Tuesday, 21 April 2026

Tuesday, 21 April 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

GREG O'CONNOR (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.

Motions

Condemnation of Antisemitism

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Deputy Prime Minister) (14:01): Point of order. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate.

SPEAKER: OK. Leave is sought. I’ll put that leave. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That this House condemn all incidents of antisemitism in New Zealand and affirm that antisemitism has no place here.

Motion agreed to.

Presentation

Petitions

SPEAKER (14:01): Two petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK (14:01):

Petition of Nate Brewer requesting that the House require the Government to make dyslexia screening, testing, and diagnostic assessment free for all New Zealanders

petition of Aida Tavassoli requesting that the House urge the Government to create pathways for Iranian New Zealanders to sponsor family members to come to New Zealand, review the Parent Resident Visa ballot and prioritise Iranian applicants, and implement blanket extensions for Iranians on temporary visas.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

Papers

SPEAKER (14:02): Ministers have delivered three papers.

CLERK (14:02):

2025 annual report of the Charter School Authorisation Board

Regulatory Standards (Excluded Legislation) Notice 2026

report of the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ on New Zealand’s Environmental Reporting Series: Our Freshwater 2026.

SPEAKER: I present the 2026-27 draft annual plan of the Controller and Auditor-General. Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

Select Committee Reports

SPEAKER (14:02): Four select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK (14:02):

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the petition of Dr Kerryn Palmer

report of the Environment Committee on the Ministry for the Environment and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Long-term Insights Briefing 2025

report of the Justice Committee on the Notice of declarations of inconsistency: Public Protection Orders under the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Act 2014 and Extended Supervision Orders under the Parole Act 2002

report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Alan Roy Peacock and the petition of Leah Hawkins.

SPEAKER: The Long-term Insights Briefing and the notice of declarations of inconsistency are set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced. The House comes to oral questions.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Finance

Question No. 1

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:03) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:03): Today, Stats New Zealand released the latest figures for the Consumers Price Index (CPI). These showed annual CPI inflation for the March quarter of 3.1 percent, the same as in the December quarter last year, and just outside the Reserve Bank’s target range.

Ryan Hamilton: Why is annual CPI inflation still outside the band?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Tradable inflation, which is largely driven by supply and demand for global goods and services, together with movements in New Zealand’s exchange rates, has remained high at 2.5 percent for the year. This is reflected, for example, in increased food prices, which I know is of concern to New Zealanders. Non-tradable inflation, which is driven by domestic factors and makes up around two-thirds of the CPI basket, has also had some sticky elements, such as local authority rates and electricity. On the positive side, Stats New Zealand points out that rents rose only 1.2 percent in the year—the smallest annual increase in 16 years.

Ryan Hamilton: What part has conflict in the Middle East played?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: We know, from a previous data release, that petrol prices rose 18.6 percent in the month of March alone, following the start of the conflict. However, March is only one month in the quarter, and petrol prices actually fell in January and February. Increased petrol prices are visible in today’s Consumers Price Index (CPI) results. Stats NZ identified that they were the largest contributor to the quarterly inflation rate, adding one percentage point to the total. However, their impact will be much more pronounced in the next quarter. Of course, that is partly just maths. Even if fuel prices don’t increase any further, the impact will be counted over three months rather than one month. There are a range of views out there, but I note the Reserve Bank has recently predicted annual CPI inflation of 4.2 percent for the June quarter. I know this is of concern to New Zealanders, which is why the Government continues to call for a cessation of conflict in the Middle East.

Ryan Hamilton: How does New Zealand’s inflation rate compare to other countries?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, annual CPI inflation in Australia is currently 3.7 percent; in the UK, it is 3.2 percent; and the OECD average is 3.4 percent. All countries are wrestling with the impacts of the Middle East conflict, but as the world goes into a period of higher fuel prices and therefore higher inflation, New Zealand is starting from a somewhat stronger position than many other countries.

Hon David Seymour: How important is very careful spending of taxpayer money when it comes to restraining inflation and any associated interest rate rises—or, to put it another way, does monetary policy still need friends?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, yes, monetary policy does need friends, and it is very important at this time that the Government controls what it can control. We can’t control the trajectory for the conflict in the Middle East and therefore the global oil price and prices at the pump at home. What we can control is our own spending, and this Government is determined to take a responsible course in which we do not add fuel to the inflation fire, as was not the case in recent history under previous Governments.

Prime Minister

Question No. 2

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) (14:07) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister) (14:07): Absolutely.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does the Prime Minister continue to enjoy the unanimous support of National Party members of Parliament?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why did he put confidence in him as leader of the National Party and therefore as Prime Minister to a vote of National Party MPs this morning if he was still confident that he enjoyed the confidence of all of them?

