Operation Epic Fury and its resulting fallout is hurting Kiwis”.
If you are admitting to knowing the impact that it is having on our country without condemning those who started this illegal invasion in the first place—knowing that it’s hurting this country—I find it absolutely appalling. I find it absolutely appalling. She knows the root cause of the problem; it’s Operation Epic Fury. She has already admitted that it’s Operation Epic Fury—the joint military action undertaken by the United States and Israel. You heard Trump boasting about the name “Epic Fury”. He said it’s a good name, a wonderful name, that the USA have chosen. It is a wonderful name that has killed 200 women, 168 children, and 58 healthcare workers. This conflict is hurting all people in Aotearoa, especially those who have the least.
The final statement I will make is: when will the Prime Minister condemn the illegal invasion of USA and Israel in Iran? Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (15:33): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Let’s listen to what the statement that the New Zealand Government signed up to actually says. In paragraph 6, it says: “We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.” Now, in the course of this debate, the Foreign Minister and the defence Minister have made a great joke out of the idea that New Zealand might deploy our New Zealand Defence Force personnel or defence assets, aircraft, or naval vessels to the Strait of Hormuz, as if that was the most ridiculous thing. I say to this House that, in light of the words that this Government has signed up to in the joint statement, it is a fair question to ask. Will you rule out sending New Zealand personnel and New Zealand defence assets to the Strait of Hormuz?
Yes, it might be one thing to say we’re not going to be active participants in this war, but if you send New Zealanders to the Strait of Hormuz, that’s a live firing zone right now. Israel, Iran, and the US are fighting over the Strait of Hormuz. If this Government sends New Zealanders there, you will inevitably be seen as belligerents in the war, and New Zealanders, both there in the Gulf and anywhere else around the world, will become targets, and the inevitable legacy of this United States - Israel war against Iran, which will be generations of extremism and anti-Western terrorism, will be directed at New Zealanders. That’s what is at stake here.
There is a way to clear the Strait of Hormuz and get the oil flowing again, and it’s very simple. It’s stop the war; stop the war. Now, if you listen to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, you wouldn’t even know that the war is a clear breach of international law. It’s an act of aggression. There’s no question that it’s self-defence. There was no imminent attack on the United States or Israel. It is a breach of the UN Charter. But this Government’s position is so unbalanced it’s in danger of falling over. It criticises Iran at every turn, but not a murmur of this illegal war of aggression by the United States and Israel. It is absolutely unbalanced.
This from the Prime Minister, whose favourite mantra in foreign policy is the international rules-based order, a phrase that when uttered by this Government completely lacks any credibility. After denying Israel’s genocide for 2½ years in Gaza, after keeping silent when the United States bombed Caracas and kidnapped the Venezuelan head of State, and now tacitly supporting a war by Israel and the US against Iran, which is a clear breach of the UN Charter. The tragedy for New Zealand is that it’s a small country. We absolutely rely on international law and multilateral institutions. This war is taking the world to a very dangerous place, a place where might is right and the world is run by a group of authoritarian strongmen and whoever has the most guns and the most nuclear weapons.
It would be a mistake to say that this Government has an unprincipled foreign policy. There is a principle. The principle is this: don’t say anything that might attract a late night tweet from the White House. New Zealand’s once proud, independent foreign policy has under this Government—and remember that under Labour’s Helen Clark, New Zealand stayed out of the United States and the UK and Australia’s disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003—been reduced to abject servility to the Trump White House under this Government. On the greatest issue of the day, this Government’s policy is see no evil, hear no evil, but they want to retain the option to go to Cabinet and consider sending New Zealand defence personnel and New Zealand defence assets to clear the Strait of Hormuz, if they receive an invitation from the United States. There is another way: stop the war.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato) (15:39): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I want to, first of all, acknowledge the Iranian people. I think it’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment with some of the commentary that’s been coming from the other side of the House, but the Iranian people have been having a terrible time. Of course, any family in a conflict zone is in a horrific place, but, of course, the brutal regime that they have had to survive under for some decades is terrible as well.
Now, this statement that we are debating today is a measured and wholly appropriate response, despite the rhetoric that we have heard from the other side. It’s endorsed and cosigned by many countries that we would typically have strong and close partnerships with—the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Canada, Japan. They’ve all signed on because they also understand the importance of the international rules-based system. The previous speaker, the Hon Phil Twyford, seemed to suggest that we were not in adherence with that. Indeed, that is exactly what this statement does, and I will read the first sentence: “We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces.”
That is very clearly about freedom of navigation, one of the most fundamental principles of international law and quite clearly outlined through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. That is something that New Zealand has stood in strong support of over many, many years and in many parts of the world. That’s why we sent a vessel up through the Taiwan Strait as well. That’s why we contribute to global efforts and military exercises. This is all part of upholding international law. The previous speaker suggests that’s not important, perhaps, but indeed this statement is vital. Frankly, it’s concerning to me that we have parties in this House that don’t seem to see the importance of upholding that basic principle.
These aren’t military vessels looking to transit through that strait; they’re civilian. They’re commercial vessels taking fuel, oil, and products around the world. That’s vitally important for countries all around the world and, indeed, for New Zealand as well. Of course, one of the most fundamental responsibilities of any Government is to protect the interests of its citizens. That is exactly why this Government has signed the statement alongside those cosignatories. We want to ensure that New Zealanders and New Zealand interests are maintained and upheld through these challenging times.
Mr Twyford also mentioned, or seemed to suggest, that we were imminently deploying troops to the region, and of course that is not the case. The statement does mention that we express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage. Again, that is entirely appropriate, and on this side, we will not shirk our responsibility. Should there be the need for our defence personnel to act on behalf of the Government to uphold the interests of New Zealanders, we will consider that through the appropriate mechanisms, and the Foreign Minister mentioned that in his contribution, as well.
Alongside that, of course, there are other steps that we are taking, not just in that region but back home, and we’ve heard about that over the last couple of days from the Prime Minister and the finance Minister, in terms of the challenges we’re facing with the cost of fuel prices here in New Zealand and the responses that this Government has put in place to help ensure that we can navigate through those challenging times.
I think it is really important just to highlight that this is a challenging situation on the global stage. Words matter, and we need to dial it back a notch from some of the rhetoric that we’ve heard on the other side of the House. This is a really important situation for us to navigate delicately, and as a small country that does rely very strongly on stability in the international rules-based system, we must continue to stand up and advocate for these sorts of situations to help enable civilian passage freely through areas like the Strait of Hormuz.
This is vital for our interests, as I’ve said, and it’s not just in terms of fuel there; it’s the broader signals that it sends around the world. We have to constantly do this. We rely heavily on that as a small nation. We cannot and will not shirk our responsibility. That’s why this Government has made that statement clear, in support of where we think we need to be, and we will continue to advocate for New Zealand’s interests.
Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (15:44): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. This is a very important issue, and New Zealand, as has been said, has a proud and long tradition of taking a careful and principled approach to questions of foreign affairs. Vanushi Walters laid out very clearly the Labour Party’s position on this issue, and at its heart is that it should be consistent with the principles of international law.
What we’ve seen from the Government and from the Minister of Foreign Affairs today is an incoherent and rambling knee-jerk approach. They are making it up as they go along. The statement, which was clearly hurriedly put together, is itself internally inconsistent. We see in its last paragraph that it talks about upholding the principles of international law and freedom of navigation, but in the immediately preceding paragraph it says—and these are the words that the New Zealand Government is stating—“We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait [of Hormuz]”. Now, what is the mandate for that? If we supply military assets or personnel, we will be engaging in a military action on the shores of Iran without a United Nations mandate to do so.
What is more, that paragraph continues and says, “We welcome the commitments of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.” Are we one of those nations? I don’t know, but it horrifies me that we may be planning to send military assets and people into that zone without an international mandate. Let’s be clear that this would be an escalation. It’s the opposite of what we want to see in this conflict zone. We want to see a de-escalation. Why was this crisis caused? Why has it reached the point it has when the parties who are now in conflict were, at the time, at the negotiating table? People around the table said a deal was imminent before the United States pre-emptively—not even pre-emptively, because there was no prospect of an attack. They chose to attack Iran.
Now, I agree with much of what has been said on the other side: the Iranian regime is a despicable regime that has an atrocious human rights record. We rightly recognise the people of Iran, both resident in Iran and the communities in New Zealand and around the world, and the suffering that they and their families have as they come to their annual celebration of Nowruz. At the same time, we’ve got a Government that is not proceeding on the basis of principle. It doesn’t have a direction. The Prime Minister himself said any action is justified—that was his first substantive statement—and it was palpably false. It was wrong, and he had to roll it back because he didn’t know what he was talking about. Even the Minister of Foreign Affairs, if I recall rightly, said, “He should have spoken to me first.”
The Government itself is not at one on this issue. We have a Minister of Foreign Affairs who, rather than engaging constructively with the spokesperson of the Opposition on what a consistent approach could be across Government, should it change, chooses to hurl insults across the House. That is the quality of his argument, and I was proud Vanushi Walters, who laid down carefully and clearly a principled base that said, “The first thing we need to start with is that want a rules-based order, and anything we say should be consistent with that and consistent with the adherence to international law and the principle of non-aggression.” What we have is a war that was caused by American aggression. If we are sending our people to support the United States, even if it’s for safe passage, we are supporting aggression.
The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.
Bills
Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill
First Reading
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs) (15:49): on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a first time.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill
Legislative Statement
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue) (15:50): I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill.
SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. Leave is given. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Second Reading
Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Revenue) (15:51): I move, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill be now read a second time.
Well, we all know that tax plays a vital role in the smooth running of our society. We pay tax because we continue to enjoy having a good health system, law and order, education, and, of course, roads that we rely on every day. The Government is focused on ensuring the tax system supports our core priorities as a nation: attracting and retaining talent and capital, reducing costs on households and businesses, and, of course, growing our economy so that New Zealanders can get ahead. That is why this bill is important. It makes tax collection simpler and as straightforward as possible. When rules are easier to understand, people spend less time and money on compliance and that means that we raise the revenue we need to continue providing the services we require as a country.
This bill also plays an important role in growing our economy. To be specific, it helps improve the talent pool for business recruitment by proposing rules to make New Zealand a more attractive place for people wishing to visit and stay longer, and for people wishing to migrate or return back to New Zealand. More visitors mean more spending at local shops, restaurants, tourism operators, and, of course, across our regional economies.
The bill, as reported back from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, contains a range of adjustments as a result of public feedback. I’d like to briefly bring your attention to some of the changes that have been made to three areas that I mentioned earlier. The committee recommended several changes to make sure that New Zealand’s tax rules don’t discourage visitors from staying longer or spending more while they are here. Public feedback showed that the current rule, which requires visitors to be a tax resident in a country with a tax system similar to New Zealand’s, was too narrow. People suggested it could be broadened, and now the bill proposes to allow visitors to qualify as long as they are liable for tax in another country based on their citizenship. This is just one of the examples of the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s recommended improvements. Overall, the changes are designed to remove unnecessary tax barriers so that visitors can more easily spend extended time in New Zealand.
The measures in the bill aim to make New Zealand a more attractive destination for talent. Skilled people bring new ideas, they start businesses, and they help to fill shortages in areas where we need them. But there are some migrants who face complicated tax rules when they arrive. This bill makes our foreign investment fund rules less of a hurdle. Submitters made the point that for people who are subject to concurrent taxation between New Zealand and another jurisdiction, it would be best if the taxation were more aligned between those two jurisdictions. By aligning our rules with those overseas, we reduce confusion and, importantly, reduce compliance costs.
Other amendments in the bill, such as allowing certain losses to be offset, dividend income, and smoothing the transition into new rules, will make it easier for people to settle here and to contribute to our economy.
Finally, we are also proposing changes to the employee share scheme. Employee share schemes are used by smaller companies, including technology start-ups, to give them more of an edge when competing with larger, better-resourced companies. Submitters pointed out during the committee stage various events that could trigger a tax obligation without gaining the means to satisfy their resulting tax liability. In other words, that they could end up owing tax without having the means to meet that liability. To address this, the bill now proposes that employees that have a liquidity event, but who have not acquired a liquid asset, would be able to continue to defer tax until the next qualifying liquidity event. The bill also proposes that dividends will not be considered as a liquidity event. These changes make share schemes more workable and, importantly, fair, helping innovative businesses grow and compete.
Alongside these changes, the bill includes a number of smaller improvements suggested by officials in response to issues raised by third parties. All of these changes help ensure that the tax system works better for the people who interact with it every day.
I want to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their diligent work on considering submissions on this bill. I’d also like to thank policy officials from the Inland Revenue, and the bill drafters for their work bringing this bill to its second reading. I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour) (15:57): This bill, like all tax bills, is an interesting bill. I want to draw the House’s attention to some issues that I think we need to discuss in the context of this bill.
The first one that we need to discuss is what the bill starts out with: its title. It sets the annual rates for 2025 and 2026. There’s an important constitutional aspect to this: this bill must be passed and must become law by 31 March; otherwise, the Government, the Parliament, cannot ask for taxation and that means the Government cannot run. So there’s a very important constitutional aspect to this bill. Of course, when it comes to the committee of the whole House, there is quite a significant debate on the annual rates of the bill.
The bill also has, again, as it says on the tin, several compliant simplification measures on it, but I do start to question the word “simplification” there. I know that these measures are well-meant, well-intended, that they address issues that need to be addressed, but whether it’s a simplification, is a different measure indeed.
Let me just pick up one that the Minister himself just talked about just now: that was the foreign investment fund rules. Now, they’re pretty complicated rules, whereby, if people living in New Zealand own shares or investment in foreign countries, then in some circumstances, instead of paying income tax based on when shares are bought and sold, and so on, or when investments are bought and sold—so doing it on what we call a “realised base”, because you’ve actually realised what the investment is—that income, instead, is charged on a deemed basis. At the start of the year, the person’s investments are valued, the equivalent of 5 percent of that value is deemed to be income, and they’re taxed on that deemed value. Now, the difficulty with that, of course, is that people end up paying income tax when they haven’t actually received any money, and it created particular problems on a cash-flow basis, but also problems, particularly for New Zealand tax residents who were also American citizens, because, of course, American citizens are taxed on citizenship not based on where they live. There were some particular complications between the FIF (foreign investment fund), as we call them, and the American tax rules, which created real difficulties for taxpayers. Now, in order to get around it, this bill has introduced the revenue account method. It’s a different way of accounting for overseas income. It’s based on actual realised values. This is a good thing: it is trying to provide an alternative method of calculating tax that is fair and reasonable. Whether or not we’d call that a simplification is a different matter.
I want to commend the work that has been done by Inland Revenue, by the Minister, and by the select committee on the rules around digital nomads, people who are somewhat temporarily resident and working from New Zealand. The tax rules, as they are written, would mean that sometimes those people get caught up in the New Zealand tax rules when the financial reality of what they’re doing is they just happen to be working here while they’re getting their income from overseas and returning income overseas. They are digital nomads because, these days, we can work from a distance, so we needed a sensible method of dealing with that.
Again, I think, as a select committee, we’ve done some good work there and, in particular, worked out that, in some cases, that citizenship rule that I just referred to—the FIF rules—comes into play again, where if someone is taxed on the basis of citizenship, we need to allow for that within the digital nomad rules as well. It was a good change that came through from the select committee.
Another really nice little piece of law in this particular bill is around the sale of excess electricity—as we should all be trying to do because we so need to move to energy independence. We are looking to try to get more solar installations on roofs, and where people have a solar installation, often they can generate excess electricity which can be sold back to the grid. Now, technically, that should incur income tax, but that gets very complicated for someone who’s just a wage and salary earner and, now, is earning maybe a little bit of money back from selling electricity to the grid. In this particular amendment, that sale of excess electricity is deemed not to be income. Now, that means that the person can’t claim tax deductions either, but it just seems to be a fairly simple way of dealing with what is an increasingly common situation. It just gives a sensible little amendment there.
I note that the select committee has put in a rule change saying that the person who gets the exemption—who is selling the electricity back and getting the income for it and therefore gets the exemption—must actually be resident in the property. This is interesting because, from the point of view of us on the side of the House and others, I think we saw it as a way to ensure that a tenant, rather than a landlord, would get the benefit of that excess electricity being sold back to the grid, because the tenant is the person who uses less electricity in the first place. Officials seem to see it as just a sensible measure around complications around deductions—whatever; I think we’ve got the right outcome here.
I’ve spoken really about the things that we support and that we agree with. At this stage, the Labour Party continues to oppose this bill, and the reason is around the sharing of information. Now, on the one hand, in this bill, the Government has repealed a particular section 17GB, which enabled Inland Revenue to collect information for the purposes of making tax policy. A number of people objected to that rule. They felt it allowed Inland Revenue to go digging around in their affairs. Perhaps that might have been the case, but I suggest that the solution then was stronger guard rails around the rule rather than removing it altogether. We oppose that change.
There were a number of rules in the Tax Act which are now being taken out as to what information should be collected about trusts. There’s a huge number of trusts in this country and people use them, in many cases, quite legitimately for protecting assets and so on and, in particular, for protecting vulnerable people, but there are also many, many instances where, frankly, trusts are used for tax planning purposes. Again, it might be quite legitimate as to what is being done with them, but it was very hard to track it and gathering information about trusts enabled what was going on in trusts to be tracked much more accurately. Now, the Minister and, I think, officials, have assured us that the commissioner still has the power to collect that information—maybe; the commissioner might test that—but it’s a shame to take those rules out, because they provided surety for the commissioner. So two bits of information—and, of course, taking those rules away tends more to protect those who can afford to use trusts in the first place.
There’s a second set of rules which, instead of preventing Inland Revenue from collecting information, are a set of rules that enable Inland Revenue to collect information and then share it with a whole set of other Government agencies. There’s a huge set of privacy implications there, a huge set of worries about tax information that might get disclosed to other agencies—other agencies like social welfare, like health, and like the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, which, for goodness’ sake, is listed in amongst the people where disclosure may be there. What this means is that your tax information—and your tax information and your tax information [Member points at other members], instead of being held very carefully by Inland Revenue, could be spread who knows where. Inland Revenue officials have a really strong commitment to keeping taxpayer information secret. It is not clear at all that that extends to other agencies. This is a dangerous measure. And who does it go against? Well, it goes mostly against poor people. So, we oppose the bill for these reasons.
Now we’ve been given notice, today of course, that there is an Amendment Paper coming that will put in place a measure to help families, in particular, during this time when fuel prices are very high due to the war in Iran and the bombing of all sorts of oil facilities and the flow-on effect to us, New Zealand. We obviously don’t know about that officially—it hasn’t been tabled yet, but if that Amendment Paper is tabled tomorrow and if it does what it says on the package, then likely we will change our position to support this bill because we want to see families getting that relief. But, in the meantime, the Labour Party opposes this bill.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:07): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The question I think most New Zealanders might want to reflect on is, do they think our current tax system is fair or could it be better? What’s contained in this legislation is mostly a bunch of tweaks, some harmless, some slightly good, like the one around not taxing income from people sharing electricity generated from their home solar panels—that’s fine—and then contained in this legislation, there’s a couple of changes, including the repeal of section 17GB, and some other changes to tax rules that were overwhelmingly opposed by the submitters. This is really notable because if you go through the departmental report, you’d see that there’s a lot of different issues but there’s one issue in particular that had 202 submissions opposed the repeal of section 17GB.
Most of the people who submitted on that are people like St Peter’s on Willis Social Justice—you know, they’re churches, they’re Quakers, they’re Tax Justice Aotearoa; there’s a number of individuals; there’s tax experts. All of them are saying that this was a perfectly sensible and reasonable thing to exist in our tax law and the reason this Government is repealing it is because they want to make it easier for the very, very ultra wealthy in our country to hide their wealth and for most New Zealanders to not have any idea of how totally unjust our current tax system is. The work on high-net-worth individuals demonstrated that.
It is a total joke that members in the coalition parties that form this Government—in Luxon’s Government—claim to be for equality of opportunity when they are all about defending the privilege of a few with an unfair tax system. This is to the point where not only are they not going to move on taxing capital gains—which was also a submission that we heard from a number of people suggesting that we should introduce a capital gains tax—but the IRD will not even be able to, in a transparent way, collect information that would help us understand the effective tax rates of those with exorbitant amounts of wealth relative to the 2 million New Zealanders, many of whom are working in precarious jobs, minimum wage or relatively low wages, like the workers who had their pay equity settlements unceremoniously cancelled by this Government last year: nurses, teachers, midwives, cleaners, firefighters. You know, all those people are paying higher effective tax rates than the extremely wealthy people in our society, and that is by design. The coalition Government, the Luxon Government, with Winston Peters and David Seymour, is all about the protecting the status quo. They’re about protecting the inequality of wealth, and then they claim that the Government has no ability to invest to support people in times of difficulty, like right now when we’re facing this fuel crisis. They are just saying there’s this very limited ability for the Government to act in a way that could shield people from higher fuel prices and there’s going to be consequential rises in prices right across the board because of this fuel crisis.
So the Green Party is not supporting the bill, and I really wanted to quote from some of the submissions that we heard, like from Tax Justice Aotearoa—really well informed submissions that explain why it was necessary to insert section 17GB: “because the general information collecting power under s. 17B was not sufficient to enable the breadth and depth of the information required for the High Net Worth Individuals Research Project.”
In 2018, the Tax Working Group noted a concern that there was not enough information about the tax system, and that it compares poorly in that regard with other tax systems, including Australia’s. We know that other countries—like New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, especially the United States—are suffering from this increasing concentration of wealth and increasing inequality. Once we get that sort of concentration of wealth, extremely rich people have nothing else to do with their extra money other than buy up assets, which then makes them less affordable to ordinary working New Zealanders. It wasn’t so many generations ago that a teacher or a firefighter could support a family on their income and buy a home, and yet now that is totally out of reach for most people in that situation, while we have a tiny percentage of extremely wealthy people—wealthy enough to buy elections, in fact—who are able to buy up lots of assets, many, many houses and homes, and then they can collect that passive income, which further entrenches their wealth. Unless we address the systemic inequality, working people will get poor. Their quality of life will diminish. Living standards are declining, and that is a consequence of inequality of wealth.
Not only is this Government unwilling to take action to rectify that and make it fair—as the Green Party has proposed as long as we’ve been in this Parliament—through things like a capital gains tax and a wealth tax, they’re even removing the provision that allows the Inland Revenue Department to collect the information that is needed to fully understand rates of taxation, effective tax rates, and to understand that concentration of wealth and how people in that situation avoid paying tax legally because our tax system is not addressing that income from wealth.
I congratulate the many informed and kind and values-driven submissions that we heard from hundreds of people, and from those who submitted written submissions, particularly the 202 submissions opposing the repeal of section 17GB. Of course, my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell mentioned the same with transparency around trusts, because, while there may be many legitimate reasons for using trusts, the reality is that the existence of trusts means that we have less transparency, less information, and it’s easier for the wealthy to avoid taxation by using trusts. If we want to address inequality in our economy, then we have to have more transparency and more information.
The provisions in this bill not only repeal section 17GB and reduce the amount of information the Commissioner of Inland Revenue can correct; there’s also a range of provisions around trust disclosures, in clauses 95(27), 136(3), 152, 153, 156, 157, 167, 188, 189, 190, and 191.
There was also a large number of submissions—35—opposed to the repeal of the legislative provisions for trust disclosures. So, overwhelmingly, from the submissions, there were many, many more that opposed the repeal of these provisions that allow for greater transparency, and therefore the hope of a fairer tax system one day being able to be implemented here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and there was a very small number of people who supported the repeal of these. No one will be surprised about what type of organisations and people are supporting the Government’s changes to ensure that the very wealthiest New Zealanders can hide their assets and hide their wealth and we can never design a tax system that would address the inequality that exists.
So there are a few minor changes that we could support. I note that the Hon Deborah Russell mentioned that she suspects—we don’t know for sure—that the Government will be trying to implement their very, very limited and inadequate policy to try to help a small percentage of New Zealanders with rising fuel costs through an Amendment Paper to this bill, which would extend the in-work tax credit for certain people with children. Of course, the Green Party has already put out a response to that: yesterday, the co-leaders, Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick, wrote to Prime Minister Luxon and offered our support for a package that would actually address the issues that New Zealanders are facing with higher fuel costs.
Of course it would be better if successive Governments had taken on board the proposals we had to make the energy system, and the transport system in particular, less reliant on fossil fuels because they are imported. The fossil fuels we use in our cars and trucks are and always have been powered by imported oil. It has never been the case that we produced oil in New Zealand that would be used in cars and trucks, and we never will. So that’s just not a reality. I know that some of the Ministers in the Government want to claim that somehow that was a possibility; it’s never been a possibility—people can check their facts. We could make public transport free, we could make public transport much more reliable, and we could have sensible speeds and the ability for kids to walk and cycle to school.
Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (16:17): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill—that’s a mouthful.
This is a pragmatic piece of legislation that fixes technical glitches while clearing the path for Kiwis to come home—we quite like that. This bill is important because it modernises our tax system to reflect the 21st century world where digital nomads and remote workers are a reality, and where tax laws shouldn’t act as a bureaucratic maze for returning New Zealanders. It introduces a revenue account method—otherwise known as RAM—to lower the barriers for our people living abroad who want to bring their skills and their investments back to our shores without being unfairly penalised by the foreign investment fund regime—otherwise known as the FIF regime.
This bill is a direct expression of New Zealand First’s principle around open, accountable government with less government overreach. I’m just going to go on a little bit of an aside from here. I want to thank the honourable member from the Labour Party who clarified the amendments around energy self-sufficiency. We wholeheartedly agree and we welcome this change. However, on section 17GB, let me come back to that a little later.
I remember with some mirth and a touch of irony the glee with which one member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee relished the prospect of taxing rich people and looking into their affairs in depth—in depth. You see, when you’re a Labour tax hammer, everything looks like a nail—“We want to hammer it all down.” Their first and primary instinct is to tax higher to raise revenue—that’s it; that’s the first instinct. But they’re all about the tax rate, not the tax base—funny that, isn’t it?
You see, if you increase the tax base, you actually grow the economy. You can address our current account deficit, whereas if you raise the tax rate—especially too high—behaviours change and tax takes go down sometimes. Would you like me to repeat that?
If you need a reference, look to none other than Thomas Sowell, that famous black economist in the US, who said in the 1920s—let’s take a little bit of history here. The tax in America for the ultra-rich was 76 percent, and I’m sure some members in this House would thoroughly approve of that rate of tax. However, if you go back to that period, they lowered the tax rate to 24 percent and earned more revenue. Sometimes if you raise the tax rates, you actually get the opposite effect because there is something called behaviour and you can’t always predict all of those things.
Some of us would like to look at having a wealth tax. Well, that’s one way of changing behaviour: kill initiative, kill entrepreneurs, kill innovation, and watch high earners leave, as has happened in other jurisdictions—and if you don’t believe me, take a look at our own income tax rates and the revenue that comes from those. OK, let’s take the top two income tax brackets: $78,101 to $180,000, and $180,000 and above. Around 20 percent of our taxpayers bring in around 70 percent of our tax revenue, and so is that the crowd that you really want to tax more—is it really? You have not learnt anything from history? It’s just stunning.
You see, if you increase the number of people earning more—you know, those people that start a business, employ a few people, grow things, make things happen—you increase the tax base. That’s called growth, and this is what we want. We don’t want to be mucking around and scaring people off with these other futile events and futile ways of trying to get more money so that you can spend it on your own whims, in certain parties.
OK, we’re in favour—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just be careful with the use of the word “you”, please.
Dr DAVID WILSON: OK.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.
Dr DAVID WILSON: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will not use that any more. In terms of the repeal of section 17GB of the Tax Administration Act, on trusts and high net-worth individuals, we understand that certain members of our Parliament—especially on that side—would love to look into the interests of these other people and make some judgments on those. However, it has been judged through the Finance and Expenditure Committee that that is actually going just a little bit too far, and we have some case law that can back that up.
We also note with interest the forthcoming amendment by the Minister of Finance—look, we look forward to that. I commend this bill to the House.
LAURA McCLURE (ACT) (16:23): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of this piece of legislation. I firstly would like to acknowledge my team member Todd Stephenson, who sits on this wonderful select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee.
Hon Barbara Edmonds: A good man—a good man, Toddy.
LAURA McCLURE: He’s a great man.
Look, this is not my wheelhouse, and one of the things that is a longstanding ACT policy is for having a simpler tax system. Looking through this bill with my small-business hat on, with my mum, non-intellectual brain, it is a lot, and I think about everyday Kiwis and how complicated some of our pieces of legislation and some of our bills actually are. I’m always going to advocate for having a flatter tax or an easier, simpler tax system, and that is just what the ACT Party is all about: making things nice and easy and fair for everybody so that we end up with more of our own money in our back pockets at the end of the day.
I know that this bill has been discussed quite clearly by other members of the select committee, and I think the select committee has done some great work in at least sending it in a better direction, which I think ACT can actually agree with. I do acknowledge the fact that this is a bit of a living bill at this stage and that there will be some Amendment Papers coming in the committee of the whole House, which I think everybody is actively waiting to see, but, right now, I support this bill and I commend it to the House.
FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (16:24): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to oppose the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill. This bill will do several things—
Dr Vanessa Weenink: “Fernando”—sorry.
FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: —yeah, that’s right; it’s not “Fernando” this time—including setting the income tax rates for the 2025-26 financial year. It will exempt digital nomads from becoming tax residents, delete the power for the IRD to collect tax information for research purposes, exempt income from selling electricity to the grid, and much, much more. As a previous speaker has already said, this is a very long and very complex bill.
This bill was already not fit for purpose when it came to the House, and I want to talk about the fact that the things I have already mentioned that this bill does are emblematic of this Governments’s misguided policies. Those members fundamentally misunderstand what it takes to create a modern, resilient economy.
Now, there is one good measure, and I want to front-foot it because I’m a positive guy. I like to start by saying positive things. One good measure that this bill does that we do support is the change to exempt income from selling electricity to the grid. That is a good change, and if—and this is a big “if”—this was matched by bolder investment in the transition away from fossil fuels, we’d be much happier with this Government. Instead, the Government has subsidised big fossil fuel while cutting incentives for electric vehicle uptake and it has cancelled decarbonisation measures like the Regional Energy Transition Accelerator.
Now, the income tax rates that this bill sets cements this Government’s strategy. Sadly, the Government’s strategy has been and continues to be giving handouts to the very top, the richest New Zealanders, while giving scraps to the very bottom. It’s emblematic of what this Government has done through the entire term: giving tax cuts to big landlords, big fossil, and big tobacco.
The so-called digital nomad tax exemption stems from some fantasy that this Government has that the way to create a modern, resilient, productive economy is to sell our country to foreign investors. It is selling to them our conservation land, allowing them to buy our houses, and now, apparently, exempting them from the tax regimes in this country. Most egregiously, this bill deletes the ability of the IRD to collect tax information for the purposes of developing tax policy.
We know that 311 of the wealthiest families in Aotearoa already hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent. We know that price shocks like the Iran war and the COVID crisis will tend to lead to those who already don’t have much losing much more than those who already have quite a lot. How convenient it is, then, that we are losing the ability to determine what fairer tax systems might look like, including, most crucially—and this is something that came through in our call yesterday—the potential to introduce a windfall profit tax for the biggest corporations, which we know made a killing from the COVID crisis and are poised to make a killing from this crisis. I want to talk about why that’s important, particularly in the context of the Government signalling that they intend to use this bill to introduce what I think they’re calling their fuel crisis cut measure—I’ll have to look it up exactly. I don’t want to get it wrong. But it’s really concerning that this bill does not—fuel crisis package, I believe, they’re calling it.
We know that there have already been signals that an Amendment Paper will come in at some stage, and the Government will use this taxation bill as a mechanism to introduce the fuel crisis package. Instead of doing what the Government had proposed to do with this current bill, which will further lead to a concentration of wealth and power with those who already have too much, and instead of cementing this Government’s lack of ambition when it comes to the climate, we know that there is a better way forward.
There is a better way that has been proposed by the co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick yesterday, and what we’ve proposed is a more expansive and comprehensive set of measures that would have been more inclusive. It includes things like universal, free public transport for everyone. It includes a broader measure of people that are able to receive the fuel crisis package, because the Government has excluded beneficiaries and students and that’s very concerning. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) (16:29): It’s great to speak here on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill. The Finance and Expenditure Committee recommended all amendments by majority, as you will see in the committee’s report.
One thing I wanted to focus on—and the previous Green member actually just threw some accolades at it, so I want to highlight that. That was a provision within this bill that encourages residential solar uptake, ensuring residents up and down this country who export excess power back to the grid—i.e., selling any excess to their electricity retailer—won’t face income tax, recognising that the compliance burden would outweigh any benefit and it will encourage solar and battery uptake. It’s a small but meaningful and notable change to encourage solar electricity at a residential level.
Look, this comes on top of yesterday’s announcement of another 2,500 electric vehicle chargers up and down the country. It comes on top of our liquefied natural gas facility in New Plymouth to ensure electricity security into the future. That is just one of many provisions in this tax bill. I commend it.
Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (16:31): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to take a call on a taxation bill and to provide some information to the actual House. I do want to acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s work on this. We had very constructive discussions around whether some of the measures went far enough, whether some of the measures were actually too narrow, which is why you’re getting this sort of very scattered debate about some bits that we support and some bits that we don’t.
I also want to acknowledge one of my select committee members, Ryan Hamilton, who joined me on the weekend for the Parliamentary Sports Trust volleyball team. David MacLeod was there as well, and Carlos Cheung. We actually only lost that match by one point.
Hon Member:And me.
Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I said Ryan Hamilton and David MacLeod. Were you not listening, Ryan Hamilton? Whakarongo mai. But to the three National MPs and myself, we only lost that game by one point, and that’s because I think it was unfair because the person that was serving was an actual volleyball player, so full credit to both the work by the select committee on this bill and to my Parliamentary Sports Trust volleyball team friends.
I also want to acknowledge the work that’s been done by Inland Revenue (IR) officials on this bill. IR officials have a very high-calibre work rate. You would have seen, obviously, with the Minister’s announcement today that they quickly did some work on the in-work tax credit over the last three weeks.
The other key thing that the IR officials have done as part of the report on this particular bill is they’ve gone through it submission by submission. I do want to also acknowledge the 275 individuals and groups who submitted on this bill. Tax is a complicated affair. It’s important that we have full select committee process in relation to this, following up from a generic tax policy process, which I will touch on a little bit later.
But as the Minister said, there are some good changes within this bill. For example, it does change the annual rates, which have to be confirmed by an Act of Parliament. The tax treatment of digital nomads is actually important. That’s because people who come to New Zealand, for example, for a holiday and they are actually working on their computer, they’re doing remote work for their business or their job that’s overseas—some of them don’t realise that they may be actually subject to a tax impost because they’re doing the work here in New Zealand. The way our international tax rules go is we have both a pillar of revenue—where the revenue is sourced from as well as residence, if they’re based here in New Zealand, so they get captured by those residency rules.
There is a change here in this bill to basically allow certain visitors to New Zealand to now be classed as non-resident visitors to be present for a certain amount of days. The bill recommends 275 days. Some of those changes just mean that we don’t necessarily capture those visitors who are here for a short time and are doing some of their work emails, so that they don’t get captured by our tax groups.
One of the second pieces of changes in this particular bill which I actually think needs a bit more work is the foreign investment fund rules. The foreign investment fund is basically a form of wealth tax. The way you calculate whether a foreign fund is subject to tax here in New Zealand is based on how their income is accrued. When income is accrued, basically you have a tax calculation method. There are currently two methods with the tax legislation. A person can choose one or the other option. The way that it’s designed is a wealth tax. Basically, as the income is accrued, they get taxed on that income.
This bill now includes a new calculation method which is called the revenue account method. That is actually a form of a capital gains tax. Rather than when the income is derived or accrued, it’s actually when it’s made, so the receipt of it. The whole point of these foreign investment fund rules is actually back from sort of the 1980s and early 1990s and it was about a number of Kiwis who had investments offshore. It was actually around New Zealand - domiciled Kiwis who had investments such as shares offshore, for example, in the US. At a certain point in the year, that would be counted as income, depending on where their shares are. Therefore, they would have to pay tax at a certain level.
The new revenue account method does change that slightly, so now it’s actually when it’s a receipt. But the mischief that this amendment is trying to deal with is in relation to—the lifestyle has kind of changed. We are attracting a number of offshore overseas people to New Zealand, because why wouldn’t you want to live in New Zealand? For a number of reasons, why wouldn’t you want to live in New Zealand?
Therefore, after four years, if they’ve still got assets offshore, basically there’s no longer a safe harbour. Every time that their assets are offshore, whether it’s shares, whether they own a house, whether debt is owed to them offshore, that’s counted as income, therefore, they are required to pay tax on it, despite there being no cash flow. This is actually is a bottleneck for Kiwis who are either returning or people who want to come and live here, because it means that they are required, within four years, to sort their affairs offshore in order to basically not be subject to a tax impost.
Now, I was on an American Chamber of Commerce panel a couple of years ago with Rob Coneybeer. Rob Coneybeer is an American who has become a New Zealand citizen. He is a venture capitalist and has done a lot of investment in New Zealand start-ups, because he believes in the start-up ecosystem, as they would say here in New Zealand.
Rob raised this as part of that US summit, which was hosted by Fran O’Sullivan and the American Chamber of Commerce. He raised this as a particular issue as to why people don’t stay here in New Zealand after four years and why they basically have to go offshore. It was because of the tax reasons. I agreed with Rob and I thought, “OK, from a policy perspective, this is an issue, because we do want to keep New Zealanders here. We want to keep people who want to stay here and contribute to our wider economy.”
The changes that are within this particular bill, however, they don’t go far enough. One of the very first questions I asked officials when they briefed the select committee was: how much is this going to cost? The integrity measures in tax, that is either a fiscal cost to the Crown or it can come out of an envelope, which is basically part of the tax policy work programme. The fiscal cost of this is so small. Therefore, it points to the fact that this is not a significant change. We’re not going to get much more. It’s not going to incentivise those really highly skilled, capable new immigrants to New Zealand or expatriates back to New Zealand. It’s not going to incentivise them to stay here, because the way the revenue account method is, it’s so narrow.
I want to put that on the record because I believe that there still should be some changes to this. John Cantin, who was the independent adviser to the select committee, went through a raft of particular changes. All the advice is now public around why he believed that scope needed to be widened. Officials’ advice to the select committee at the time is that it is out of scope. However, I believe that John Cantin provided very good reasons as to why it should be part of this particular bill.
The last bit I want to touch on is actually disclosing information via ministerial agreements changes which are contained in this bill. As Dr Deborah Russell, who spoke earlier before said, we in the Labour Party do have some major concerns about this. There are a number of submissions that were received in relation to this, including from the New Zealand Law Society and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner raised some serious concerns around the changes in the clauses in this particular bill, which we will tease out more at the committee of the whole House stage.
One of the concerns that the New Zealand Law Society set out is that there are insufficient safeguards in relation to this ministerial agreement of information between IRD and other departments. The purpose of this change is because they wanted to make it faster; however, there are privacy safeguards that are very lacking, and submitters provided a long list. For example, the New Zealand Law Society suggested there should be proportionality or necessity tests as part of this, and a requirement—and, yes, there’s a requirement to consult with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, but the Privacy Commissioner needs to have the resources in order to be able to do their job properly.
The other provision of safeguards that they were concerned about is: there is no mandatory privacy impact assessments, there’s short review cycles for these agreements, there’s no requirement for independent audits, and stronger transparency was needed. These are serious concerns, which is one of the reasons why the Labour Party won’t be supporting this particular bill at this phase of the bill, but when it comes to the committee of the whole House, we do look forward to the Amendment Paper by the Minister in relation to the in-work tax credit changes.
RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (16:41): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and yes, I acknowledge the former speaker, as well. It was a great game of volleyball that we should have won. I felt we were robbed—but nevertheless.
As the chair of our select committee has already mentioned, the residential solar power tweaks that we did was a sensible addition among many in this bill, which make practical changes to make this system more effective. They remove barriers that hold back investment and growth. With this bill, we’re backing businesses, attracting investment, and creating the conditions for a stronger economy. I commend it to the House.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) (16:41): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thought I’d have longer than a minute. Heoi anō rā e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā tātou katoa, kei te tū ahau mō Te Pāti Reipa ki te whakahē i tēnei pire ngāwari rawa atu ki te whakaputa.
[So to the Speaker of the House, and to all, I stand on behalf of the Labour Party to object to this bill that appeared so easily.]
I’m standing, on behalf of the Labour Party, to speak on the bill that just rolls off the tongue: the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill.
Cameron Luxton: That’s great pronunciation.
CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Thank you. We’ve heard across the House this afternoon the word “status quo”—maintaining the status quo—and, of course, “compliance simplification”. First of all, as you all know, I am the Labour spokesperson for the Māori economy, and assuming that Māori organisations are status quo is a massive oversight. That assumes standard company structures and conventional income flows for Māori organisations, which is certainly not always the case; though sometimes, it is.
Not all of our Māori whānau trusts and incorporations are quite at the standard where they are nominees for the Ahu Whenua awards—though I want to commend all the whānau who are at that standard. However, there are plenty who are not—plenty who are simply Māori-owned, whānau-operated small businesses. When you talk about compliance simplification, often, what you are talking about is a whānau organisation heavily dependent on volunteer workforce. No matter how simple the compliance—“simple” the compliance—is, it still falls on volunteer labour—someone who’s simply the person in the whānau who’s good at numbers or good at words, and all the compliance falls on them, while also trying to manage their full-time job.
In submissions for this, there was a call for co-design with Māori. That hasn’t been discussed. You know, we talk about the Māori economy, and it’s acknowledged throughout this House how dynamic and exciting the Māori economy is. What I’m not hearing today is any dynamic or exciting changes to the taxes to support Māori economic models. I think that’s something, hopefully, as a Parliament, we can work towards, beyond this.
Now, another issue raised throughout this—well, another concern raised through this bill, is the sharing of information. Often, what you’ll hear amongst Māori whānau and Māori organisations are their concerns—not just amongst Māori, amongst communities and families throughout New Zealand, but, in particular, a lot of Māori organisations, whānau, iwi, hapū, are calling for autonomy over their data. Sharing information is something people are already highly concerned about, so there’s going to have to be a lot of work put into putting people at ease.
It appears that no real thought has gone into how a revised tax system can actually have material impact on Māori businesses, Māori-owned corporations, and Māori land trusts. As an example, iwi may benefit from the Investment Boost as they have the capacity, they’ve got the asset base, they’ve got the capital; however, a lot of Māori businesses are actually small, independent, family owned, so they won’t have the opportunity to take advantage of Investment Boost.
Again, I just revisit the fact that while the bill says it’s basically going to keep the status quo in regards to the Māori economy, Māori businesses—we are anything but status quo. I think there has been a missed opportunity here to think about how we can continue to support the dynamic and exciting Māori economy and look at how modernising the tech system to benefit that could have been done. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (16:46): It’s a privilege to rise in the second reading to discuss this bill that we’ve had lengthy discussions about at its select committee, so I won’t labour the point.