SPEAKER: Yeah, just before we go any further, that is caucus business, not necessarily—you could word it a different way, but as it was worded it becomes caucus business.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Thank you, Mr Speaker. If the Prime Minister won’t share details of the vote of confidence in him as leader of the National Party, how can he assure the Governor-General that he continues to enjoy the confidence of this House?

SPEAKER: No, no, that’s not a reasonable thing. You know that—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, hang on, I’m speaking—

Hon Member: No, sit down.

SPEAKER: One speaker only. Party caucuses’ business is not a matter for Parliament or for question time, where scrutiny is on the Government. The question was put a different way; you could still put it a further way, but if you’re referring in your question to a matter that is for the National Party caucus, or for any party’s caucus in this House, then that is outside the spirit and standing order of question time.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. In order to be the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon has to advise the Governor-General that he continues to enjoy the support of a majority of members of Parliament in this House.

Hon Chris Bishop: No, that’s completely wrong.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: That is absolutely the constitutional position. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: One person only speaks during a point of order.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Somebody cannot be the Prime Minister unless they can continue to advise the Governor-General that they enjoy the support of the House. If they have lost support of some of their own MPs, then the question of whether or not they enjoy the confidence of the House is a very legitimate one.

SPEAKER: The point is, though, that the Prime Minister, at the time of the Government’s formation, goes to tell the Governor-General that he is able, or she is able, to command the confidence of the House. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Cabinet Manual, which is the constitutional authority on these matters, is very clear that if the Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the majority of members of Parliament in the House, they have to advise the Governor-General of that. It is completely legitimate for the Opposition to question the Prime Minister as to whether or not that is the case.

SPEAKER: And in your questioning, your first question related to that, which did get through, and the answer from the Prime Minister was “Yes, absolutely.” Now, no need to go further than that.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why should the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who have lost jobs under his leadership have confidence in him when the job that he seems most committed to fighting for is his own?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, in answer to the first part of the question, I’d just say to the member that this is a Government that is doing everything it can to turn this economy around, to lift incomes, to create new jobs. If the member wants to get on board, support the Indian free-trade agreement. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: That noise is going to stop. We’ve already got people away from the House; a few dozen more would probably make things go a bit smoother.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why should New Zealanders have confidence in him as the Prime Minister when, on a day that business confidence has plummeted, the confidence he seems to be fighting for the most is the confidence of his own MPs?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, because I’d put my economic management record up against his any day of the week. This is a former Prime Minister who drove up spending 84 percent, who actually drove inflation to 32-year highs, 12 or 13 interest rate rises, slowed an economy up, and created unemployment. We are fixing his mess, and we are taking this country forward.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Why can’t the Prime Minister answer questions about when they are going to secure the additional fuel that he promised New Zealanders he would have secured by yesterday—or has he been distracted by other matters?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No, we’re very focused on the fuel crisis, and that’s what this Government is doing an exceptionally good job of managing, and I think New Zealanders understand that. We’re working through commercial options; when we have that resolved, we’ll come and talk about it.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: What’s going to run out of fuel first: New Zealand or his leadership?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’ve seen reports of Labour scaremongering about our fuel situation, and I just think that’s really inappropriate for a Leader of the Opposition not to get in behind New Zealand and New Zealanders in a crisis. This country has sufficient supplies of fuel, we’re managing the crisis to the very best of our ability, and we’re serving New Zealanders well.

Hon David Seymour: Has the Government learnt anything from the experience of previous Governments in procuring COVID vaccines, where we somehow went from the front of the queue to the back of the OECD in record time, and how will those lessons be applied in responding to this crisis?

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Because this is a Government that—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Point of order. [Interruption]

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Someone is going to leave shortly, because when there is a point of order called—

Hon Member: Yes, he is.

SPEAKER: Well, you’re speaking now during a point of order. Let’s all just calm down.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Mr Speaker, I know you’re very focused on ministerial responsibility today; there is no way that that question falls within the current Prime Minister’s ministerial responsibility.

SPEAKER: That is true. The question could have been asked a different way. We’ll go to question No.—

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order. Sir, that question was about procurement, and it was seeking to contrast procurement practices of several years ago with procurement practices associated with a fuel buffer. There’s no way that’s out of order.

SPEAKER: Well, that’s a very generous interpretation of what the question intended. I did say that the question could be asked in a different way.

Hon David Seymour: Oh, well, can I?

SPEAKER: Well, are you taking it or not? No. We’ll go to question No. 3—a supplementary?

Hon David Seymour: Yes. Has the Government used learnings from past crises in its response to the current fuel shortage; and does that include the botched procurement—

SPEAKER: No.