This bill benefits non-residents that seek to work in New Zealand; it has huge benefits for Kiwis that have foreign investment income—Kiwis returning from America or other countries, but, also, many American Kiwis, as well, that are here; and it makes a whole range of other changes designed to improve tax administration.
There will be two, I guess, Amendment Papers, one pertaining to the temporary tax changes for the in-work tax credit, and, also, the amendment to change the thin capitalisation rules, which I look forward to thoroughly debating in the committee stage. With that, I commend this bill to the House.
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (16:47): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on this bill. I want to start off like many speakers have and acknowledge the work of the select committee. I think anyone just needs to read through either the select committee report or the very comprehensive bill commentary the Inland Revenue Department has prepared for this, to see just how complicated and how quickly technical this work becomes. I think that no one does an omnibus bill like tax, in terms of putting together a number of measures, so we see that there’s a number of amendments that are brought together here.
Now, Labour is opposing this bill, because I’ll come to the changes that are being made that mean we can’t vote for it—but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t some things in this bill that we do think are good, and are positive changes. I think that speaks to the amount of effort that needs to be put into continually refining the tax system to ensure it’s working as was intended, to make sure those tweaks are in place and it’s keeping up.
I think some of my colleagues have talked through some of those changes that we do think are positive. My colleague Barbara Edmonds spoke about the digital nomads changes. This is something that is a continually evolving set of people, and the tax treatment of this group of people is something that we do need to continually make sure that our tax system is fit for purpose. Also, the foreign investment funds rules are being changed so that, in some circumstances, New Zealand tax residents who own foreign shares will no longer be taxed on unrealised gains.
I think what we’re seeing with a number of these changes is, actually, just the broad scope and the kind of international connections that need to be thought about when we are thinking about our tax systems. There are the GST rules for joint ventures being changed to reflect current practice so that partners in a joint venture can legally claim the GST associated with expenses incurred by the joint venture, even if the joint venture itself is not GST-registered. That was an example I gave to just demonstrate how quickly and how very technical some of these changes being made are.
One of the things that I found particularly fascinating was the changes that needed to be made around the supply of excess electricity, which is, essentially, around solar panels and how we treat the income that people derive from having solar panels on their house, either as a credit to their electricity account or otherwise, and then an even more complicated part of this is how we treat this in a rental situation. What happens when a tenant might be getting a credit to their power bill, but a landlord is deriving income from this? So there are some very technical and very complicated things that need to be worked through.
In the commentary that’s been produced, one of the things it does—because I know that everyone wants tax as bedside reading and to be able to read it—is that it puts in some very real-world examples. These allow people to imagine how these very technical changes are going to show up and to imagine the difference that they will make.
These were measures that, by and large, we supported, but where Labour found that we could not support this bill was around the information sharing. There were two key changes in here, and it’s the way in which they work together that is also one of the really problematical parts of this legislation for us. It is easier for Government agencies to share information if Ministers agree that it’s needed to determine entitlement to Government assistance and to help with the direction—now, this can already be done. I don’t think that anyone is saying that we shouldn’t be able to share information across Government agencies, and that wasn’t the point in question.
We know that to have a well-running machinery of government, we need our ministries to be able to share that information. I think that any of us who do constituency work will sometimes appreciate very much that there is a lack of that flow of information between Government agencies, and a large part of our constituency work is actually around facilitating that flow of information between agencies—with, of course, people’s permission—but what we know is that there are changes in here that go beyond that. There are changes in here that allow this to be used for policing purposes. The regulatory impact statement shows that the only consultation undertaken in respect of this measure was with the Privacy Commissioner, and one of the concerns that we had that was that there needed to be a broader look taken at this.
Then there is some other information in there too, which is the disclosure of information about trusts, and there’s a lot in this amendment bill about trusts. The disclosure of information about trusts will be repealed, and so section 59BA of the Tax Administration Act is being repealed in its entirety through this bill. This means that trusts that earn income will be required to file income tax and to pay tax, but the extra information obtained by the application of section 59BA will no longer be collected.
Now, that extra information was really important. There was a whole heap of information about who was settling assets into trusts and who was getting assets and income from trusts, and that will no longer be disclosed. We actually think that having transparency around this is vitally important. It means that trusts can again be used to shelter and to hide income and assets, and we do not think that that is a good or a positive thing for our country. On one hand, we give Ministers complete discretion to decide about information sharing, including how that information can be used in policing, but we say that when it comes to trusts, we’re actually bringing down the shade. We’re stopping the sunlight getting in and we’re saying that, actually, having that information about what assets and what income is being sheltered in the trusts is something that we’re going to hunker down on and go backwards as a country on. This is not something that Labour can support.
The other measure that we did not agree with, with regard to this legislation, was the removal of the ability of Inland Revenue to collect tax information for policy development purposes. Now, this is really important, and I’ve gone through at the beginning of this speech about how tax legislation needs to continually be changing to keep up with what’s happening, to be fit for purpose for the future, and to reflect what is going on at the time—and the solar changes are a really important example of that.
We also think that it’s really important that those people within Inland Revenue are looking at these real-world examples and thinking about them as we make policy and use them as a tool for policy development. Now, I know that a number of people were very unsettled about the changes that Labour brought in around being able to do this and to be able to use this information for the development of policy, and so there were some suggestions that, OK, if people were that unsettled by it, then maybe we could put in some stronger guardrails around that in terms of how it can be used, and all those kinds of things, but that was not agreed to. Instead, what this bill and what this Government wants to do is say that we’re not going to do that.
Again, we are, on the one hand, giving these extraordinary powers to Ministers in terms of how they can direct information to flow, but we’re clamping down and not allowing transparency into trusts and into the knowledge about assets and income that is being sheltered within those trusts, and then we’re saying that we won’t even allow Inland Revenue to collect information about individuals that we might be able to use to create a better, robust tax system that ensures that New Zealanders are paying their fair share. We do not think that this is the basis of good tax legislation—the fact that when we have these three converging changes that come together—and it means that we are not able to support this bill. As I’ve said, there are a number of measures in it that we do agree with, but it is the asymmetrical treatment of people and information and disclosure that resides in this bill that means that Labour cannot support it.
NANCY LU (National) (16:57): I rise to support the bill. As is suggested by the name of this bill, it is for compliance simplification and also remedial measures. I wanted to particularly thank all the members on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, including all the parties that have provided a lot of very valuable feedback, as well as the submitters who came before us and gave us real-life examples. With that, and with all the professional advice from the IRD, this is a great bill, which I am very proud to be commending to the House.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (16:57): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to oppose the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025-26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill. Now, when it comes to some of the conversations that we have heard already as part of the debate on this bill, the first thing that we want to acknowledge is the kind of conversation that we’ve heard from a previous member around the difference between a tax base and a tax rate, and I think that this also comes up in terms of some of the changes we’re seeing in terms of the foreign investment funds and also the introduction of the revenue account method.
It is true that we do need to look at the tax base and the scope of the tax base, and I think that that is the very reason why the Greens are proposing a wealth fund. The fact is that, currently, our tax base does not cover certain revenue-generation methods when it comes to things like capital gains and additional assets like private jets, superyachts, etc. To be able to expand the scope of the tax base is very much in the best interests of Aotearoa New Zealand because, as we see, currently, those who are uber-wealthy in Aotearoa New Zealand pay half the effective tax rate of a nurse. When we’re seeing the wealth gap increasing by more than ever before in the history of Aotearoa, that is of concern, and that should be of concern for everyone in this House.
Now, when it comes to tax rates, it is also true that we do need to look at the way that we are taxing, as well. As part of having a wealth tax and as part of tax reform, one of the things that we have been pushing for—which we have not been able to see in this bill—is the introduction of a tax-free threshold for lower-income earners, because, frankly, that’s what they do across the Ditch, in Australia. When we have a higher tax rate, and also particularly when we’re punishing those who cannot already afford it in a cost of living crisis, plus not expanding the scope of the tax base, we wonder why we are in this fiscal black hole that we are seeing right now. This bill is not doing anything to address any of that.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order. Madam Speaker, I wonder if you could ask the speaker to return to what’s in the bill, not what’s not in the bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I have been listening. The member has been referring to the bill. But I will certainly bring him back to the bill and the content if he strays too far. Thank you—Mr Xu-Nan.
Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker, you are wise, as opposed to, frankly, some of the members of this House who have forgotten some of the rules that we do have here.
Now, going on in terms of this particular bill, one of the things that we are also looking at in terms of the foreign investment fund and also the revenue accounting method, it is also important for us to note that this bill has made it easier—and this will be under the Government’s agenda—for foreign investors, and this will be also a relief for investors, but also we must acknowledge the other side and the fact that while they are doing that, they are further punishing New Zealanders overseas with increased interest rates for student loan interest as well, which is something that we are seeing that is diametrically opposed to what is being introduced in this bill when it comes to the revenue accounting method.
I do believe that when it comes to this bill, the intention is that we simply want to expand—and this Government simply want to expand—that wealth inequality here in Aotearoa. A third important part of this bill, that a number of the previous speakers have already spoken on, is around the sharing of information. Now, it is important to note that this must be coming as a relief for those who are the wealthiest in Aotearoa, the uber-wealthy in Aotearoa, because what it is doing is allowing—well, it is no longer making it mandatory for some of the information to be collected, so it’s harder to track that wealth inequality as we see here. This particular part is to do with clause 141 of this bill, repealing section 17GB of the Tax Administration Act. It is deeply problematic, and it is emblematic of the way of this Government has managed the economy.
I also think that one of the other parts that is introduced by this bill—the digital nomad tax exemptions—reflects the Government’s distracting, incoherent approach to public policy. I think that is also a problem that we are seeing that’s more broadly with the way the Government has approached, that is basically punching down on the poor to further benefit the rich. With that, the Green Party of Aotearoa will not be supporting this bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Finance and Expenditure Committee by majority be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.
Amendments agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025–26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Vote Correction
Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh) (17:05): Members, before I call on the next order of the day, we have some minor housekeeping. Following the vote on the first reading of the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, the bill was not read a first time. I ask the Clerk to do this now—would you mind, Mr Clerk?
Bill read a first time.
Bills
Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill
Legislative Statement
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (17:06): I present a legislative statement on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Second Reading
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister for Racing) (17:06): I move, That the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
This bill amends the Racing Industry Act 2020 to close commercial greyhound racing in New Zealand from 1 August 2026. This is not a decision the Government has taken lightly without thinking through its effects, but the Government and the overwhelming majority of this Parliament think it’s the right thing to do. The bill achieves this by establishing roles and responsibilities and process to provide for a well-managed closure. This bill comes into effect over three stages, ensures a framework for closure is in place before commercial greyhound racing ends on 1 August. It allows sufficient time for subsequent tasks to be completed, such as ensuring that greyhounds are successfully rehomed and the people affected by closure are assisted through the transition.
Essential to the success of this closure and established in the first stage is the Greyhound Racing Transition Agency, an independent body that will be responsible for ensuring that a transition plan relating to Greyhound Racing New Zealand is in place to wind up the industry, including facilitating greyhound rehoming and supporting industry participants. It is intended that the current members of the greyhound racing ministerial advisory committee, whose recommendations form the basis of this bill, will be appointed to the board of the transition agency. The transition agency will work with the industry, animal welfare organisations, and other relevant groups. It will have the same goals as those in the industry and the wider public; that is, to look after greyhounds, see them into loving homes, and to support people affected by the closure into new work.
The second stage of this bill is from 1 August and will be the official end of commercial greyhound racing in New Zealand. This stage will see the removal of references to greyhound racing from the Racing Industry Act, so it is no longer permitted. At some point during this stage, Greyhound Racing New Zealand will be dissolved and appropriate remaining functions will be transferred to the transition agency once it is determined that Greyhound Racing New Zealand has no further functions to perform.
Then the third and final stage of this bill will see the repeal of provisions relating to the transition agency once the agency has completed its functions and tasks. This third stage is anticipated to take three years. However, to account for some flexibility in timing, the third stage comes into force on a date set by Order in Council, but no later than 31 July 2031. This is in case there are still some outstanding tasks at that time.
Throughout all these stages, the primary intent of this bill remains to prioritise greyhound welfare and the wellbeing of affected people throughout the closure process. It is these issues that we know were top of mind for those submitting on the bill and for members of the Primary Production Committee that considered the bill and who have my thanks. Thank you to the committee for its careful consideration and scrutiny of this bill and for working so constructively with the office to achieve the best bill possible. Thank you also to the members of the public who took the time to share their views with the committee.
The committee received 2,134 written submissions and heard 75 oral submissions. Most submissions supported the bill and the closure of the industry. We do acknowledge those individuals in the greyhound racing industry who wrote in to oppose this bill and recognised, as we have continued to do, that the industry did make efforts since being put on notice in 2021 to improve animal welfare. However, it continues to be the case today that the serious injury rate for greyhound racing remains persistently too high despite these efforts. In the most recent 2024-25 racing season, there were 16 race-related greyhound fatalities, equating to 0.47 fatalities per 1,000 racing starts. There were also 822 race-related injuries, of which 250 were serious injuries.
We also know that New Zealand is not alone in concluding that the time has come for the end of commercial greyhound racing. Other jurisdictions are also moving to close commercial greyhound racing. Last week, both Wales and Scotland voted for a ban, and Tasmania has signalled a ban by 30 June 2029. New Zealand moves towards August this year in good company.
The closure of this industry is something we take very seriously. The decision to close greyhound racing has come from lengthy consideration and is why the bill we present today is a measured one. We recognise that participants in this industry don’t wish to see it close and that this bill represents a significant disruption to their livelihoods and the way of life that they've had. It’s for that reason that the measures in this bill are designed to ensure the closure is orderly and well managed.
The Primary Production Committee has now reported the bill back to the House, recommending that the bill be passed with proposed amendments. We accept those amendments as practical changes for the betterment of the closure. First, the committee has recommended changes to ensure that TAB NZ can continue to take bets on overseas greyhound racing. This was always the Government’s intention, but the bill, as introduced, inadvertently did not reflect this.
This bill is focused solely on the closure of the domestic greyhound racing industry here and is not intended to affect other currently allowed activities such as TAB NZ taking bets on overseas greyhound races. It is also the Government’s intention that the closure of the industry be funded by the racing industry itself, not taxpayers. Continuing to allow the funding stream to TAB NZ from betting on overseas greyhound races helps achieve this.
However, we know some submitters view NZ’s ability to continue to take bets on overseas greyhound racing as unfair, and in light of those comments, the committee recommends an amendment to have a mandatory review of this ability once the third stage of the closure is complete. We acknowledge a further amendment from the committee around the residual assets held by the transition agency at the end of the closure period and process. It’s always been assumed, given the tasks needed to complete the closure process, that at the end of that process most assets will have been utilised, and then in line with the purposes of the Racing Industry Act, the few remaining assets would then transfer to the other racing codes. However, we recognise some submitters’ unease with any residual assets going to the other racing codes. Therefore, we accept the committee’s recommendation that any residual assets at the end of the closure process are to be distributed to former greyhound racing participants.
Additionally, the committee recommends an amendment to ensure the Racing Integrity Board has enough time after the final greyhound race to conclude any ongoing compliance matters that have not been resolved. The committee heard that an abrupt loss of the board’s jurisdiction after the closure date missed its ability to carry out compliance and enforcement through the transition period. This amendment wisely extends the board’s existing functions to address this risk.
This bill is now our way forward. Greyhound racing no longer reflects New Zealand’s values or expectations of animal welfare. Too many rescue dogs are seriously injured, and despite the industry’s efforts, injury rates are too high. This bill lays out a sensible. plan for moving forward.
As the 19th century US Senator George Graham Vest once said, in defence of dogs, “The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.” As this bill moves towards its next stage in the House, those listening today are urged to not wait until 1 August to consider adopting a greyhound. We are saying, adopt today; you’ll never regret it.
Just one last thing, on a personal basis, when this industry was in terrible trouble, the person you’re looking at now was the one who went out and saved them by ensuring that they were still alive at the end of the process after COVID—those are the facts—and in a previous time, gave them the highest price they’ve ever had for five years for the best greyhound race in New Zealand. There was an independent report in 2013, 2017, and 2021—all separate from the Minister of Racing today, and they all pointed to one thing, and I’m grateful that this Parliament and the mass majority of its MPs have had the conscience to act on it. Thank you very much.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (17:16): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. I rise as Labour’s spokesperson for racing to speak on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. This is a Government bill. The Labour Party supported this bill at first reading and it will continue to do so through second reading today.
I agree with the sentiment that the Minister has just outlined in that this bill is the right thing to do. That’s why we are supporting this Government bill today. The interesting aspect around the racing industry—as yourself will know, Madam Speaker—is that it is an important industry for New Zealand’s economy. There are many people who are involved in all codes at the moment, whether they be the greyhound code, the thoroughbred code or the harness code, and so that means any movement, any desire to initiate any change is going to have an impact on the racing industry. Where the Labour Party lands with this bill is alongside the words that have just been expressed previously in terms of it being the right thing to do.
This is a bill that comes as no surprise. Yes, when it comes to the greyhound racing industry it was, as we know, put on notice back in 2021. There have been some changes since that time, but we are of the view that this is not something that has been an overnight issue; it has been an issue that has been well signalled to the public, to the industry, and that is what lies behind the Labour Party’s support for this bill today.
I want to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee. I’m not a member of it, but it’s represented by the Hon Jo Luxton and Rachel Boyack on that, and I did have an opportunity to sit in on that committee to hear some of the submissions. Yes, there were over 2,000 submissions that were received—a significant number of folk that wanted to be heard, which is important. I do want to acknowledge and thank those that did actually submit to this process, because, despite an individual’s or a group’s or an organisation’s views on this legislation, one of the overwhelming points of views that did come through was the thankfulness about the opportunity to be able to share their views, their experiences, and to have their voices heard.
Now, I acknowledge that this bill, where it has landed in front of the House right now, is not going to be satisfactory to some of those submitters, but I do want to acknowledge the process that was held to allow them to voice their concerns. I do think that the bill is now in a better position than it was when it left this House to go to the select committee.
Many of the changes that the select committee report does identify were changes that were made unanimously by all members of the select committee. There were three clauses that were not, and two of those clauses relate to the ability for the TAB to continue to accept wagering or bets on overseas greyhound racing. The other one was around clause 34, which relates to the ministerial review that would need to be undertaken once the final part of Part 3 had been concluded or completed.
As part of that submission process, many of the individuals were very firm in their view around the need to protect animal welfare considerations and around issues in that space. Likewise, those who are current participants within the industry were using that as an opportunity to explain what this change would mean for them. I do acknowledge that this is a change that will have an impact on a number of participants.
As the Minister has said, this is a bill that’s going to be rolled out in three phases or three parts. It’s important to note, I think, that this bill is a separate piece of legislation, but that it’s tied to a former bill that this Parliament passed unanimously around ensuring that greyhounds were actually protected when the announcement came into play that there was the possibility of greyhound racing being closed out from 1 August of this particular year. This bill, in terms of stage one, does stand up and set up that transition agency, which the Minister has confirmed to the Parliament today. It is likely, if this bill does go through, that the members of the ministerial advisory committee would simply become the new members of the transition agency. I think that is a positive move because it means that there is a continuation of knowledge that has been gathered as part of this process.
The second stage is around, effectively, the cessation of greyhound racing come the 1 August of this year. Now, I know there have been some questions raised around whether or not 1 August this year is an appropriate time frame or whether it should be delayed. The position of the Labour Party is this: we don’t believe that there is any purpose in delaying the implementation of 1 August. We see nothing in the legislation or, indeed, the information that has come forward before the select committee to indicate that any issues that arise from 1 August cannot be attended to. Actually, the changes that have been progressed by the select committee do actually make it somewhat more palatable, I think, to have that 1 August of this year start date, as opposed to the possibility of rolling that out.
I don’t intend to go through all of the amendments, but there are a couple that I do want to touch on. One of them relates to the role of the Racing Integrity Board. This is the entity within New Zealand that has the responsibility to look into, investigate, and adjudicate—albeit through separate arms—around, potential breaches of the rules of racing, regardless of the code, whether it’s in the harness code, the thoroughbred code, or the greyhound code. What we heard through select committee was that the bill as drafted would mean, actually, that some of those investigations that might be under way or, indeed, any of the discipline functions that might follow would have to cease on 1 August. Now, that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense that you would have a system where people, effectively, who might be charged with a breach of the rules of racing simply could not allow the investigation or, indeed, the adjudication process to follow through, so where the select committee has landed is actually allowing that investigation and that adjudication process to continue beyond 1 August and that particular time frame. I think that’s a really important position, where the committee did land, and take that on board.
One of the other changes that the committee was not in total agreement over was around the TAB continuing to accept wagering or betting on international greyhound racing. It’s important to note that the revenue that would be generated from that would be used to offset the transition costs. Now, this is not going to be a transition process that comes at no cost; there will be costs, and it is expected that the new transition agency that’s going to be stood up would be doing what they can to ensure that the transition is smooth in terms of rehoming the greyhounds—that’s the primary importance—but also that there’s a mental health, wellbeing, and transition focus to ensure that those who are involved in the industry are well looked after. That revenue needs to come from somewhere, and it’s appropriate that the revenue that’s generated as a result of the TAB’s ability—continued ability—to accept wagering on international greyhound racing is used for that specific purpose. That is, in our view, the right thing and the proper thing that needs to happen.
One of the key aspects around all of this, though, is the ability for there to be a ministerial review as to how that all works. From time to time, Madam Speaker, as you know, this House does put in place a review opportunity or a mechanism. This is not something that would be optional. It is a mandatory requirement for the Minister for Racing, post that third stage being implemented, to undertake a review, and the bill, as it has come out of select committee, identifies all of the criteria that the Minister for Racing must turn their mind to and the process that they need to go through to give effect to that. One of the aspects in that space is an ability for the Minister to consider anything else that they would consider appropriate as part of that review. Now, it may be that, at a future point in time, when that report is completed and tabled here in the Parliament, the Parliament may take a different tack in terms of the ability of the TAB to continue to take wages on international greyhound racing or not, but the fact that there is a review mechanism there in existence is an important one.
Finally, I want to conclude by again thanking the select committee—thanking those who submitted to the select committee process. I do believe that this is a bill that is much different to when it was that first introduced in the Parliament, and it gives effect to what is the right thing to do, and on that basis, we will support it.
STEVE ABEL (Green) (17:26): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support the bill on behalf of the Green Party. Greyhounds are gentle, loving animals that deserve to live a good life, like any animal. They may love to run, but perhaps not as much as you’d think, and they should have the option to run freely and of their volition in the loving care of a household that holds them as a pet.
We heard in select committee some heartfelt appeals from those in the greyhound industry, and I would like to put it on the record that we recognise the love that many of them feel for their dogs, and the care that people take for their dogs, and those who’ve kept them as pets after their racing days are done. We heard the heartache that people feel at the closure of this industry, from those for whom it has been their life and from those who had plans for it to be their future and had invested with that in mind. We received those responses, and we felt it. I believe it is the sincere expectation of the Primary Production Committee—and I’m hoping my colleagues will affirm this—that the transitional agency will take care of the welfare of the people, as well as the dogs, in the closure of the greyhound industry.
I acknowledge Greyhound Racing New Zealand’s Hail Mary, their bid to have the closure delayed for them to have time to, for example, build straight tracks at Addington, but I fear that bid, in earnest, was too little too late in terms of the journey that we have been on as a nation to make a decision on greyhound racing. The idea of straight tracks had been around for some time. In fact, it was one of the recommendations of the Hansen review in 2017. Their review said, “[clearly there was] scope for further reduction in the number of injuries [of dogs]. The greatest potential for further improvement is offered by the introduction of straight tracks.” It went on to say, “A Queensland study has showed that the incidence of tarsal bone injuries produced by rotational forces on a round oval track would be reduced [by] a straight track. And plainly the elimination of turns would drastically reduce the risk of collisions.” That was nine years ago, and not sufficient action was taken by the greyhound racing industry.
I also note that, in October this year, Greyhound Racing New Zealand said the uncertainty of being under review for the last three years has undermined industry confidence, adversely affected the mental wellbeing of our participants, and impacted on investment decisions required across all areas of the sport. We hear that. At the same time, the SPCA has been making a call for there to be a decision. The time for a decision on the future of this industry is now. We cannot continue with the repeated cycle of exposés and damning industry reviews. Greyhounds deserve better. Well, today, we have a decisive decision. We know it will hurt some, but the intention is to protect the welfare of greyhounds. It is undeniable that while things have improved in the industry, there have been too many years of unnecessary suffering and death for these dogs in New Zealand. This law brings an end to that.
I want to speak to a couple of the technical details that my colleague Tangi Utikere spoke to. There was an amendment put up because of the original error in the drafting that allows there to be a continuation of gambling on greyhound racing in Australia, even though it will be a prohibited activity by this legislation here in New Zealand. It was the view of the Green Party that it was an unsatisfactory hypocrisy that we would prohibit New Zealanders from racing greyhounds and gambling on them yet allow gambling on greyhound racing in Australia, where there are the same welfare issues, and we voted against that amendment at the Primary Production Committee. We were the only party that did, I would note.
We also understand that the $44 million that is projected to be raised from that gambling over the next three years will be going towards the closure of the industry, so we also do see the logic of why the Minister for Racing has decided to go that way. We still think it would be preferable that that closure cost be paid by other means, such as from other racing codes, rather than allow the unfairness of not allowing gambling here but allowing gambling in Australia.
Another point is the asset distribution. We think we got to a better place with the decision because we heard the grievance that industry members felt that the assets that remain at the end of the closure would have been distributed to other racing bodies. We agreed as a committee that that was not fair either, so whatever assets are left will be redistributed to those who are members of Greyhound Racing New Zealand as at 1 August this year—members at that time. It won’t be redistributed then; it will be after the closure that any remaining assets will be redistributed.
There was another conversation we had about the exporting of greyhounds and the concern by animal welfare advocates that greyhounds would be exported to be raced in other jurisdictions. We heard reasonably compelling advice that there was a belief on the part of officials that there was a low likelihood of that export to occur, though there have already been dogs exported for that purpose since the introduction of the position that the Government would close greyhounds. The bill does provide flexibility for the transition agency to discourage exporting for racing by attaching limits or conditions to the support provided to participants who do this. Noting that Air New Zealand already prohibits greyhounds being used for racing or breeding purposes from travelling in their services, we believe there is a low likelihood of that occurring, but the committee decided against prohibiting that. We may yet bring an amendment to the House as the Greens on that matter.
Finally, the review of the ongoing racing gambling will be taking place at the end of the closure. We support that review and hope that, indeed, it makes a decision that TAB should not be allowed to host gambling on Australian greyhound racing.
It is possible to hold two seemingly contradictory views and for them both to be true—one, that most of those in the industry are good, caring people who love their animals, and the other that too many dogs have suffered and died and will continue to do so for us as a society to accept the continuation of greyhound racing. I hold both those views. Today, the Parliament is making the choice that the time has come to end the racing of greyhounds in New Zealand, and we support that choice.
My final message to those in the industry is that we do not want you to feel vilified. We know you are hurting, but we hope you can work through this and find a good way forward. We also ask that Greyhound Racing New Zealand and your executive accept this outcome, as hard as it is. Now is the time to focus on the care of your people and on the safe and humane rehoming of dogs. To the public of New Zealand, please, we will have an increase in the number of greyhounds that need a home to go to. If you are of that mind and of that means, in these tough economic times, then please seek out the opportunity to rehome a greyhound.
Finally, we ask that the transitional agency offer all reasonable support to those people in this industry to that end, and, of course, we know you’ll be using the existing rehoming agencies to make sure the dogs find good, caring, and loving homes. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (17:36): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was lucky enough to sit on the Primary Production Committee while it examined this bill, and many of my ACT colleagues did as well. What we heard is something that I think that every member of this House should reflect on carefully, because what we heard was troubling.
Before I talk about some of that, I want to talk about some of the key changes that the committee has made, and it has been reflected on in this House. There weren’t many, but they are important. The first and most significant change was to ensure that the TAB can continue to take bets on overseas greyhound racing, which was a controversial aspect of the bill. Many submitters noted that there seemed to be some kind of hypocrisy in allowing that to happen when the Parliament and Government were banning greyhound racing on animal welfare grounds but allowing its gambling arm, which has a monopoly, to continue to take bets from said industry overseas. This bill also includes changes to prohibit offshore betting agencies from taking bets from New Zealanders on greyhound races. The second change was to ensure that assets remaining at the end of the rehoming process and at the end of the transition process were redistributed back to participants. This was important, even if wider compensation was not added into the bill.
Finally and importantly, the select committee—most importantly, really—said that animal welfare should be included in the transition agency annual reports, making sure that there is an eye kept on what’s happening throughout the transition. The people who came before the committee were not lobbyists or activists. They were ordinary New Zealanders—good, hard-working, salt of the earth people who built their lives and communities around this industry. For many, it’s not just a job; it’s generations of work, of families investing everything into it. They invested their time and capital over decades building something they hoped they’d be able to pass on. We heard that.
What was most clear, however, was that these people, these participants, these trainers, care deeply about their animals. They are not villains that some have made them out to be. The dogs are well cared for, both during their racing lives and after they retire. The industry has invested millions into animal welfare and veterinary care and has continued to spend millions to ensure that retired racing dogs are rehomed. They know they can do better. The industry has been continuously evolving and making sure they put animal welfare first. That’s what we heard directly from people doing the work and from those marking that work.
Yet, despite this and despite trying to be heard, asking for meetings, and coming to the committee, they have been dismissed. They have been labelled. We have had leaders call participants in the industry sinners. I have to ask: how can somebody be labelled like this while following all the rules that Parliament has set for them? That is the fundamental issue here. Participants have invested on a promise that if they followed the rules, they would not be shut down, and they complied. Look at the stats: injury rates have gone down, and more people are spending time enjoying the races. Yet, now, after doing everything they were asked, the rug has been pulled out from under them.
This raises serious questions about the role of regulations and what we are actually doing here. If the Government sets the rules, tells industry to operate within them, and then shuts them down anyway, what kind of message is that? Is it that lawful compliance is no guarantee that your investment and livelihood won’t be taken away because you failed, or not because you failed but because political moods shift? That’s just not fair.
This is why compensation matters. No confiscation without compensation is one of our oldest rights. Many believe it dates back to Magna Carta in 1215. That’s why there needs to be a clearer regime on how industry participants will be compensated. When the Government takes—no matter how it feels about something—it should not be able to do so with impunity. The participants deserve to know that the Crown understands the steps it is taking here and can assure participants that all they invested was not in vain. I still have hope that compensation will be part of this regime and that participants can get what is owed and what is fair. I say this now: ACT is voting in favour of the second reading of this bill, but we cannot continue to support it at third reading unless we see credible compensation plans from the Minister.
I also want to touch on something we have heard a lot in this debate and we will probably hear a lot more going forward. This is the idea of a social licence. It’s a term that sounds clear and precise, but when you dig into it, it’s incredibly vague. What does it actually mean? Who decides when it’s lost? From what I’ve seen, unfortunately this decision is not being driven solely by evidence but rather by perception, and that should concern every member of this House. Once decisions start being justified on the basis of a so-called social licence rather than clear rules and evidence, where does it stop? We’ve seen this before. First they came for licensed firearm owners, telling them their social licence was gone. Well, ACT stood up for them when others didn’t. Now, it’s greyhound racing. I can assure members that this will not be the last; so what will be next? Will it be trout fishing, rodeos, or horse racing? Give it a decade, and members might be in this House debating whether farmers have a social licence. That’s where this could head down. I don’t think New Zealanders signed up for a system where industries can be shut down on the basis of shifting political winds.
Now, I also want to address the way this wind-down is being handled. Under the bill, the Crown is taking control of shutting down the whole industry. I have concerns about this. We’ve heard the words about care and looking after participants, but the industry itself knows how it operates. It knows all the people involved. It knows who will be hurt and who will be lost, and it knows, through experience, how to manage and rehome effectively the retired racing dogs. It is best placed to manage the wind-down. Instead, we’re handing responsibility to the same people who, frankly, haven’t listened, have refused to meet with them, and have called them sinners. That does not inspire confidence. There is another well-known line from an American leader, and it goes, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.’ ”.
For many in the industry, I suspect that this doesn’t feel like a joke, and I want to be clear that this is not a moment for celebration. It is not something that members should turn into a social media win. This is a serious decision with real consequences for real New Zealanders. It is a sombre moment when Parliament is ripping away livelihoods.
I want to finish by acknowledging the greyhound racing community. Thank you for coming to the select committee and sharing your stories, even when it felt like no one was listening. Thank you for your patience through a process that, at times, must have felt stacked against you. Thank you for the respect you gave us and that, in this process, hasn’t always been granted to you. Thank you for the role you’ve played in New Zealand’s life. You deserve better than this, and I hope you can forgive our sins.
MILES ANDERSON (National—Waitaki) (17:44): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. I firstly want to thank the select committee, the Primary Production Committee—the best committee in the House. This wasn’t an easy bill to deliberate on. I also want to thank the clerks of the committee for their hard work as well. I especially want to thank all those who put forward written submissions, and I particularly want to thank those who came in and presented to the select committee. I really am grateful that they did that. We did hear them, and we heard a lot of people who had their hearts on their sleeves and, certainly, were very distressed.
As the previous speaker said, there’s nothing to celebrate in the passing of this bill. There are many people whose livelihoods will be lost, and what I’m most concerned about in this bill are these people. Not only are they losing their livelihoods, but in many cases, they’re also losing their companions. That’s the greyhounds that are going to be rehomed and have to be rehomed because they won’t be able to afford to keep them.
The committee has put forward a number of amendments that should make the transition somewhat smoother, and it also put forward a suggestion that the transition agency appoint another member, which there is room to do under the current settings, from an industry background. I look forward to these amendments coming through the committee of the whole House, whenever that may be.
HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato) (17:47): Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori at the second reading of this bill in support of this bill, the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill.
Greyhound racing has long been associated with animal welfare concerns. Thousands of dogs are bred for racing each year, but not all compete successfully. Reports document injuries, neglect, and early euthanasia of greyhounds. Internationally, countries such as the UK and Ireland have phased out greyhound racing, citing cruelty and declining public support. Domestic support—the SPCA strongly supports the ban, having advocated for years to end greyhound racing in Aotearoa.
In the Department of Internal Affairs’ first departmental report, the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, SPCA, organisation reported that the 2024 to 2025 season recorded 16 race-related deaths—the highest number, all by euthanasia—since the industry was placed on notice. Of those that support the closure of the industry, many submitters—559—specifically mentioned the view that greyhound racing is inheritably dangerous as it results in on-track injuries and high-speed collisions and puts them in harmful circumstances.
Te Pāti Māori supports this bill through to the third reading and the alignment with Te Pāti Māori tikanga, which is kaitiakitanga. As Māori, we are guardians of all living things; ending greyhound racing is a clear act of stewardship. Mana ōrite: every living being has its own whakapapa, tapu, and mana, and greyhounds deserve dignity and humane treatment. This bill addresses systemic animal cruelty. Mana mokopuna: taking action now ensures a better ethical foundation for future generations; our mokopuna will inherit a society that values the life and wellbeing of animals. This bill ensures thousands of greyhounds will be safely rehomed.Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka.
SCOTT WILLIS (Green) (17:49): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in support of this bill, and I also note Cameron Luxton’s point about shifting political wills. I would note that shifting political wills did give women the vote, it did end slavery, and it did give us homosexual law reform. Shifting political wills is something that happens in society and it happens, typically, because society’s values move with the times.
Fortunately, we are moving with the times, and, as my colleague Steve Abel mentioned, greyhounds are gentle, loving animals. The greyhound that I’m most familiar with—Lily—is a gentle, loving animal. She is also not very bright and incredibly lazy, but charming with all that.
We support this bill because it also represents some broad political consensus. It shows a shared concern for animal welfare concerns and a responsible, managed transition for the industry.
We’ve heard what this bill does. It prohibits commercial greyhound racing from 1 August. It establishes the Greyhound Racing Transition Agency to oversee and manage the industry’s closure. It transfers all functions, staff, and responsibilities from Greyhound Racing New Zealand to the new agency. It dissolves Greyhound Racing New Zealand following the ban, with assets and responsibilities shifting to the transition agency, and it requires TAB New Zealand to fund the transition process. What it’s doing is making sure that we do things in a structured and good process. It’s enabling the transition to work because there’ll be a structured wind-down of racing operations, and that’s what I particularly like: the responsible rehoming of greyhounds like Lily to places where they’ll be cared for.
I know that Kieran McAnulty has got that crazy animal up on the floor. I quite like greyhounds, despite their small heads, but they are creatures that sometimes do show a bit of spirit, and I think there’s a lot of space for people who want to have an animal that is fun to have around.
This approach has broad support because it shows that we can have a clear ban with a practical, structured transition plan, and it has got really good recommendations from the ministerial advisory committee. I do thank the Primary Production Committee for all its work on this because it’s balancing welfare priorities with fairness to workers and industry participants. What it will also do is ensure that the industry contributes to closure costs, and so it is showing fiscal responsibility.
Chlöe Swarbrick and the Green Party have consistently advocated for ending greyhound racing. We are very pleased to see this bill where it’s at, and I would like to suggest some areas where we can have some further improvement.
To talk to Cameron Luxton’s point around compensation, we should consider ring-fencing any remaining Greyhound Racing New Zealand funds for retraining and for mental health support. We should strengthen provisions to ensure that greyhounds are rehomed within Aotearoa, rather than exporting them for racing, and I would be very pleased to see that. I think that my colleague Steve Abel may put in an amendment to that point, and these refinements can be progressed through the committee stage.
I also think that there’s opportunity for further constructive engagement. I would like to congratulate the Rt Hon Winston Peters on this bill, and we’ve also heard from the Rt Hon Winston Peters that he is very keen to achieve structural separation of the four big power companies in order to create a fair market under corporate separation rules. It’s fantastic that we can have such agreement across the House, and so I’m really in support of this bill. I do think that we could do more to ensure that we build greater consensus, and so I put all my support behind this because I think we need to enforce corporate separation to drive down electricity prices and—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.
SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (17:54): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too would like to thank my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee—the best committee in the world—but most of all, I’d like to thank greyhound owners, trainers, and racers, whose lives and livelihoods have been for ever changed by this legislation. Thanks for presenting to our select committee. Your stories were heartfelt and real, and we’re very grateful for your contribution.
I reiterate the words of my colleague Steve Abel in respect of the transition agency taking responsibility for the care of both the dogs and the people. I too think that that is really important, and I would strongly urge the Minister for Racing to appoint a fourth member to the Greyhound Racing Transition Agency, which is actually provided for in the legislation—someone who can help facilitate the change for the benefit of all the industry participants. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House is suspended and will resume at 7.30.
Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Good evening, members. When we went for the meal, we were on the second reading of the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. We were on call number eight.
RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) (19:30): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a privilege to take a call on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill as the Labour Party’s spokesperson for animal welfare and as a member of the Primary Production Committee that considered the bill.
Much has been traversed already prior to the dinner break about this bill. We are on the second reading, and so as such, there’s an appropriateness in our speeches tonight to report back on the process undertaken throughout the select committee and the changes that have been made to the bill as a result of that select committee process. Can I begin by first acknowledging the Minister for Racing for putting this bill through the House, the other parties who are supporting it, and particularly the submitters, who spent a considerable amount of time putting submissions together and presenting to the select committee, and also the officials, who did a significant amount of work behind the scenes on the bill in what was a shortened time frame.
There have been longstanding animal welfare concerns and multiple reviews about greyhound racing in New Zealand and around three reviews have been undertaken. Unfortunately, despite some effort from the industry and particularly recently—and I do want to acknowledge the greyhound industry, who have recently undertaken a good number of changes to improve standards within the industry. But despite that, not enough has been done to allow this industry to continue because of the significant harm that it does cause to the greyhounds who participate in greyhound racing.
I do want to spend a bit of time just discussing some of those animal welfare concerns as the spokesperson. A significant number of deaths of greyhounds who participate in racing—and while that number has dropped away, what continues to still be high is the number of dogs who are injured undertaking greyhound racing. The public view of that is that that level of injury is unacceptable. As such, this industry has been put on notice and has now had the decision made that it will need to wind-up.
A couple of years ago, when I sat on the Petitions Committee at Parliament here, we conducted quite a substantial set of hearings into greyhound racing. We heard from industry participants, from the Racing Integrity Board, from the SPCA, and we came to some conclusions. This was back in 2022, and those conclusions, in many cases, still exist. One was around the lack of good data and record-keeping—and, again, there have been some improvements and I want to acknowledge that, but not enough to actually be able to have that good quality robust data so that people can properly understand the rate of injuries where they occur.
One of the things that was mentioned in our report back in 2022, which other commenters have talked about tonight, is the lack of progress on straight tracks. This is something that was noted many years ago, that straight tracks would cause significantly fewer injuries to dogs. Unfortunately, only one straight track has now been invested in and it was being put in place as a trial. That was in Whanganui. Despite repeated calls for the industry to invest and start using straight tracks, that has not occurred across the industry. While there has been some progress, it has been too slow. It has not been enough.
I want to acknowledge those who operate in this industry. Many of those who work as trainers, as greyhound owners, and work within the industry—many of those people have done so for their entire lives. For many people, it is a family legacy, so for many people they have grown up in a home where they had trained and raced greyhounds and they’ve gone on to do that themselves. We could see and hear that from the submitters as they talked about that generational input. What I do want to acknowledge is that for the people operating in the industry, this is a massive change. It’s an enormous change. While it doesn’t technically sit within the legislation, there is, I believe, a role for the new Greyhound Racing Transition Agency to ensure that the industry is properly supported and the people within the industry are properly supported as well.
We heard that loud and clear from submitters. Some of those ways that I think it’s important for people to be supported—there are three particular things. One is around support for people’s mental wellbeing. This is a significant change, and so for some people, they will need that pastoral care and that support.
The second part is around employment support. Many people will be losing their jobs and their livelihoods. We heard people concerned around the ability to pay their mortgages and all of those ongoing costs. People who’ve worked in the industry their entire lives are feeling concerned about how they’re going to find a new job, so there will need to be significant support, in my view, from this agency to support people to transition into other employment. That’s very, very important—particularly when we have a time of high unemployment as well, it’s even more important.
Finally, one of the things that the legislation does is it takes the ownership of the dogs away from the current owners, and the agency will become the formal owners of the dogs. When we discussed this with the agency, many of those dogs will be placed back into the homes that they’ve been with for many, many years. There needs to be the appropriate payments made that can cover the cost of housing the dogs, feeding the dogs, ensuring the dogs get appropriate vet care. All of those things are very important, because without being able to earn income through racing, the ability to pay—and we heard some of the figures from people. It’s thousands and thousands of dollars in weekly costs to ensure that you are properly looking after your dog, so that’s going to be very important.
That’s why some of the changes were made. I acknowledge that the Green Party voted against continuing to allow offshore betting. I do understand why, on a principle point of view, but we had to make a pragmatic decision about that, because allowing that allows money to continue flowing into the TAB that can then be used—and it’s millions of dollars—to support the industry and the people participating within it as it winds down. I do accept the principle here, but pragmatically, in order to make sure people are properly supported throughout this wind-down process and that the dogs are well looked after, that money needs to come from somewhere, and that is the appropriate place.