Hon David Seymour: —of vaccines during COVID? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, he’s got no responsibility for any of that. He can answer the first part of the question.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I’d say to the member is that we have learnt everything from the management of the last COVID pandemic. That was a complete and utter mistake, and we have learnt from rapid antigen test procurements, we’ve learnt from vaccine procurements—that’s why this Government got organised early, that’s why we’re in constant contact with industry around fuel importers, and we’re making sure that we learn the lessons and the mistakes from COVID where debt was run up, where spending was out of control—

SPEAKER: No, that’s enough.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —and New Zealanders’ future was put at risk.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Sticking to the same lines that got him into all this trouble!

SPEAKER: Yeah, good. Just wait till the House is quiet and ready to hear your question—Chlöe Swarbrick.

Prime Minister

Question No. 3

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (14:15) 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) (14:15): Yes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister accept that the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather this country is experiencing is driven by climate change?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, I do believe there are climate change effects in the extreme weather we experience all around the world.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why did his Government cut funding for flood protection by 41 percent compared to the former Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We’ve invested $200 million in flood protection. We’ve invested a billion dollars in our first Budget on roads—to build more resilience into what we’re doing.

Hon Member: Not $6 billion!

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why did his Government decide to cut flood protection funding at a time when extreme weather is becoming more frequent and severe, by approximately half compared to the former Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, this Government doesn’t just talk words; we put action and investment to climate change. That’s why this country, in the last quarter, has had less emissions produced than in any time since 2010. That’s why we’re investing in resilience in our roading network; that’s why we’re investing another $200 million into our flood protection. We’re proud of that.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that this Government is the first Government in New Zealand history to develop a national flood map which will map for the first time the areas of high natural hazard risk around the country, which will be taken into account in planning decisions?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I can. I’m very proud to say we’ll have a national flood plan by the end of this year. We are the first Government to do so, and we are taking action and putting investment into climate change, not just words and bumper stickers and Post-it notes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister agree with the Ministry for the Environment annual report that—[Interruption] Point of order, Mr Speaker. I understood that questions were supposed to be heard in quiet, and we’ve got one of the co-Deputy Prime Ministers going off at my side at the moment.

SPEAKER: Yes, it is true, so no one will be speaking while you’re asking your question.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Prime Minister agree with the Ministry for the Environment’s annual report that “Having a national flood map would enable council and homeowners to better prepare, to protect areas and homes from climate risks. However, officials have also emphasised that data alone is not sufficient. Additional measures around infrastructure and community support are needed to reduce exposure and vulnerability.”; or is that why he decided to disestablish the Ministry for the Environment?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I haven’t read that report but I’d just say we are very comfortable with the actions that we have taken, because we are the ones putting together a national flood plan, we are taking actions across this country to build resilience into everything we’re doing. I’d just say to you: the failed energy policy of the Labour-Greens Government caused an ungodly mess. We’re not doing that; we’re taking action, we’re making investments, we’re sorting it out.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why did his Government decide last year, in Cabinet, to delay all decisions on cost sharing and investment in climate adaptation until after the next election?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We are determined to make sure we deliver on our climate change commitments—that means net zero 2050; that means doing everything we can to deliver on our Paris agreements. But we are doing the practical things. We have reversed the oil and gas ban so we don’t create an energy dry-year risk and high power bills for New Zealanders. If the member cares about it, get in behind the initiatives that we’ve got.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister understand that his Government has made decisions to delay any meaningful work on climate adaptation until after the election, or is hope now his plan?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No, look, I’m proud of our record on what we’re doing. We have a renewables boom under way in this country, and that’s in part because of what we’ve done to enable more renewables investment through our fast-track legislation. We have taken a strategic coal reserve behind Huntly; we are looking at extra strategic diesel reserves in Whangārei because we are determined that we are going to lower the cost of energy for New Zealanders so it’s affordable and abundant.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Prime Minister confirm that there is a suite of renewable energy projects going through the fast track, including just yesterday, after 20 years of delay, the Waitaha Run of River Hydro Scheme to make the West Coast more energy resilient and more renewable?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Exactly—we have a number of renewable projects that are benefiting from the fast track, whether it be down in Southland or whether it be on the West Coast. Again, it’s the point that I’m making: a Labour-Greens Government just talks about it; we are the ones that put action and investment to the task.