There have been some other changes as well, which have been mentioned today. Distribution of assets—it’s very important that as each part of the industry is wound down, the money doesn’t go firstly to other codes, and it actually continues to be used for the purpose of the welfare of the dogs and the welfare of the people within this industry.
Importantly, the Racing Integrity Board (RIB) put a very excellent submission in about the need for their jurisdiction to be extended so that any cases currently sitting within the RIB can continue to be prosecuted and followed through.
I just want to take the last couple of minutes of my contribution to talk a little bit about greyhounds and about what needs to happen now. Many people who submitted were concerned that with the ending of the industry, we would see the ending of the greyhound as a breed. Now, I accept that concern. However, I also note that greyhounds have actually existed since before greyhound racing began. Greyhound racing is being wound down in many parts of the world. In parts of the world like America, there’s a huge demand for greyhounds as pets and, in fact, there are examples of dogs being exported as pets through to America.
For those people who fall in love with the greyhound breed, like our colleague Kieran McAnulty, they actually go out seeking these dogs. I’ve got no doubt, because they’re such warm, loving, quirky, lazy dogs, that people will still wish to have them as pets. People will be able to breed them for the purpose of their being pets in New Zealand.
We will now, as a country, be looking to rehome thousands of greyhounds over the next two to three years, because it will take that amount of time to go through that process, because people do need to be vetted. We do need the right types of people to be looking after these dogs. I’ve said in my first reading speech, if I didn’t already have two dogs that I’d brought home—kind of with my husband’s agreement; he would say that they arrived—I would probably end up with a divorce being presented if I ended up with a third dog coming home. But I think it’s on all of us as leaders to be promoting the fantastic pets that greyhounds can be, and I know many people have been doing that.
For the public who are very supportive of this change that we are making to end greyhound racing in New Zealand, I encourage you all to consider adopting one of these beautiful animals and taking it home as your pet. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa) (19:40): Thank you, Mr Speaker, I rise to speak on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. I would like to thank all of those who participated in the select committee process, and I’d like to particularly acknowledge the submitters from the greyhound industry who submitted in person for their very passionate and heartfelt submissions. This is an incredibly tough and emotional bill. Yes, it’s about greyhounds and their welfare, but it’s also about people, breeders, owners, and enthusiasts, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.
One of the select committee amendments regarding the distribution of assets is that we recommended any residual assets held by the transition agency following its disestablishment should be returned back to the greyhound industry participants. So thank you, once again, to those from the industry that submitted. Thank you.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): A five-minute split call. Lemauga Lydia Sosene.
LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere) (19:41): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to make a contribution and to acknowledge the opportunity. I’m not a member of the Primary Production Committee, but I’m really interested in making the contribution to this amendment bill.
We’ve heard that Labour will be supporting this bill—amendment bill—through the second reading. Of course, we heard earlier from the Minister; we thank him for his leadership. We also thank our spokesperson Tangi Utikere, who spoke earlier that this is the right thing to do, in terms of the greyhounds and winding down of the industry. I do want to acknowledge the select committee members in following the process of more than 2,000 submissions. Members shared that it was not an easy process to go through, not just for the greyhounds but also the process; the emotional battle that some of their submitters would have shared in terms of, whilst it’s their work, the emotional toll that it took on them, especially for their livelihoods—like, decades, for some families, in that industry.
The work of the select committee has strengthened the bill and better reflects the interests of animal welfare and the affected industry participants who shared that through the submission process. As I understand, that was needing to be met—to balance the needs of the animals or the rehoming of animals. The Minister spoke earlier, as did our spokesperson, of the toll it took, especially when animals were injured and seeing this year after year—and then there had to be a call made by the Minister. For those people who were involved and were submitting on not just losing their livelihood, what would be the compensation for the next part of the process?
The amendment bill, whilst it winds down the industry in an orderly, humane, and well-managed way, it was important that the select committee members saw the key improvements. I do acknowledge the dedication of those involved in the industry, and I had the opportunity to sit through and listen to industry members, who were very concerned at the swiftness of the legislation and the things that come with it.
Labour has consistently supported action on greyhound welfare, and we’ve also requested the reasonable transition. So, whilst we support the amended bill’s objectives, we will continue to hold this Government to account on compassion, on fairness, and on meaningful support for the workers and the trainers and communities affected by the transition. What is important, and what I recall in listening to the greyhound industry, was the huge concern is how will they be compensated, particularly when you’ve got members of the community who have worked in the industry for many, many years. Some of them will need to find a new job, and so that is not going to be an easy transition—in particular, in this cost of living crisis that we are in.
The creation of the Greyhound Racing Transition Agency will be the dedicated body to oversee the closure, the rehoming of dogs, and fair transition for affected workers and clubs. We, again, want to emphasise that the importance of this was raised through the submission process.
Just as I finish, we will continue to emphasise that the balance must be achieved through this amendment bill, and that animal welfare sits at the centre, and that the bill strengthens prohibition against unlawful destruction to prioritise safe and successful rehoming. I commend this bill to the House.
DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast) (19:45): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this call on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill in its second reading—the bill, of course, establishing roles, responsibilities, and processes for closing the industry.
I want to thank the select committee. I wasn’t part of the select committee that heard this bill, but I want to thank the members for their time spent in looking at it really closely and understanding the issues, and, I understand, dealing with some very emotional and heartfelt submissions and people who came to tell their story as part of the greyhound racing industry. We are concerned about the welfare of the people in the sport as well as the dogs, and I do understand that that has been a topic of much consideration.
There have been a number of amendments made to the bill as part of that process, which I am pleased have gone through the select committee to improve the work that’s been done. It’s hard to find a good way to comment on it and to show a positive way forward, because everybody is feeling slightly fragile by it in the industry. It is a difficult time, but we are at this juncture. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon JO LUXTON (Labour) (19:47): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on the Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill. Labour does support this bill at the second reading, but as the Minister who introduced this bill, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, said, it’s a decision and a piece of legislation that’s been brought to the House but hasn’t been taken lightly.
We’ve heard from other speakers this evening and, as part of the select committee, we heard some really heartfelt submissions from members of the public who are involved in the industry. We’re not talking, necessarily, big corporate companies and businesses, either; we are talking families, family businesses—we are talking generational families that have been working in this industry, right through to the young children. We even heard from some very young submitters talking about their love of the animals and the joy that they take in caring for them and helping with the training of them, as far as they were able to.
This closure and wind-down of this industry is going to happen in three stages. The integral part to this is the set-up of the transition agency; they are going to be central to the successful wind-up of this. As the Minister mentioned earlier tonight, the ministerial advisory group will become the members on their transition board, and I think that’s going to be really important, because they’ve been part of this whole initial process and, therefore, it will provide continuity going through as part of that board overseeing the closure of this industry.
I do think that one of the key roles of the transition agency is going to be not only ensuring the animals are well cared for—that they are rehomed to appropriate homes and that that runs smoothly—but I do think they’re going to have a key role to play in supporting these people who have been part of the industry, who’ve invested time, money, and much of their lives to the success of the industry as they see it. So they are going to play a really key role in the support of people as it is wound down and ended.
We heard from quite a number of people who wanted to submit orally on this piece of legislation. I think there were over 70 oral submissions, but there was certainly a lot of interest. There were over 2,000 written submissions, and I think that’s quite substantial, given that it was a shortened report-back time frame, but it just goes to show that those involved in the sector and also perhaps those that were in support of this piece of legislation felt that they needed to contribute to it and have their voices and their opinions heard.
We have heard that there have been some changes made to the bill as it was introduced initially as part of the process of going through that select committee and hearing from the submitters. There were a number of issues that were raised, and I think that the main core of them was around the compulsory closure and transition of assets to the transition agency. We’ve heard this evening that once everything is all wound up, any assets that remain will be distributed amongst the industry—those that have been involved. I think that initially there was some thinking that they might be distributed amongst the other racing codes, and the decision has been made to change that. It’s only fair and right that they go back to those who have been participating and been putting a lot of money into that industry.
One of the several other things that came through in issues that were raised were compensation for financial loss due to the closure, having the TAB continue to be able to take bets on overseas greyhound races, the exporting of greyhounds, the rehoming of greyhounds, and the timing of the closure of the industry. As I’ve mentioned, there have been significant investments and commitments and expenses and time within the industry. Because of this, some thought that there should be some kind of compensation when the closure goes ahead, whether that be financial or what have you, but these comments and concerns were generally from those that were actually opposed to the bill, and a small number that supported the bill also commented on compensation. But at this point, there were no changes made as far as that goes.
With regard to the issue of the TAB continuing to take bets on overseas greyhound races, there was a bit of conversation around that. There were a lot of submitters who felt that it was a bit hypocritical for people to be able to continue to place bets in this industry, given that it was going to be closed here, but the intent around the legislation was that the wind-up of the industry really was not to be funded by the taxpayers. With regard to the returns that would be garnered from allowing betting on overseas racing, the money from that, as we have heard, will come directly towards supporting that transition so that it is not the taxpayer that ends up having to perhaps foot the bill, and as my colleague Tangi Utikere mentioned, there is a financial cost to winding up this industry.
We heard a bit about the various reviews that have taken place over the years, and I want to acknowledge that there have been some improvements over the years, but, as my colleague Rachel Boyack mentioned, these have taken a very long time and they’ve not necessarily reached what would be the expected standard. The Minister who introduced this piece of legislation talked about the race-related deaths that we have seen from this industry. I note that in the SPCA’s submission, they talked about the 2024-25 season recording the highest number of race-related deaths. There have been 16 race-related deaths or deaths due to euthanasia since the industry was placed on notice, and from what I read it looks as though early data on the 2025-26 season indicated a race-related death trajectory similar to the 2024-25 season. I think that it sort of doesn’t sit well with anybody to think that animals are suffering purely for human entertainment, and so that is a timely reason and consideration as to why this industry needs to be wound up.
I really do want to express my thoughts to those families that are going to be impacted by this. It is their livelihoods, and, as I said earlier, this wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly. It was really hard to hear some of the submissions from those people. There were really heartfelt, genuine, and upset people out there who were submitting on this piece of legislation, and so I think we do need to ensure that they receive the support to get them through this period.
There are a couple of things that I want to finish up on. I want to encourage everybody out there who might be able to rehome a greyhound to really seriously consider doing it. They are lovely and they make a wonderful family pet.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to withdraw and apologise for comments I make around our Zoi in the first reading, because it would be fair to say that I copped a fair bit of flak, not only from Zoi’s owner, Kieran McAnulty, but from others when I made comments—which I won’t repeat—about the lovely Zoi. But I will compensate and make up for that by saying that she is a wonderful, lovely, fun, friendly dog and a perfect pet—just like any other greyhound would be—for a loving, welcoming home. I commend the bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): So you don’t think I should kick you out of the House, then?
Hon JO LUXTON: Well, that’s up to you, Mr Speaker!
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (19:56): I just want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the trainers, the industry players, and, particularly, those from Whanganui who are affected by the closure of this industry. I want to acknowledge those that were involved in building the straight track at the Wanganui Racecourse for its positive impact on the health of greyhounds since that has been opened. I want to acknowledge the challenges that all those affected will face over the coming period, and I want to acknowledge the positive amendments that are being made to the bill as a result of the select committee process. There has been the engagement that we’ve had with industry, the visits that I’ve made to trainers and to the straight track in Whanganui, and those amendments that have been made through the select committee process by my colleagues on this side of the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Primary Production Committee by majority be agreed to.
Amendments agreed to.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Policing Amendment Bill
Legislative Statement
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (19:58): I present a legislative statement on the Policing Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
First Reading
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (19:58): I move, That the Policing 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 27 July 2026.
The Government wants to restore law and order as a priority by supporting Police to carry out its lawful duties to maintain public safety and enable effective policing and enforcement. The bill provides clarity and consistency for front-line police, with the tools needed to effectively manage public safety risks and harms.
The bill amends the Policing Act 2008 in two ways. Part 1 of the bill reaffirms the Police’s longstanding ability to record images and sounds in public places and in private places where police are lawfully present, and to collect personal information for lawful purposes, including intelligence. In my view, the collection of such information is key to Police fulfilling the Government and the public’s expectation that it is efficient and effective in its duty to hold offenders to account and keep New Zealanders safe. Part 2 of the bill expands Police’s temporary road closure powers, currently provided for in the Policing Act, to include a broader range of accessible areas that may be subject to closure and enforcement powers. These provisions expand the temporary area closure powers for vehicle-related offending that are being progressed through the Antisocial Road Use Legislation Amendment Bill that my colleague the Hon Chris Bishop is progressing through the final stages of this House.
I’ll now outline these Part 1 and Part 2 changes in further detail. Part 1 of the bill clarifies Police’s lawful authority to collect information and record images and sounds for the breadth of policing functions and duties. The recent Supreme Court’s judgment in the Tamiefuna case has impacted Police’s ability to collect and use personal information for any or all lawful purposes, including for the purpose of general intelligence. Information collection, including the taking of images, is integral to supporting a wide range of policing functions and activities.
The bill seeks to restore Police’s ability to record images and sounds in public places in circumstances that were not prohibited prior to the judgment. This will ensure that Police has the necessary tools to fight crime and keep New Zealanders safe without intending to unfairly affect their everyday lives. It will also confirm Police’s ability to collect information for intelligence purposes. Police will be able to collect information for intelligence purposes when it’s connected to lawful purposes, functions, and activities of Police. This includes for the safety or the integrity of police officers. I’m clear in my expectation that Police understands the criminal environment and has good intelligence—for example, on organised crime groups and gangs, and I consider the ability to take photographs or video a key tool in ensuring this intelligence is accurate and fulsome.
But the bill also includes a number of important restrictions. The bill seeks to strike a balance between Police’s ability to collect information and avoid intruding into the lives of New Zealanders. Reflecting this, new section 45D(a), inserted by clause 4 of the bill, places two key restrictions on the collection of information for intelligence purposes.
First, Police must not collect information for intelligence purposes unless they consider that the information will or may support the Police in performing a function or carrying out an activity of Police. Second, continuous recording solely for an intelligence purpose is permitted only if it is reasonable to make the recording, and the duration of that recording is no longer than is reasonable in the circumstances. The reasonableness tests are important. They will ensure that Police cannot take continuous ongoing recordings, while still enabling Police to take limited continuous recordings—for example, targeted video clips.
Police’s application of these reasonableness tests will be open to challenge in the courts. These provisions require that Police justify the collection and recording of any information for intelligence purposes against objective tests. This justification will be subject to legal challenge. External monitoring and safeguards governing Police collection of information will be maintained. There are already robust safeguards providing oversight of Police activities. These will be maintained with ongoing oversight by the Privacy Commissioner and strengthened with the establishment of the Inspector-General of Police, which I and other Government Ministers announced in November.
Police will continue to use its internal controls, monitoring, and information systems to maintain obligations under the Privacy Act. Police is continuing to strengthen data control, safety, and protections for the information collected and the image and sound recordings. I expect Police to do this in consultation with external parties such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Ministry of Justice.
The bill strikes a balance to address differing interests. I want to be very clear that this bill will not provide additional powers to Police that could be construed as enabling mechanisms for mass surveillance of the New Zealand public. The bill will not unfairly impact everyday New Zealanders, but it will ensure that Police has the tools needed to prevent, disrupt, and address crime. The bill will reconfirm the lawful basis for Police to undertake routine recording and information collection by clarifying this in statute. Through these changes, the bill will preserve better law and order outcomes for New Zealand and for all New Zealanders.
Part 2 of the bill will broaden the temporary closure powers available to Police to enhance public safety. Part 2 of the bill expands Police’s powers to temporarily close areas in response to anti-social behaviour, public safety risks, or a serious crime incident. The changes will build on and support the Antisocial Road Use Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 that is currently progressing through its final stages in this House, which enables Police to temporarily close an accessible place to traffic, including pedestrians, on new grounds related to antisocial road use. These include street racing, sustained loss of traction, dirt bike gatherings, and siren battles.
Part 2 of the bill will enable Police to close a broader range of areas, not just roads, to manage disorder or emergencies. These include roads, golf courses, river catchments, or public parks. Police will be given extra powers to respond when people do not comply, allowing officers to use a clear, proportionate, and graduated enforcement approach. This will enable police to act quickly to keep the public safe and stop situations from escalating into more serious offending.
Part 2 of the bill provides clarity to front-line police officers about their legal powers, reducing the risk of inappropriate intervention and subsequent legal challenges. This clarity will enable Police to close larger geographical areas to undertake wider scene examinations where circumstances require it. One example of this are crime scenes that were part of the Tom Phillips critical incident, including remote camp sites in the Waikato region, which provides an example of the scale of a geographical area that may need to be temporarily closed in order to allow police officers to complete a subsequent investigation. An example of a smaller-scale temporary closure could be at a public park where there’s a risk of trees falling on members of the public during high winds.
Part 2 changes in the bill do not include private land under this temporary closure power. Police will be enabled to direct vehicles and individuals to leave closed areas. Where people fail to comply with these lawful directions without reasonable excuse, police will have the ability to arrest and judge anyone who fails to stop their vehicle. This includes cars, dirt bikes, and e-scooters. Police will be able to issue infringement notices for people who, without reasonable excuse, fail to comply with the direction to leave or to not enter a closed area. Police will also be able to arrest and charge people who refuse to provide identifying information to issue this infringement.
Finally, Police will also be able to detain and move individuals who, without reasonable excuse, refuse to leave or enter a closed area. This will ensure that police can respond quickly, effectively, and safely in situations where people continue to be non-compliant, and high-risk situations where there is a risk of dangerous staff or the public.
I refer the Policing Amendment Bill to select committee. I move that the select committee consideration of the bill be for a period of four months and one day. The timely passage of this bill will restore and enhance lawful policing practices and provide essential clarity for front-line policing. It will also strengthen operational effectiveness and area closure interventions available to Police.
In closing, I state that the bill is yet another example of this Government’s strong focus on restoring law and order in New Zealand. The bill is a reminder that our focus is on detecting and reducing crime, maintaining public safety, and enabling effective policing. This bill provides a balanced, modern, and necessary update to the Policing Act, and to achieve these Government objectives, I recommend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is the motion be agreed to.
Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (20:08): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Policing Amendment Bill. We are cautiously supportive of this legislation, and we have a number of questions that we are looking forward to the select committee process and to have a variety of submitters there where we can find out more about the detail of this bill.
We acknowledge that there is a requirement for Police to be able to take photographs, but questions in and around who they are photographing—whether they are children or adults—where those images are being stored, and how long those images are being stored for are all questions that are not answered by the legislation on the Table in front of us. Furthermore, the questions that were raised by the Privacy Commissioner when inquiring into this case have still not been fully addressed in this legislation. In that final report we had from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in October 2024, it was clear that the issues that they raised, particularly around the storage of images, had not fully been addressed. It reads: “These same issues may make it difficult for Police to find and use the information [that] they have collected and retained to fight crime and keep communities safe.” And, in particular, I think this is an important paragraph: “The development and implementation of a digital evidence management system was presented to us as a potential solution to these issues. We are concerned that investment in such a system has not proceeded. Had they had that, police would have stored and identified photos and linked them to specific cases, which would have also meant [that] staff would have documented the lawful purpose for taking the photo.”
It is encouraging that Police have gone a long way to addressing the issues that were addressed by both the Privacy Commissioner and the IPCA, but it is important—and it’s noted in this report—that for trust and confidence of the New Zealand public, we have a right to know how long those photographs or video recordings or sound recordings are being held for and where they are being stored. It’s important to know that there is a system in place within Police for this to be done responsibly, and it’s also important for us to know if this is funded, because we know there have been key issues within the Police budget; that there’s been inadequate funding for the development and implementation of a digital evidence management system. We would like to understand if there is work under way and funding under way to enable that system to be introduced alongside of this legislation.
We know that there are parts of the community that have low trust and confidence in police, and we know we want to rebuild in those areas. We think that having communities that are able to report crime, and have trust and confidence in police to do that, means that we resolve crime quicker and we have a good, safer outcome for all of our communities. We do not want the antithesis of that, where communities have mistrust and we do not report crime and we do not resolve crimes and have repeat victims of crime.
New Zealanders have every right to want to know what the safeguards are that the Minister has referred to. They are not specifically detailed in this legislation. We want to know what the role is of the new Inspector-General of Police in making sure that police comply with whatever their safeguards are, and we want to know what the ongoing role of the Privacy Commissioner is: what are the internal checks and balances, and how public will they be? Does the public have a right to know what is being filmed? And, furthermore, we know that police work incredibly hard every day and do the right thing, but there are always instances where some police do not do the right thing. What are the implications if devices are not used for work purposes or if images are not used? Are there implications for that?
We want answers to all of those questions, and we encourage members of the public—and, hopefully, the Children’s Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, and other agencies, as well, will provide information to the select committee so we can fully understand what the implications of this quite sweeping law change means, and how we can reassure New Zealanders that they can have trust and confidence that New Zealand Police will treat these images with the privacy and the respect that they should do.
TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (20:13): When the Minister was introducing this bill, he said this bill will not impact everyday New Zealanders—and maybe he’s right, because this bill is going to impact Māori. I kind of had a bit of a giggle reading the general policy statement of this bill: it says this bill affirms the police’s “longstanding ability to record and images and sounds in public places”. Just because the police have the ability to do something doesn’t mean they have the legal right to do something, and that’s why when this went through the courts and when there was an inquiry from the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA), they found that police officers unlawfully were collecting tens of thousands of images of people on the street, and that half of those photos were of Māori.
How did they find out about that? Because a group of rangatahi in the Wairarapa were being pulled up on the side of the road for no reason other than they looked “out of place” and “suspicious”. This was a 15-year-old boy who was pulled up next to by a police officer—two uniformed police officers in a police car—and was told that he had to have his image taken. Now, if you’re a 15-year-old and a police officer told you that you need to have your photo taken, you wouldn’t know your rights and you wouldn’t question it either, because when we look at someone in a uniform, we trust them. Little did those rangatahi know that that was unlawful. We know that that was happening in the Wairarapa, and that blew the lid off everything, because when the IPCA looked into this issue, they found that the Police were collecting tens of thousands of images.
Now, the bill rationale is that police should be able to collect photos of people, or evidence or sound—record that information in public places for lawful purposes. But what I can see clearly is that those officers that were pulling up kids in the street don’t even know why they were doing it. They didn’t even have a reason for them taking the photos except for—and the only way to explain it is—systemic racism. Because why else would you pull up Māori kids—kids, children, 15-year-olds, 17-year-olds being pulled up and racially profiled by police officers and having their image taken and their fingerprints taken without even the presence of a supervisor, a caregiver, a guardian or an adult, let alone their parents. That is wrong.
And if you don’t believe that, let’s have a look at this: “Police illegally photographing youth, Māori a ‘widespread practice’, investigation finds”. It’s a “widespread practice” because rangatahi Māori look “out of place” or “suspicious”, and “officers have systematically photographed and fingerprinted minors in custody who have yet to be charged, with the joint inquiry contending that in many cases the information was unlawfully kept when it should have be deleted.” And then—guess what—the Police were told to delete those images and they missed the deadline from the IPCA, their conduct authority body, and the Privacy Commissioner of the country told them to delete the images and they missed the deadline. I have to say, if you want to talk about trust and confidence in the Police, how about we start with the Police listening to the law that they enforce?
This is why people in New Zealand were and are still so upset at the findings of the McSkimming report: because police officers, of all people, cannot act as if they are above the law. Because you are enforcing the law, you have to hold yourself to the highest standard—and here they are breaking the law. And rather than the Government actually following the recommendations, which say Police were told to tighten up their practice, and, instead, rather than tightening up their practice and protecting children, they’re changing the law to make it legal for the police to collect whatever pictures and whatever sounds that they want to collect in a public setting. That is surveillance. What this bill is enabling is widespread surveillance, and the impact will disproportionately hit Māori, because half of those photos that the police had on their devices were Māori. How can you deny systemic racism is a thing when you’ve got this evidence right in your face? Random kids not breaking the law—“suspicious” and “out of place”. That’s the systemic racism within the Police that we keep talking about.
TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (20:18): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Policing Amendment Bill on behalf of ACT. Now, as the Minister of Police has outlined, this bill does clarify and expands the police’s power to collect, record, and use information, including images and sounds, for lawful policing purposes. It also broadens the police’s powers, as the Minister said, to close roads and some public areas in response to antisocial or unsafe activity.
ACT is going to be supporting this in the first reading through to select committee, but our support is conditional on ensuring that there are strong privacy protections and safeguards against mass surveillance powers. I’m looking forward to interrogating this bill in the select committee and, obviously, hearing from submitters. We want to make sure the police do have the powers and the tools that they need to keep the community safe. However, there are clear limits, and there needs to be clear accountability. Our ongoing support will be conditional on ensuring that there is strong statutory privacy safeguards; clear thresholds for intelligence collection, and I think the Minister talked a little bit about how he sees that; independent oversight and audit mechanisms; and ensuring there are limits on the retention and secondary use of the data collected, because, obviously, as we’ve heard, some issues have been identified with previous police protection.
ACT does want to make sure that Kiwis can feel safe in their homes, on the streets, and in their communities, and we want to make sure that we give the police the tools, with the proper safeguards, to make sure that they can do their jobs, clearly. While we will be supporting this bill to select committee, we look forward to digging into the issues and making sure we are setting this up in a way that’s actually sensible, proportionate, and balanced. Again, ACT is committed to fixing what matters and making sure we deal with crime—safer communities—but we’ve also got to make sure we have the protections and freedoms in place for New Zealanders. With that, I commend the bill to the House.
Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Police) (20:21): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Policing Amendment Bill, and I would like to acknowledge, first of all, that New Zealand First has always had a foundation, pillar principle around protecting community and country. This is about putting New Zealand and New Zealanders first as part of our main policy positions around law and order.
I would like to de-emotionalise this speech to some extent and talk about when we talk about police in this House. We’ve seen emotional responses around policing as a machine. Policing is 10,500 individual sworn police officers. They are individuals who take their job seriously. They swear an oath that they will without favour or affection, malice or ill will, uphold the laws of New Zealand, and every individual police officer takes that oath seriously every day they go to work. Whatever powers we bestow on those individual police officers, they take seriously. They uphold the law and, when an individual police officer does not act in accordance with their duties and obligations, they are held as accountable as any other individual.
We just heard today—I’m quoting media articles—that police were told to tighten up their practice. That is exactly what this legislation is doing. It is taking out of common law practice and putting into legislation a process by which these images can be obtained, managed, and secured, and that policing will be accountable to those practices.
I’m old enough to recall vividly, when I joined the Police, the first electric typewriter being delivered to Papakura police station. We didn’t have tools, we didn’t have technology, and we’ve had to, over the decades, respond to changing technologies. We are now in a society where we are under surveillance. It is the reality of our lives: every shop, every street, every red camera light, every speed camera. We have acknowledged that surveillance exists as part of our everyday life, and quite frequently we volunteer our images to be part of social media platforms. We are constantly under surveillance to some extent. This piece of legislation is recognising that surveillance is a core tool for police to do their job. Obtaining images is part of that function. Understanding intelligence, understanding what is out there, who is doing what, and analysing that information is part of an investigation process. That is critically important when we are dealing with an organised crime network and criminal activity that is moving faster than police can under the law. They are doing more harm than we’ve ever seen before, and they have more tools than we’ve ever known them to have before. Giving police more tools, better technology, and clarifying the rights and reasons under which they can obtain images is common-sense practice.
Now, when we talk about obtaining these images and when we talk about the evidence that they’re going to gather and what they’re going to do with those images, let’s think for an instant about the victim who has just been robbed, the home invasion, the robbery, the assaults, the violence. They deserve some effort from police to ensure the right people are held accountable for the harm they cause, and giving police tools to do that is common sense. The Policing Act refers to the functions of policing. They are required to keep the peace, maintain public safety, do law enforcement, crime prevention, community support and assurance, national security, participate in policing activities outside New Zealand, and emergency management. Enforcement of law is one of those functions, and detection of criminal activity is part of that enforcement of law. It is only reasonable that, as a Government, we ensure there is clarity around using the tools that are important for investigative capability, and that is what this bill is trying to do.
Let’s think about the police not as a machine but as 10,500 individuals dedicated to upholding the law and doing the very best in trying circumstances. For that reason, we commend this bill to the House.
RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (20:26): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I feel like I’ve gone back in time because, between 2020 and 2023, I believe, I can recall having the same contribution to the same issue with the last Government.
Fifty thousand records with pictures; 53 percent of those were Māori. Many of those were rangatahi. I was getting calls in my office about rangatahi being pulled over on the streets because they looked out of place or suspicious. The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) and the Privacy Commission found that the police were illegally photographing young people and adults, with rangatahi Māori being targeted at extreme rates. What this particular bill looks like is that the IPCA and the Privacy Commission found it was illegal. It was illegal for them to capture those particular images. What I find in this House—and it’s absurd that we’re moving this particular bill, because it feels like, now, we’re going to legalise that illegal activity.
Minister, I am disturbed by this because, like I said, of the personal interaction I had with many rangatahi who were filmed, and I’m talking as young as 14; between 14 and 17. Fifty-three percent of those photographed have been Māori, of the 50,000 that were recorded. This is why there will be trust issues. This is why there will be issues in regard to this piece of legislation, because rangatahi and Māori are already profiled in that way because they look out of place and suspicious. Incarceration rates have increased. Māori make up 53 to 54 percent of the male prison population. Our wāhine Māori—I don’t have to give out those particular numbers, because we’re the most incarcerated indigenous peoples, in terms of women in incarceration rates, in the world.
What this is telling me is that there is a huge concern that we have—that Te Pāti Māori has—with this piece of legislation, because I had the same conversation with the last Government, and the IPCA and the Privacy Commission found it absolutely illegal to be capturing those particular photographs. I agree with my colleague here from the Greens, because they did miss the deadline in regard to deleting those particular images. I’ve just heard a speech from New Zealand First saying that they need the tools to be able to arrest people who have burgled and people who have attacked others. They already have the tools to do that, but what Māori and the public here in Aotearoa need to know is whether we have the confidence that police will use the discretion that they had to ensure that our people, and I’m talking about te iwi Māori, are not racially profiled in this particular bill. What levers do you have in this bill? I look forward to what the discussions are in the select committee—
Carl Bates: Will you be there?
RAWIRI WAITITI: Carl, this was well before you came into Parliament. You were still watching me on TV, wishing you were here!
This is a serious conversation. You didn’t receive those phone calls; I did. I had conversations with people in Taupō, conversations with rangatahi in Auckland, conversations with the very rangatahi that my colleague from the Green Party talked about. They called our offices to ensure that they had a voice on this particular legislation. It was illegal in the last Government, and what we’re saying is we’re now going to make it legal in this particular bill. I find it very, very disturbing—I find it very, very disturbing. But I trust, Minister, that you will make the right decision and ensure the safety of our tamariki, ensure the safety of our rangatahi when they are minding their own business walking down the street, but if they look out of place or suspicious, that they are not going to get their photograph taken and it’s not going to be stored on police phones.
There were thousands of police phones that have recorded those rangatahi. They weren’t even put into a central database, so how do we manage the data that’s coming in? How do you manage that? Many of them had them on their phones. They were taking the photographs of those tamariki and those rangatahi. That was disturbing—it was disturbing and traumatic for our communities.
I hope that we’ve learnt from the past and I hope that we’ve learnt from the inquiries of the IPCA and the privacy commission. I hope that we’ve learnt from that, but I hope that this particular legislation isn’t about making that illegal practice at that particular time legal for the police to be able to use their discretion, and if somebody looks out of place or suspicious that they’re able to take their photographs. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (20:31): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and I acknowledge the member Rawiri Waititi for his passionate contribution on the bill. I’m also welcoming—finally—a member of Te Pāti Māori turning up to the Justice Committee, because that hasn’t happened for 2½ years of this term of Parliament, so I would look forward to that finally taking place.
Tamatha Paul: Point of order.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Mr Rutherford, that extends also to people turning up or otherwise, so just be wary around those comments, please.
TOM RUTHERFORD: This bill amends—
Tamatha Paul: Point of order, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): If it’s to deal with what I’ve just dealt with, then I’ve already cautioned against talking about members not turning up.
Tamatha Paul: So he doesn’t have to do anything different for misleading the House?
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): It’s a caution at this stage.
TOM RUTHERFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The changes enabled by this legislation will strengthen police’s ability to detect and prevent crime, and ultimately hold offenders accountable, which in turn will make New Zealand a safer place. We on this side of the House put victims first. We want to ensure we have a safer country for everybody across New Zealand, and that’s why we are bringing about these legislative changes. I commend the bill to the House.
CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (20:32): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a serious matter and I take note of other people’s contributions to this in the House. The member who’s just resumed his seat, Tom Rutherford, talked about victims. I think with this particular bill, I don’t think anyone would disagree with the fact that the police have to have some ability to take photos and videos. Of course, that will form part of their evidence. But what we need to make sure that we’re not doing with a bill like this is creating more victims by making wide powers that encourage the incorrect collection or unfair collection of information that will impinge on people’s privacy.
I think this bill does need changes to ensure that there is sufficient taking into account of very serious matters. We know that there’s been a joint inquiry into police photographing members of the public. There is a significant number of recommendations in that report and many of those are not reflected in the drafting of this bill. One of the things that is specifically recorded on that bill is the concerns around taking photographs of children. This bill, as far as I can see, doesn’t address that, and that is a serious consideration that must be addressed by the select committee.
Reading this bill, it appears that there’s almost any situation where the police could legitimately say that they were doing something adjacent to their work that would allow them to take photos or video recordings of people from a public place and, in certain circumstances, from private properties as well. This doesn’t specifically exclude that that might be, in some instances, into someone’s home. These are serious questions that the select committee will need to be asking when this bill comes to select committee to make sure that an inadvertent outcome of this bill isn’t creating more victims of police action.
Now, this isn’t, as some members have indicated, anything to do about being pro or anti the police. We know that the police have an important job to do. We know that they need clarity in their work. But there are serious concerns around what this bill will actually implement. There is no mention in this bill of the storage of these visuals and how long these audio recordings or photographs will be stored and how they’ll be stored. There’s no mention of excluded age groups in this bill. Does it cover children? Does it cover people who may be children but look like adults? We don’t know. It isn’t specified in this bill.
There’s very little detail on how this will actually be implemented and the training that police will get. Further to that, if you look at the regulatory impact statement, even though this issue has been one that has been around for a while—and it’s from the Tamiefuna case that was in the Supreme Court of New Zealand—there is specified a lack of consultation. When Te Puni Kōkiri was asked about this, they raised concern about the lack of consultation, including with iwi, hapū, and Māori, and issues around the social licence that police will have to undertake their activities in this bill. These are valid concerns raised by organisations who have said that there hasn’t been enough consultation on this bill.
I have listened to the Minister’s speech and read the associated materials, and I do think that it is important to say that what the Supreme Court did is not change the law from what it was. They interpreted the existing law in a way that said that the current practice of the police was not in accordance with that. So this bill doesn’t change the situation back to the status quo; it changes the status quo, and it gives the police additional rights that they didn’t have in statute, that they now will have as a result of this passing of this law. We need to be careful because these rights are broad. We don’t want a situation where we have an Orwellian society of mass surveillance where there is unreasonable collection of personal data which is then, in some instances, used to charge people with offences. There isn’t enough detail in this bill, to date, that should assure the House that that situation will not arise.
I look forward to participating in the Justice Committee to make sure that this bill doesn’t create more victims than there currently are and make sure that there is clarity and not uncertainty for our police officers, who we acknowledge do a very difficult job under very difficult circumstances and do require clear direction from this House into how they should conduct these activities. So there are a lot of questions still to be answered around this bill, and I look forward to discussing those at select committee.
CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (20:37): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We heard earlier that technology that police have used over the years has changed somewhat. Indeed, my great-grandfather was the last police officer to direct traffic down the road on Lambton Quay before the traffic lights were installed there. Mr Speaker, if you’ll indulge me, two weeks ago I had the opportunity—the privilege—of being present when the 393 Keven Mealamu MNZM recruit wing graduated at the Police College. It is those recruits that are going to be going through a very different journey of technology over the years to come.
This bill ensures that they will have the tools needed to respond to incidents like street racing and like dirt bike racing in public parks. It provides the clarity for those graduates as they go on their policing journey. It’s part of our focus on restoring law and order in this country and, therefore, I commend it to the House.
GLEN BENNETT (Labour) (20:39): I have on good authority that the previous Labour speaker, Camilla Belich, her ancestor—her great-great-great-grandfather—was actually the first police officer in New Zealand. I just heard that as she—it was just whispered in my ear, but that’s beside the point.
Carl Bates: You were about to say, “As she was leaving the House.”
GLEN BENNETT: I was about to say—and I was very diligent in my abiding by Standing Orders.
As we look and listen this evening, it is good to have the contest of ideas. Although there were a few moments of heckling and interjections which I thought were unhelpful, the majority of contributions in this debate have been, I think, what this place is about: that contest of ideas and that pushing and shoving and pulling apart, which then of course will go to select committee where we can have a fulsome engagement.
It was interesting to hear from, for example, one of the Government parties, the ACT Party, Todd Stephenson, talking about ensuring that this bill has strong protections around privacy and that the safeguards are in place, because we agree—we need to be looking at this, pulling it apart. The reason, as I was looking at why we’d allow it to go to select committee, is that as I looked at the regulatory impact statement, I realised it was a piece of legislation that has been done pretty quick and fast. As I’ve looked through the regulatory impact statement, there has not been the engagement that would help to inform the genesis of this legislation in a way that can actually go and move beyond this House. For it to go to select committee is very important for people to actually engage—for the experts, for members of the public, for those who are impacted the most.
It is disappointing, and we understand, but it is disappointing that yet again it’s not going to get a full 6-month process in select committee—only four months and one day; just that magic number one, four plus one, which means we cannot debate that motion, unfortunately.
As I look through the regulatory impact statement, I see that—
Carl Bates: I’m sure you’d make an invigorating contribution.
GLEN BENNETT: Well, I want to talk, Mr Bates, around the regulatory impact statement, which I’ve been reading. It’s around the limitation and constraints on the analysis that was done. That’s why we need to spend time debating it in this House but also taking it to select committee. It was due to the pace at which policy approvals are being sought. There has been no time for public consultation to test the proposals and incorporate feedback.
Then we go on, and there’s talk around the Ministry of Justice and some of their reflections and thoughts, as I flick back to this. The Ministry of Justice, in the regulatory impact statement, talk about how they were “concerned that the proposals do not provide sufficient assurances that there will be clear and transparent protections to ensure that Police’s collection, retention, and use of personal information remains proportionate to the actual policing value of that information.” Then it goes on to talk about the Privacy Commission, which several speakers, who have grave concerns about this legislation, have talked about.
As has been said, this is a piece of legislation that is controversial, that is concerning, but we also understand that we live in a world now where everyone has access to a phone, has access to a video player on that phone. We need to consider, as the the Hon Ginny Andersen said in her contribution earlier on about—we need to understand how these images, these videos are being gathered, how long they’re being stored for, where they’re being held. People want to trust the system. I think the majority of people do want to have faith in the system. That’s why we need to have very transparent and clear rules around this.
Finally, I just want to come to the last part of the regulatory impact statement I was looking at. Actually, one part which we haven’t spoken a lot about, which the Minister of Police did mention, of course, was Part 2 of the bill, which is around expanding the temporary road closures. I do note that on page 66 of the regulatory impact statement, it talks about the concern for disabled people and the impact that could have. Then it also goes to talk about the fact that the consultation hasn’t been done with Māori. The lens of Te Tiriti o Waitangi hasn’t been put over this. When we look at this, Māori are more impacted and need to be consulted and need to be engaged in this process.
We will allow it to go to select committee, but we have some serious concerns.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (20:44): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On this side of the House, we live in the real world and we listen to the real problems of real people, and we know that what’s important is for people to feel safe, for my neighbours in Takanini to feel safe, for us to create a situation where there’s less victims of violent crime. The way we do this, simply put, is by backing our police to do a good job. I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Policing Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 102
New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 21
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Referral to Select Committee
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor) (20:45): The question is, That the Policing Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Bill referred to the Justice Committee.
Instruction to Select Committee
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (20:45): I move, That the Policing Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 27 July 2026.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.
Ayes 68
New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.
Noes 55
New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.
Motion agreed to.
Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill
Legislative Statement
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Corrections) (20:47): on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I present a legislative statement on the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Second Reading
Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Corrections) (20:47): on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I move, That the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
This bill reforms the way that transport is governed, planned, and delivered in Auckland and marks the most significant change to transport arrangements in Auckland since the amalgamation of Auckland’s local authorities in 2010. There is a strong case for governance reform. This Government is investing across Auckland to improve transport connectivity and drive network performance. Major projects like the City Rail Link, Northwest Busway, and Eastern Busway will enhance Auckland’s rapid transport network and act as catalysts for productivity and economic growth. We have also passed legislation to enable time of use charging, and Auckland is expected to be the first city to introduce a scheme.
While all these initiatives matter, it is also important to ensure that governance, planning, and delivery systems are well placed to deliver continued progress. Public confidence in transport decision-making in Auckland is low, with Aucklanders not feeling that their voices are heard when transport decisions are being made. A recent survey showed that only 36 percent of people have confidence in transport decisions made by Auckland Transport.
This bill aims to address two problems with current arrangements that are holding back the performance of the network. The first is a lack of democratic accountability. Since the amalgamation of Auckland’s councils in 2010, Auckland Council’s elected members have had a limited role in transport decision-making. Most local transport responsibilities have instead been carried out by Auckland Transport, a council-controlled organisation (CCO) with an unelected board. Auckland Council has been challenged to hold Auckland Transport to account. The second is a lack of long-term aligned transport planning between Auckland Council and the Crown. Duplicative planning processes happen across transport agencies without a coherent overarching direction.
Key features of the bill: the bill intends to restore democratic accountability by returning most local transport functions to the elected members of the Auckland Council. If Aucklanders feel the transport system isn’t working for them, or if they disagree with decisions made by their elected members, they will know who to hold to account.
Auckland Transport will be reformed into a transport CCO focused on providing public transport services in line with strategic direction set by the Auckland Council. This focus is essential, given the role that high-quality public transport plays in improving accessibility, reducing congestion, and increasing urban density. Within Auckland Council, the governing body will be responsible for transport policy and planning. Local boards will regulate specific local activities on local roads in their area to help ensure that relevant decisions can happen close to the community. The governing body will be responsible for regulating arterial and city centre roads. These changes mean that Auckland Council’s elected members will be directly accountable to the public for transport decisions that affect the daily lives of Aucklanders.
The bill will also establish the Auckland regional transport committee: a new joint central government and Auckland Council structure. Ministerial appointees and Auckland Council elected members will work together to prepare a clear and durable 30-year transport plan for Auckland. This plan will set out the strategic direction for transport in Auckland based on establishing alignment between Government and Auckland Council. It will look at making the most of the existing transport network, efficiently maintaining the network and sequencing of new investments.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to submit on the bill and share their views. Now the bill is back in the House, I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and thank them for their time and contribution to the development of this bill.
I’d also like to extend a particular thanks to Mayor Wayne Brown and Auckland Council for their engagement with Government as we have progressed these reforms, and for their submission. The bill proposes major changes to the transport system in Auckland, many of which will depend on Auckland Council to deliver.
It goes without saying that I’d also like to thank all organisations and all individuals who submitted on the bill. The committee received a total of 47 submissions. The diverse range of perspectives shared by submitters has been integral to getting this bill to this stage today.
I understand that most submitters welcome the introduction of a 30-year transport plan for Auckland, a majority supported a decision-making role for local boards, and that submitters were divided over whether transport delivery functions best sit with Auckland Council or an arm’s-length transport CCO. Many submissions provided invaluable feedback, spanning the design of the new transport CCO model, the mechanisms for empowering local boards with transport responsibilities, and the bill’s transitional provisions. Their input has strengthened the bill and will help improve how the reforms work on the ground.
I appreciate the committee’s careful consideration of the bill and thoughtful report to the House. The committee has recommended further refinements to the bill, which the Government agrees with. The full recommendations can be found in the committee’s report, but there are some that I’d like to draw to the House’s attention.
I welcome the committee’s addition of a requirement for the draft and final 30-year transport plan for Auckland to be provided to the public in an accessible format, to be inclusive of those with disabilities. The committee has proposed sensible amendments to clarify the split of public transport activities between Auckland Council and the reformed transport CCO. These provide for Auckland Council to specify the activities that the transport CCO must perform in order to carry out its function in providing public transport services.
I also welcome the changes the committee has proposed to the mechanism by which Auckland Council can make transport by-laws under the Land Transport Act 1998. The committee has proposed that the governing body and a simple majority of local boards should be able to make a transport by-law, which is a more efficient process than what the bill had previously.
The committee has proposed several amendments to the Auckland roading classification framework that will be used to specify what roads come under the decision making of the governing body and local boards, respectively. These will improve the framework’s workability by fine-tuning the existing definitions of roads and adding new road categories. This will include “Eden Park precinct” roads that will be regulated by the governing body. This change reflects the regional and national importance of Eden Park and aligns with decisions taken by our Government to promote the use of Eden Park for a wide range of events.
The committee has also listened to feedback from Auckland Council and revised the bill’s mechanism for shifting assets and other relevant matters from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council. This change will help ensure a smooth transition. Auckland Council will be permitted to appoint up to five members of the interim board of the transport CCO. The interim board will govern the transport CCO during the six-month transition period, and this change by the committee aligns the number of interim directors with the number of permanent directors post transition. The changes recommended by the committee improve the bill while preserving the intent of the reforms, and I’m grateful for the care and expertise the committee has brought to this work.
I’m looking forward to hearing others’ input on the bill. Again, I thank the committee members for their hard work on the bill and all those who submitted on the bill. I acknowledge your valuable contribution to the parliamentary process.
Overall, this bill is about putting Aucklanders back at the centre of Auckland’s transport decisions and creating an enduring transport partnership between Auckland Council and the Crown. This will lay the groundwork for a more efficient, more responsive, and more future-focused transport system. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to the committee of the whole House debate.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (20:56): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. I rise as Labour’s transport spokesperson to provide our support for the second reading of this bill. I’m a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that this bill went to, and the other team player from our team is Dr McLellan, and I know that we were able to spend some time considering the submissions that were received on this bill.
The Minister of Corrections is right. He says that there were 47 submissions and 14 oral submissions. The interesting point within that bundle is that there was an Auckland Council submission that I have to say was very, very useful because it was a coordinated submission that was, effectively, submitted on behalf of the council; on behalf of Auckland Transport; on behalf of the governing body; on behalf of the local boards; and Houkura, the Independent Māori Statutory Board, as well. It was an easy point of reference in one place to understand the formal position of Auckland Council.
I also want to acknowledge colleagues on that select committee and the officials who also worked very closely with Auckland Council, which the committee—ably lead by Mr Foster—was very, very happy to have happen. I think it actually meant that it was able to be a bill that could save a bit of time in terms of making sure that the officials were able to spend time with Auckland Council, not necessarily to all align on the same view, but it meant that there was a little bit more collegiality for them through to the committee.
The Minister is right in that this is a piece of legislation that puts Aucklanders back in the centre of transportation decisions. The issue, of course, is that the National-ACT Government back in 2009 got it wrong when they didn’t turn their mind to doing that in the first place. It means that many, many years later, we have to come back after this sort of experiment gone wrong to realise that that was a mishap that now needs to be sorted. That’s no news to the Parliament—I know in the first reading my colleague the Hon Carmel Sepuloni touched on that. She was a member of Parliament at the time, and so no doubt she is very attuned and aware of that.
This is a piece of legislation that really does bring Auckland, in terms of the transportation arrangements for decision making, into line or into a form of consistency with the way in which other councils around the country function. You yourself, Madam Speaker, will be very familiar with how that all works in your particular neck of the woods. We all know that Auckland is our largest city in this country, and anyone who lives there, anyone who visits there will understand that the transportation needs of our largest city are very, very different; very unique to any other city in Aotearoa New Zealand. With those challenges come, I guess, opportunities to try and do things a little bit better. What this does is it shakes up the system—albeit bringing it into line with what exists elsewhere around the country for councils—to ensure that localism, local democracy, local decision-making around transportation matters actually goes back to local decision-makers, and the accountability also sits with them for the decisions that they make as well.
What is clear, is that what has been in place, up to this point, has led to a crossroads where there are challenges for Auckland, but also challenges in terms of the relationship between Auckland decision-makers and central government in trying to align a long-term vision and a long-term plan around what the transportation needs are around that.
I do want to acknowledge Mayor Wayne Brown and thank him for what seems to be doing the Government’s, sort of, work in terms of getting this issue on to the agenda. That relationship is really, really important, and one of the things that we heard through the select committee process was the importance of having this 30-year long-term transport plan that would meet the needs of Auckland now but also meet the needs of Auckland into the future.
What the Minister has touched on is an example of submitters coming to the Parliament and saying, actually it’s great that there is a 30-year transport plan that would be required, but given our experience, from time to time, particularly from those in the disability sector—this is what we’ve heard from them—they found it difficult to engage with a plan that was so important. So that accessibility piece of work that the committee has done and has recommended as a change is going to make this more user-friendly. Why is that important? Well, it’s important because it means that the connection between those decision makers in Auckland and those Aucklanders who will be day-to-day users of the services that will be delivered under this 30-year long-term transport plan, will have a stronger connection in terms of meeting the various needs that exist out in the community.
For us, this is a bill about localism, it’s about local democracy, but also accountability that flows from that as well. One of the changes that the committee did think about was this notion of the new Auckland regional transport committee being stood up, but, actually, how those individuals would be appointed. At the moment, in terms of the mayor’s responsibilities, how the bill originally was drafted indicated that the mayor would just appoint whoever those individuals were. Now, the mayor, as we know—well, mayors throughout New Zealand—do have some powers where they can appoint committee chairs, where they can set the committee structure; clearly, in this circumstance, there’s no need to set the committee structure, but it is around the appointment. What the committee has recommended is: before the Mayor of Auckland seeks to exercise those powers, they are required to consult specifically with the governing body before making the appointment. We did think about whether it should be the governing body that should make that appointment, but where we landed was actually one of comfort to reflect the current practice for Auckland Council as to how they currently approach things, which is pretty important.
This local democracy is not just a buzzword, it’s something that this bill will actually deliver on for local boards, because, as we know, the Auckland set-up is very, very different. It’s the only set-up in the entire country where there are local boards—not community boards but local boards that exist. And so what this bill does is it provides some more autonomy to local boards to make decisions around parking, make decisions around the operation of local roads, to make other decisions in relation to local transportation needs in local board areas. I think that giving that autonomy back to local boards—which should have really happened in the first place when the National-ACT Government in 2009 ran foul when they didn’t quite get it right—is where this particular bill has landed. However, the by-laws process will still require of local boards a simple majority.
Before the bill came to the select committee, it required the governing body to propose a by-law in the traffic space and to have every single other local board agree with that, unless the governing body could somehow demonstrate that the approval being withheld by a local board was unreasonable. Now, the committee turned its mind to that and said, “Well, actually where is the threshold? Where is the standard in terms of what is unreasonable and what is not?” And so where the select committee has landed on a change is, actually, let’s just have a simple majority of local boards endorsing that and therefore the by-law can follow.
There are a number of other changes that the select committee has made. One important point is around the focus on transition and the various responsibilities, because what we’re going to see here is a mass level of transition from Auckland Transport, in many respects. Although, Auckland Transport will remain as a council-controlled organisation that would have responsibility for public transport per se, but the resource, staffing, those components would be transferred across to Auckland Council to undertake the residual responsibilities that exist as a result of the change. I know that Auckland Council, the Public Service Association, and Auckland Transport were very keen on ensuring that those transitional arrangements were workable for employees, that they were manageable, and that there were also the adequate protections in place to protect employees. That’s never an easy feat, but where the committee has landed is that we believe that those protections do exist and the expectation is that that would be followed through.
The Labour Party is very happy and comfortable to support this. It is sorting out the error of the previous National-ACT Government in 2009, but we’re happy to deliver on this change.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (21:06): Kia ora. The Green Party has long held that decisions are best made at the level at which they affect people—that is a key principle of ours. If we want good transportation decisions, then they need to be made at the level at which people are affected. So we opposed the aspect of the super-city, referred to by my colleague Tangi Utikere, at the time it happened, which was around that first term of the National-ACT Government, 2008 to 2011, that amalgamated the city, in a way, and set up all these council-controlled organisations.
I think the changes in this bill will bring about better democratic accountability to the people of Auckland for transportation decisions, and I think that will be a good thing. However, it’s not going to go so far as to truly implement localism when it comes to transport, because central government has far more power over local government than it probably should when it comes to local transport decisions. And we saw that with the speed rule that was brought in by Simeon Brown, which was actually totally opposed by the Auckland Council, and the Auckland Council stood up against that. Of course, central government still imposed that ridiculous rule, which forced a whole lot of nonsensical speed changes—which look worse and worse all the time in the context of a fuel crisis—where they literally forced speed limit increases on streets around schools. If children are trying to walk and cycle to school, they’re going to be in a speed environment where if they get hit by a moving vehicle that’s legally travelling at the speed limit, it will be more likely to severely injure and kill them. Hence why so many people are afraid to let their children walk and cycle to school and instead jumping in the car, which leads to worse congestion, higher costs, higher fuel costs, more pollution, and all the rest of it. So we would like to see more localism, which would include giving more power to local communities to determine what speed limits are appropriate on their local streets.
I should mention the wonderful Transport and Infrastructure Committee has done very good work on this. I do respect the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I think it’s one of the better committees, particularly because we have such a good chair—Andy Foster—and I feel all the members of that committee are very constructive. I did not have the pleasure of being the permanent member of the committee for the entirety of this bill. It was ably covered by my colleague Celia Wade-Brown, former mayor, long-term city councillor in Wellington and now Green MP, who is also a big enthusiast for transport policy, so it was excellent that she covered some of it. She’ll be able to talk more to some of the submissions because I wasn’t there to hear them all. But some of the changes that were made by the committee, I think, significantly improved the bill.
We initially supported the bill to select committee, and we said that it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There are some potential benefits and also some risks and downfalls, and I think that requiring the mayor to consult with the governing body for appointments to the regional transport committee is very good. I also think the change that says that getting a majority of local boards on board with a by-law is sufficient—it’s a good change.
The reality is that New Zealand is going through a period of transformation, and it has been for 20 to 30 years. We spent the second half of the 20th century banning inner city apartments in Auckland and many other cities and building motorways and kind of just really pushing out urban sprawl and forcing everyone to own cars, which turned out to be a really bad idea, especially now that we’re in a fuel crisis.
We could have a much more energy-efficient transport system which means it costs less money, we import less fuel, we have less pollution, fewer crashes and deaths and serious injuries, and we’d have more people more able to make their short local trips on foot or by bike or by scooter or by public transport, and all of that just improves the liveability of the city. It’s literally a win-win, win-win-win. It’s like something that just makes pure economic sense and is good for people and is good for the environment and is good for productivity. As one so passionate about transport—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can the member come back to this particular bill.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The relevance to this bill is that the right decisions to make our transport system more efficient are inevitably a change, and there’s always a constituency for the status quo and against change. Change is always difficult, even when everyone’s going to benefit. One thing that I think will come of this change, of giving the council more ability and control over the long-term transport plan and more—you know, we saw Auckland Transport not implementing things like bus lanes and bike lanes even when the elected members wanted that. When central government and local government were all aligned and this is what people kept voting for, we still had a council-controlled organisation that was, basically, accountable to no one and not implementing the things that people actually wanted. It’s because they were afraid of bad headlines and because, at any time, anywhere in the world where you take away on-street car parks and put in something like a bike lane or a bus lane, which actually moves more people in the public space, there will be objections. But what has been demonstrated time and time again is that there’s majority support for that.
Every city that has implemented these changes, the politicians who have led on it get re-elected and re-elected and re-elected, because even though there’s a small number of people who are unhappy with it—and they’re very, very loud and overrepresented in the mainstream media, and some people shy away from that—the truth is that the majority benefit. And over time, people really come to embrace it because it just works better.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can the member please refer to this bill.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: This bill is about transport governance—it’s about transport governance and where that lies—and, specifically in Auckland, people have tried to vote for improvements to public transport and walking and cycling for a long time and, believe it or not, it’s lagged behind public opinion. And now that we have a fuel crisis, we’re going to need far more energy-efficient options for transport so that people can keep moving and getting around and not have to spend an ever-larger portion of their household budget to do so.
As I said earlier, this bill in and of itself cannot solve all the problems and there will be a period of transition once it passes into law. There will be a period of time in which there’s disruption, disruption to the people working in these organisations, and the new systems will get put in place, and we will wait to see the outcome of that. But until central government really, truly empowers cities to take the transport budget, which is really due to them—because the road user-charges and fuel excise duty is collected from regions and then central government holds it and decides where it can be spent. That’s the way our current transport budget works. And then, of course, they top it up with the Crown funding.
But, really, if we gave cities more control over where that money went, I think we can trust them to make much better decisions than central government.
Sam Uffindell: Not Wellington.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Absolutely, Wellington would make better decisions. What Government members are pointing out is that they are not actually supportive of localism when it comes down to it. They campaign on it, but they don’t do it. They’re all about consolidating money and power in central government hands when they hold it and then forcing their will on communities. That’s what the right in New Zealand does, and it’s what the right in America does now too. It’s a kind of authoritarianism that stands up for the richest.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is the member’s third and final warning about relating to the bill.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Madam Speaker, I thought we were allowed to respond to interjections from members opposite. Members opposite were making some injections, so I was simply responding to those.
The other big question I have is: while conferring powers to local boards, is there going to be sufficient funding devolution to local boards to be able to implement the decisions? That is something that I think a future Government that is far more enlightened than current one could look at—further changes to empower localism and local communities to make the decisions that they need so that their cities work for them, so that their communities can have nice things like well-functioning public transport, like safe walking and cycling, like kids walking and cycling to school. Again, that’s something we can all benefit from. So this is not the worst bill the Government has put before the House in this term of Government, and the Green Party is supporting it.
SIMON COURT (ACT) (21:16): The ACT Party supports bringing back Auckland Transport under democratic governance of Auckland Council. If you don’t like Auckland Council approving stupid speed humps everywhere, we’ll be able to vote them out, whereas when it was under Auckland Transport it was just a faceless bureaucracy apparently taking its orders from central government about where to build speed humps and cycleways.
Aucklanders are so frustrated that we couldn’t do anything to stop Auckland Transport. They were slow to deliver new infrastructure—because the city is growing; it does need new roads, including four-lane roads and high-speed roads to get 1.5 million people where they need to get to at a reasonable clip.
We had Auckland Transport obsessed with cycleways that destroyed commercial precincts like K Road by ripping out all the car parks and spending tens of millions of dollars designing architectural pathways to navigate e-bikes of a few privileged people while businesses suffered. The eye-watering cost of these things—absolutely the people responsible deserve to be voted out, but we couldn’t. With the passing of this bill, we’ll be able to.
Then the bus-lane cameras and the cameras in the T3 lanes are calibrated to fine people for putting a wheel over the paint or going to turn left and getting in the left-turn lane 5 metres early. It is absolutely outrageous—nothing but a cash cow for the bureaucracy that imposed their iron will on the poor road users of Auckland.
Celia Wade-Brown: Shame on you.
SIMON COURT: The former Mayor of Wellington is heckling me: “Shame”. You’re responsible, Celia Wade-Brown, for wasting tens of millions of dollars of your ratepayers’ money, when you were mayor, on cycleways while absolute sewage flows into the sea. You’ve got nothing to tell people on this side of the House.
The bone-rattling speed humps that Auckland Transport installed are not just a frustration and damaging motorists’ cars—every time the suspension hits those things, it takes one pump out of your suspension and reduces the life of your suspension. For ambulances and fire, transporting passengers in the back of an ambulance over these enormous, raised speed tables, speed tables built on four-lane arterial routes that are the specific routes designated for over-dimension and overweight vehicle loads when they’re transporting large things like transformers or excavators or cranes through Auckland—they’re facing this obstacle that some numpty who wants to slow the traffic down on a four-lane road thinks is suitable to put on a designated heavy-transport route. If Auckland councillors continue to support this crap, we can vote them out. This bill is great.
There’s something else that Auckland Transport used to do—actually didn’t do—that used to wind up Aucklanders, particularly if they lived in rural places like Rodney District. They would let the potholes grow to the size of sinkholes before they turned up to fix them, and it turned out they only turned up to fix them when my mate Geoff Upson turned up with a spray can and painted a big cock and balls around it. Otherwise they wouldn’t turn up—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Keep it parliamentary please, Mr Court.
SIMON COURT: Yes, Madam Speaker.
It didn’t used to be like that. I used to run the road maintenance contract for Auckland Central where we delivered hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of road resurfacing, of rehabs, we fixed retaining walls, we replaced drainage before it failed, and we delivered value for money for Auckland ratepayers on the Auckland Road Maintenance Alliance. So it’s not like we don’t know how to do this stuff well—
Celia Wade-Brown: More profitable for you.
SIMON COURT: —but without good governance, Celia Wade-Brown, it doesn’t get done properly. This bill solves many of these problems, but ACT does have some residual concerns. We do need some improvements. The committee’s report makes it clear that providing unspecified Māori groups an exclusive role in the development and preparation of the Auckland Regional Land Transport Plan is not only unnecessary, it’s unacceptable, considering that the bill does not currently allow for those who actually rely on the efficient operation of the road network—business, the freight sector, general road users, emergency services—to have their say in the critical design phase.
Some of us are also concerned—and that would be ACT—that the bill requires the Auckland regional transport committee to establish and maintain processes for unspecified Māori groups to contribute to the design—
Oriini Kaipara: Oh, awesome, that’s great!
SIMON COURT: —and this will require appropriation of scarce transport resources—I knew you’d like that, Oriini Kaipara, because you’re always looking for a grift—rather than spending that budget on roads and public transport.
Auckland Council already retains a standing mana whenua consultation group, which I’ve had the privilege to present to and receive their feedback on transport and other infrastructure proposals. That would seem to be a much more appropriate way, an efficient vehicle, for consultation with Māori in major transport planning.
Madam Speaker, this is a great bill. ACT supports it; it still needs a bit of panel beating. We look forward to doing that in committee stage. Thank you.
ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (21:22): Madam Speaker, thank you. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and also as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I just want thank those of my colleagues on the committee who have already spoken, and thank you for some of the kind words that have been said. I also want to thank the staff who did a lot of great work, the submitters, and particularly Auckland Council and Mayor Wayne Brown. We’ve already had mentioned the collaborative process that we went through, so while we were not encouraged to have Auckland Council being an adviser, we were certainly able to have Auckland Council sitting alongside our officials and working together, so we ended up with the best possible outcome as we could.
The decisions were unanimous but, as you’ve heard from Simon Court, there were a couple of areas where we had a bit of backwards and forwards and we didn’t entirely agree, and we’ve reflected that in our report and I’ll come back to that shortly.
We’ve had a bit of comment about localism. Every single council in the country has responsibility for its roads, its footpaths, its street lights, it’s retaining walls; if it’s a regional council, its public transport—except for one: Auckland, our biggest council, has not been trusted to do that work, effectively, for 16 years. This bill is about putting that right, because how we ended up in that situation and for that long—clearly there is something wrong, that we didn’t effectively trust our biggest council to do the things which every other council in the country has been able to do. So this is a putting-right bill.
Since 2010, all of those functions have been carried out by AT, Auckland Transport. We all know, I think, that that has been a source of significant frustration for the council, for the local boards, and for Aucklanders as a whole. They’ve done some great work, but they’ve also had a fundamental problem just in terms of the structure. Because I know—I’ve had 30 years in local government before that, serving alongside Celia Wade-Brown in the Wellington City Council for quite a long time. The issue which got people more riled up than anything else—and they certainly weren’t all in agreement; they were right across the spectrum—was transport. You will never please everybody all the time, but people were really passionate about transport because everybody walks, everybody drives, everybody takes the bus, everybody rides a bike, whatever it might be. Everybody has an interest in transport. And, by the way, everybody is an expert on transport because they do those things, and they are not afraid to tell you about that.
The problem was that Auckland Transport, effectively, was insulated from that. They didn’t have, as Simon Court has said, the cold wind, if you like, of the ballot box sitting there that gets councillors very interested in making sure that they are responding. They can’t always agree, because you can’t agree with everybody because everybody wants different things, but they are responding. Auckland Transport didn’t have to do that.
Now, councils are not always the most popular beasts in the world, but Auckland Transport managed to be even less popular than their own councils, and that is because they were not having to be responsive through the democratic process. This bill is all about the importance of democratic accountability and listening. And even if you don’t agree with everybody—and you can’t agree with everybody—authentic listening to people makes a heck of a difference and people saying, “Well, I didn’t agree with where you got to, but I can understand why you got there, and you did at least listen and you gave me a go.” That’s really important.
This bill is about putting transport in Auckland back to where it belongs: with the council and the boards elected by the people of Auckland. I would note that New Zealand First actually, in the name of Jenny Marcroft, lodged a bill, effectively, to very much the same intent shortly before this bill was introduced by the Government, so we obviously, strongly support it.
The bill gives functions and assets of AT back to council and to a council-controlled organisation (CCO) to run the public transport system. Exactly what is delegated to the CCO is a decision for the council, and that’s something really important: instead of Government dictating what goes to the CCO, it’s up to the council to make that decision. But the question is going to be—and the council will need to consult with the community about this; not immediately, but for its long-term plan next year: what is public transport? What is it actually delegating? Because, obviously, if it’s a bus or a train or a ferry, that’s obvious—those things are obvious. But what about the bus stops? What about the bus priority lanes? What about the bus priority signals? What about the enforcement of those things? What does council want to do with those? So that is a real discussion that the council needs to have.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Can they have gardens on the bus stops?
ANDY FOSTER: I don’t know why that’s excited the Labour Party. It’s a real conversation that the council needs to have with its community, and it’s right and proper that they should do that.
Some other aspects of the bill that I think are important to draw attention to: first of all, it’s the establishment of the Auckland regional transport committee (ARTC) to develop a 30-year transport strategy. That committee will be jointly appointed by the mayor and the Minister. We did have a discussion, as you’ve already heard, as to whether the mayor should do that appointment or whether the council should do the appointment of the Auckland Council representatives. We ended up deciding on the mayor, and that’s basically was consistent with the way in which the mayor has special powers in Auckland to do other appointments like deputy mayor and committee chairs and so on.
The important thing there is also having a 30-year strategy. Now, how many 30-year strategies does this place have? Probably virtually none, and that is something that’s really, really important.
Hon Rachel Brooking: Pity you repealed the Spatial Planning Act.
ANDY FOSTER: Think about what we require of ourselves in terms of the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport. It’s not a 30-year transport strategy, in fact you could argue that it’s something that flips and flops depending on who the Minister is. I can remember when that model was brought up, and I said to Steven Joyce at the time: “Steven, you know, you’ve done this. You’ve actually picked which roads you wanted build.” And just imagine what happens in a few years’ time when there’s a change in Government and Julie Anne Genter—and I did say Julie Anne Genter—is the Minister of Transport. She didn’t get to be Minister of Transport, she got to be Associate Minister. But the change is dramatic, and of course we’ve had all this discussion about the infrastructure plan, saying we need consistency across a long period of time. This is a place we need consistency, in our biggest city. We actually also need it in our country as a whole in terms of our transport thinking.
We also discussed the balance of responsibility between the council and local boards. You’ve already heard a little bit about that: the local boards getting the local and collector roads, excluding the central city and the area around Eden Park. But we also got rid of, in terms of bylaws, what was, effectively, a veto right for any individual board. We made some tweaks to the transition process, and we also had a bit of discussion about the disposal of surplus land. That was actually quite important because we didn’t want to see, in the transfer from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council and the CCO, that land sort of went walkabouts to unnamed parties. So we said, “Look, who are those parties that are likely to end up with that sort of land?”, and we have actually named those: KiwiRail and the NZ Transport Agency. So, of course, we do not want to see public assets alienated to unspecified entities.
The final area of discussion that I want to just touch on—which Simon Court said—the bill actually requires ARTC, in developing its strategy, to consult with Māori, is the word, and that comes from the Land Transport Management Act. The issue is, though, of course, if roughly one-fifth of your population has some Māori whakapapa, how do you identify who on earth it is you are trying to engage and do that authentically, as opposed to using, for example, an existing statutory body or whatever else it might be? We thought that that had some real issues with it. There is requirement to consult with Māori again, as part of the consultation, once we’ve actually got a draft strategy.
Rawiri Waititi: That’s not for you to determine. That’s for Māori to determine.
ANDY FOSTER: We thought that was very difficult to do that—well, it might be for Māori to determine that, but when you’ve got to ask 350,000 people, probably of that order, it’s going to be a heck of a consultation to try and work out who is going to speak for Māori on that and put those particular issues right up front. Really interesting.
Just to finish off with a couple of other changes that we made; we tweaked the responsibilities around cycle lanes and cycle tracks so that the local boards have those responsibilities, because that wasn’t clear in the bill as it started. We also had some discussion around freight and the local boards’ or the council’s ability to interrupt freight. Obviously, there’s some very, very significant freight routes that we don’t want to see interrupted, and there was a discussion about, how would you say, the threshold that needed to meet before we actually made any interruptions at all.
Just to finish off, I just want to say thank you to everybody for the great work that’s been done on this, and I commend the bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is a split call.
ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (21:31): I stand on behalf of Te Pāti Māori to give rise to the voices of the people of Tāmaki Makaurau, because this bill before us affects them the most. With this bill, we see the positives, but we also have a couple of reservations. In its current form, the bill will reshape how transport decisions are made in our city, and therefore how our people move, live, and thrive. For Māori, transport is not just infrastructure; it’s about connection—connection to whānau, connection to whenua, connection to moana, to mahi, to education, to opportunity, and to the future we want for our mokopuna.
This bill responds to two longstanding weaknesses in Auckland’s transport system: a lack of democratic accountability, with major decisions made by an unelected Auckland Transport board, and a lack of long-term integrated planning between central government, Auckland Council, and delivery agencies. For years, Aucklanders, including Māori communities, have been frustrated by unclear responsibility, slow delivery, and a system where no one seems to own the outcomes. Even Auckland Transport’s own leadership has acknowledged this, saying that they, the council, will have to own the outcome, and that’s what the people of Auckland have been asking for. This bill answers that call.
The bill will return most transport decision-making to Auckland Council, restoring democratic accountability. It will establish a new Auckland regional transport committee (ARTC) to lead long-term strategic planning; allocate specific transport functions to local boards, strengthening local voice; and refocus Auckland Transport into a smaller entity responsibly primarily for delivering public transport services. For Māori, these changes matter. Māori are heavy users of public transport; Māori live further from employment centres; Māori communities feel the impacts of congestion, poor planning, and unsafe streets more acutely than most. A system that is clearer, more accountable, and more coordinated has real potential to improve daily life for all our people.
That said, e te Whare, we must also be honest about the concerns raised through the select committee process. Eight submissions specifically address the bill’s relationship to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The message was consistent: Māori want stronger obligations, not just opportunities to contribute; Māori want representation at the governance table, not only consultation; Māori want protection for marae, papakāinga, wāhi tapu, and existing cultural agreements during the transition; Māori want Māori outcomes, procurement, and cultural visibility embedded in the mandates of new entities. Māori also want monitoring and reporting on Māori outcomes in partnership with Houkura and manawhenua . Auckland Council itself submitted that the bill, and I quote, “misses critical opportunities to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. Healthy Families Waitakere highlighted that current arrangements have produced inequitable outcomes for Māori and Pacific communities in West Auckland. These are real concerns, and they reflect lived experience.
I acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for unanimously recommending amendments that strengthen Māori involvement. Most importantly, the committee recommends that the new ARTC must establish and maintain processes for Māori to contribute to the development of the 30-year transport plan and consult with Māori on that plan. Tēnā koutou! While these amendments are a step in the right direction, they are not the destination. Māori representation at governance level is still not guaranteed; partnership is still not embedded as a foundation. If we are to transform transport in our city, then Māori must be partners, not participants on the margins.
A Māori vision for transport actually includes mana whenua at the governance table, not just in consultation rooms, and local boards empowered to advocate for Māori communities in their rohe—just to name a couple. In includes safe, reliable, low-emissions transport that supports the wellbeing of our tamariki and our mokopuna. One last thing that would be positive is the protection of marae, papakāinga, and wāhi tapu in all planning decisions. I could go on, but with ten seconds on the clock, Madam Speaker, this is the standard that we must continue to hold ourselves to. Tēnā tatou.
CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green) (21:36): Kia ora. This bill is a new experiment in transport planning for Auckland, but don’t think that it’s a total simplification. Auckland Transport is going to become a council-controlled organisation just responsible for public transport delivery, but, as my colleague Mr Foster said, it’s not totally obvious which parts of public transport that might or might not include.
The Auckland regional transport committee is going to plan for 30 years, hopefully making good strategic decision for arterial roads, rail, and busways. The local boards have got a very strong role in determining place-making as well as roading. But the Auckland regional transport committee is not localism. Three members are appointed by central government, three by the mayor in consultation with the council, and one, which could be quite tricky, the chair, is jointly appointed. The potential is there for a stalemate.
I’m glad that my colleague Mr Foster is in the House. If we think back, before 2016—more than 10 years ago—we had the Ngauranga to Airport Governance Group working with then-Councillor Foster, who was chair of the Transport Committee and Transport Portfolio Leader at Wellington City Council. I was a councillor, and then became mayor, and the National Government had Simon Bridges, who some of you will remember more or less fondly, and Chris Laidlaw as the chair of Greater Wellington Regional Council. The idea was that we would come up with something that we agreed on and that we would deliver it. Well, that was incredibly hard, and it was particularly hard when central government changed from National to Labour and back to National.
Interestingly, cities have often got a much more consistent vision, connected to their people, than central government does have for transport. There’s much less of a flip-flop within a city. Now, Mr Rutherford might not like Wellington’s transport planning, and I might not think that Tauranga has quite got it right, but the people of Tauranga and the people of Wellington are much more connected. I agree with my colleague that we could go much further with localism and much further with devolution of transport funding. Or maybe the planning for transport could be a little bit more radical. My colleague Oriini talked about long-term Māori vision. If you look at what Ngāti Toa and Porirua City Council are doing with citizens’ assemblies—it’s not only Māori, but it’s with Māori with a really long vision. Maybe that’s where we could get some coherent transport planning.
And I do note that in Wellington, the cycleways are getting busier and busier. I come in from Oriental Bay, and when I went home last night—admittedly, it was a beautiful night, but it’s nice not to have traffic jams on beautiful nights, as well as wet weather—I think I was the 1,910th person along that cycleway. They really do offer value for money for the users and, also, for the people we are not holding up on the roads. And I note that the cycleways in Wellington have advanced; no light rail, no tunnels, but we’ve got cycleways, because that was pretty much totally under control of the council. And again, Mayor Lester, Mayor Foster, Mayor Whanau all advanced that. So—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): We are talking about the Auckland Council.
CELIA WADE-BROWN: I’m talking about the consistency of transport visions. I would also address Paris, who has elected its second cycling mayor. I think the consistency of vision of mayors and cities is something that is undersung in this piece of legislation, but we will support it.
DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (21:41): This is a bill that responds to concerns of Aucklanders that have been building for many years, since the introduction of the Auckland Transport governance legislation in 2009. Those frustrations have been building and building, and it’s, I think, to the credit of many that this bill is here today.
I would like to start out by acknowledging the former Minister of Transport Simeon Brown; Mayor Wayne Brown, for his advocacy in this area; the current Minister of Transport; and the hard-working and diligent Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and all of the people at council and the officials that have been working on this bill.
This bill is about restoring accountability for Auckland Transport decision-making in council. It is about restoring democracy and making transport-related matters more responsive to the needs of our local community. As an electorate member, I’ve had countless interactions with Auckland Transport over the years, and there are some really well-intentioned people in that organisation, but it has not delivered in terms of a satisfactory nature for our community. Up until recently, there were surveys that indicated only 29 percent of Aucklanders thought that Auckland Transport was doing a great job for the community. That is why we’ve got these changes before us today, to actually bring in Auckland Transport key functions into council; keep the council-controlled organisation (CCO), which will be focused on public transport, but actually bring it in so that if Aucklanders don’t like what Auckland Transport’s doing—which is about one-third of rates, by the way—they can up and get new elected representatives. That’s what we’re all about here on this side of the House, is direct accountability for the decisions.
Just a couple of things to note from the select committee process. We made a few changes around the remuneration of ministerially appointed directors and those that are appointed from the mayor. We’ve made some changes around decision making by local boards: under the new legislation, local boards will be empowered to do greater things around local roads and they’ll have a huge amount of say around local roads. We felt that, actually, by-laws should be passed by a simple majority of local boards rather than unanimously, so we’ve made that change. We’re also enabling a transition—the transition board. We’ve got a transition board that we’re expanding—up to five members instead of three. That was at the request of Auckland Council. We’ve also made some further changes to their transport CCO, as well.
This is a very good bill, and it’s a bill that, I think, many Aucklanders—from South Auckland right up to Wellsford—will be praising, because they will have, from the moment that this bill has passed, an Auckland Transport that is more responsive, more accountable, and more efficient for the needs of Auckland City. With that, I commend this bill to the House.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (21:45): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s my privilege to speak on this bill tonight, the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill. Can I open by acknowledging our Auckland Mayor, Mr Wayne Brown, and, also, the team in the mayor’s office that have been putting together and doing the hard yards in this piece of legislation: Luke Christensen, Stu Mullin, and Sam Jaffe. I know there will be many, many people behind the scenes over many months—and years, in fact, probably—who have brought this to a good stage.
Labour supports this bill at second reading. The select committee process has strengthened the bill and better reflects the needs of Auckland communities. Can I acknowledge the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and select committee members for the work that they have done on this, hearing from Aucklanders, hearing from key stakeholders, and looking at the recommended changes. I had the privilege to sit in on a couple of meetings to hear some of the deliberations for this.
Now, I come back to the “why”, I guess: why is this legislation important? We go back to 2009, when the then National-ACT Government put in place the Auckland super-city. At that time, they chose to establish a council-controlled organisation that was Auckland Transport. Some of that structure, indeed, has worked for our city. We are the largest population, largest city, across Aotearoa New Zealand, and, in my view, that does require a structure that is fit for purpose, but which, most of all, acknowledges the strategic value that Auckland places on all of New Zealand, whether that be economically, whether that be culturally, and so productivity is an important thing when it comes to such things as transport. We know that our economy can be more productive if our transport network is.
The problem with this—with transport for Auckland—is we experience significant congestion, as one example. We haven’t established a transport network, transport infrastructure, that meets the needs of Aucklanders getting from A to B in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, in many respects, over the years, Auckland Transport has borne the brunt of that, of Aucklanders’ concerns and the challenges that our largest city has faced.
Given the size and population of Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, this does require a distinct bill to put those changes in place—for a couple of reasons. The lack of democratic accountability in transport decision making, with the non-elected Auckland Transport board making most transport decisions across strategy, policy, and delivery, a role that is undertaken by locally elected members in other regions. So there’s a bit of a shift to address that. The second one is the insufficient relationship between Auckland Council and central government in long-term transport planning, resulting in the absence of a longer-term shared view.
What this bill does is it transfers key transport functions. They transfer from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council, including those planning, funding, and delivery responsibilities. It establishes a new Auckland regional transport committee—ARTC—that will be jointly governed by Auckland Council governing body appointees and central government appointees, amended at select committee to replace mayoral appointments with governing body appointments for greater democratic accountability. It will be tasked with developing a 30-year integrated transport plan, to be published in accessible formats. This is a step forward from what we established; under the Labour Government, we established ATAP, the Auckland Transport Alignment Plan, which was the first of its kind to start to set a long-term view for addressing Auckland’s transport infrastructure and Auckland’s transport challenges that are in front of us.
This bill will redefine Auckland Transport’s role, it will refocus it as a CCO delivering public transport services only—I find that point interesting, and I’ll come back to that—and it will provide local democratic accountability by elected members being involved in making relevant decisions. It will empower local boards by giving them a greater say over local roads, speed limits, parking, and active transport infrastructure, including the power to upgrade and repair cycle tracks.
I note that there are 21 local boards in Auckland, I think, by count—around about that number. That is a lot of localised decisions, and there will be some coordination required in that approach when you have so many local boards in one territorial area—to keep consistency, to keep decision making, and, most of all, to keep politics out of the way of good transport decisions, which can often happen. Lastly, transport by-laws require agreement from the governing body and a simple majority of local boards.
If I may, Madam Speaker, I was with a couple of colleagues from the House and Auckland Transport leaders at a panel discussion with Infrastructure New Zealand only two weeks ago. Some of the ideas that were presented to us, or top priorities that people saw as important, were about addressing Auckland’s immediate transport infrastructure needs and funding gaps that the city experiences. I think quite proudly about a Labour Government that over a period of six years shifted investment from largely taking a “roads only” investment approach to shifting some of that funding through increased funding to public transport and to active transport—that being walking and cycling. That has shifted our city in a way—
Rima Nakhle: They’re removing the cycle lanes in Takanini because nobody was using them.
SHANAN HALBERT: Takanini’s also got some of the worst congestion that you would experience.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is not a debate across the House, thank you members.
SHANAN HALBERT: The member from Takanini has actually just criticised cycleways, and she’s acknowledged the problem in Takanini that is congestion that Aucklanders face. What she doesn’t understand, clearly, is without a cohesive—[Interruption] The member for Takanini, Rima Nakhle, has identified congestion as a problem. She needs to ask her community: do they support congestion charging and has she consulted with her community around that?
But, most of all, it’s important to acknowledge that in terms of congestion, the approach that the National Government has taken here is a “roads only” approach. That is not a solution that is going to address Auckland transport issues—that being congestion. Under her Government, we’ve seen $564 million cut from the long-term plan shortfall over a three-year period—$564 million cut from Auckland’s transport budget; $213 million cut from public transport alone.
Rima Nakhle: Not cut; redirected—not wasting it on walkways to nowhere, light rail to nowhere.
SHANAN HALBERT: This is from a member across the way, heckling at me on my commentary tonight, who says that congestion is an issue. But it’s her Government that has cut over $120 million out of the transport budget in Auckland. That is shameful. That is a disgrace, Rima Nakhle.
Road safety funding has been cut from $70 million in Auckland to $6 million. And most of all, here we are in a fuel crisis where not only is it difficult to afford the fuel costs that Aucklanders are experiencing but because of this Government’s decision, fares have increased by 5.1 percent on Auckland’s buses since 1 February alone.
This is a Government that doesn’t really have a plan. I acknowledge that this piece of work, thanks to Mayor Wayne Brown, takes us a step forward to local decision-making, but that is nothing without investment and partnership from central government.
Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (21:55): This bill is another perfect example of this Government fixing the basics and building the future. We heard the words of Aucklanders, and we responded. This Government is committed to improving transport in Auckland and putting decision making back in the hands of Aucklanders. For motorists, this is a positive step.
Decisions can better reflect the needs of our diverse and growing population. For example, now the Puketāpapa Local Board can adjust parking rules in busy shopping areas like Dominion Road, or it can prioritise a new bus stop in order to better service residents who rely on public transport. These are practical local decisions that directly affect people in their daily life. I commend this bill to the House.
HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (21:56): Thank you. I’m pleased to rise and support this bill, but I do want to talk about it from a local perspective, because it involves the development of areas around Eden Park into a precinct. When I looked through the legislation, I couldn’t find the detail in terms of what those streets will be like. But I know that my constituents will want to know what kind of input they’re going to have in those roads, because they are now going to come under a plan which excludes them as local roads. Now, I absolutely welcome the idea that there will be local roads and that the local roads will be under the control of our local boards, because those local boards are really grassroots. They do know what’s going on on the ground, and they think it’s a fantastic development that they will be given more power than they’ve had.
I question the claim that there’s a lot of local democracy in this Government. I have been concerned that that’s been said a lot but it’s not happened a lot. I take, for example, the issue around Plan Change 120 and the recent announcement that those plans will be taken to Cabinet for approval. I think that just makes absolutely no sense if we’re really committed to local democracy. So it’s good to see here a more thoughtful piece of legislation, where there is the development of that kind of connection to the local. But I am concerned, when I see the plan around Eden Park, that we need that detail fully fleshed out so that the people locally can have some input into it, at this stage. I understand that this is going to come to the House and committee stage, so I’ll be asking on behalf of my constituents for much more detail around what are those roads, because there’s no definition in here in terms of what that plan is.
I think a point that needs to be made is that this probably should have happened many, many years ago, and that it was a misstep that we developed a policy at any place—and it was a National-ACT Government, as I understand, that did that—when we were looking at a super-city where we didn’t enrich it by allowing this to be part of that plan. And it’s had consequences because it has meant that there’s not been the same level of local input. So I was very pleased to read, for example, in this bill, that the 30-year plan will be consulted upon, and we will be looking at things in the long term, which is always a very good idea. But there’s also a process for consultation in the local community about the nature of that plan, and so that is a really good step.
But I think that kind of plan that has been put into place here needs to be much more consistently applied to things, so that when we get to a point, for example, in election year where Parnell is kicking up a fuss about intensification, we don’t just cross out local democracy and move to a veto right in the Cabinet. You know, the same is true in an area like this, in this kind of plan. We need to commit to these concepts and follow them through consistently.
I am very pleased to see this piece of legislation come to the House, but I will be making sure that I am asking the right questions at the committee stage that mean that my constituents’ interests are well explored and that we have as much detail as we can about where those limits are in the Eden precinct, because that’s my job as the local MP. Thank you; I commend this bill to the House.
RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (22:00): It really is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, even though I didn’t have the pleasure of being on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Since being voted in, I approached a couple of the Ministers about a by-law with respect to semi-trailers parking in residential streets in my electorate of Takanini, specifically in areas like Goodwood Heights and around Manukau Heights. I’m really excited about how the changes in this bill will allow local board members to get on top of that and make those laws needed. Marshal Walia was talking to us about it just a few hours ago. I have faith in the local board chairs of Howick, Mr Bruce Kendall; of Manurewa, Heather Andrew; and of Papakura, Kelvin Hieatt of Papakura. I have faith that they’re going to make responsible decisions, and I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.
Debate interrupted.
The House adjourned at 10.01 p.m.