Finance

Question No. 4

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (14:20) to the Minister of Finance: Has she received advice from the Treasury that inflation could peak above 7 percent this year; if not, what have they advised that inflation could peak at?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:20): Treasury will produce a full set of economic forecasts alongside the Budget. I can also confirm that I will also, ahead of the Budget, share an update on the economic impacts of conflict in the Middle East. In the interim, Treasury has given me various scenarios, which they have stressed are not forecasts. These, instead, have been prepared at different times since the start of the conflict to look at the stylised impacts of the potential trajectory and scale of the conflict, noting the inherent uncertainty in these scenarios. These scenarios vary. One of them was based on an extreme set of assumptions, including escalating conflict leading to widespread closure of key transport routes, including the Red Sea; escalating strikes on regional energy production facilities, causing widespread, lasting damage; and, critically, oil prices averaging US$180 a barrel being sustained through quarter two and quarter three. I note that if all of these assumptions did come to pass, inflation could reach over 7 percent. However, it’s worth noting that none of them have come to pass; in fact, oil prices in quarter two are currently US$95 a barrel, which is around half what was assumed in the stylised scenario.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why, then, did she not provide the stylised scenario of having over 7 percent inflation when she was asked on 1 April in this House?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I’d have to go back and look at the Hansard, but as I recall them, the member’s questions weren’t very precise, and what I’d stressed in answer to those questions was that I hadn’t been presented with a forecast, which was the case. I’m happily sharing the number, and I look forward to her listening in to my full economic update in the coming days.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: What is her plan for the 70 percent of workers who haven’t seen a wage increase above inflation in the last year?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, first and foremost, my plan is to ensure that we are responding effectively to the global fuel crisis. The worst thing that could happen for New Zealand would be that we’d run short of fuel. That’s why we have worked as a Government to ensure that we are securing additional reserves of fuel, and we are also working internationally to ensure that fuel continues to flow to New Zealand and that we have in place a plan for escalating our response, including restraining demand, should that prove necessary to extend the reserves of fuel that we have. Beyond that, we are also taking great care that the steps that we take to address the very real issues that are occurring for New Zealanders as a result of fuel prices do not make things worse than they need otherwise be, and that would include adding unnecessary fuel to the inflation fire and further deepening the debt hole left to us by the last Government.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Was Tayla Nasmith, from Nurturing Families in West Auckland, correct when she said of these very real issues that “in the past weeks or months, we might have been providing a couple of things for families, but now they’re in such crisis that we’re providing everything for a newborn, or clothing and school supplies for older kids, as well”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the person that the member quotes is correct. The conflict in the Middle East is creating enormous hardship for people throughout the world. It has made the whole world poorer. It saddens me that New Zealand has not been insulated from the impacts of that, and I am very aware of the real impacts that it is having on our families and our people. That includes New Zealanders who are vulnerable, who have little income to begin with, and that is why the Government moved swiftly to introduce targeted, temporary support to working families who face high costs in supporting their children. We delivered that support, but did it in a way that adhered to the advice that economists the world over are giving, which is: “Do not respond to this crisis in a way that adds to inflation and further weakens your fiscal sustainability.”

Hon Barbara Edmonds: How can New Zealanders have any confidence in her, given that over the last two years, there are more people unemployed, the economy is smaller, and inflation continues to rise?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because when people ask me whether they should have confidence in me, they need to compare themselves with the alternative, which is that member, and what she is promoting is more taxes, more spending, more borrowing, and more debt—back to the bad old COVID days.

Infrastructure

Question No. 5

MAUREEN PUGH (National—West Coast-Tasman) (14:25) to the Minister for Infrastructure: What updates has he seen on the fast-track approvals scheme?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister for Infrastructure) (14:26): The fast-track scheme is going great guns, well behind this Government’s growth agenda—passed in 2024 and coming into effect in early 2025. Here we are in—I suppose we’re still early-ish in 2026; 18 projects across the country have already received approvals. Some have already started construction, like the extension at the Port of Auckland for the new cruise ship terminal. And as I said in response to another question—

Hon Shane Jones: Mining!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —renewable energy and, indeed, Mr Jones, some mining projects, as well. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just calm it, thank you. Just a minute.

Maureen Pugh: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Which project was the latest to receive an approval under fast track?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I know the member asking the question, the member for West Coast - Tasman, is very happy about the Waitaha Hydro project, approved on Monday by an expert panel. Twenty years in the making; fast track has meant it has received all its approvals in just five months. Westpower estimates the scheme will generate enough electricity for 12,000 homes and prevent—Chlöe Swarbrick—129,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually. I’m told this is equivalent to taking 69,000 cars off the road annually. This is what fast track delivers: jobs, growth, renewables, and energy resilience for the Coast.

SPEAKER: Excellent, thank you.

Maureen Pugh: How many projects are currently utilising the benefits of the fast-track scheme?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: There are 48 referral applications that have been lodged and found compliant, and 47 substantive applications have been lodged and found complete. If they’re all approved, these would authorise the construction of nearly 24,000 new houses, thousands of new retirement village units, and thousands of additional megawatts of new electricity generation. There are projects for housing and urban development, renewables, new infrastructure, mining, and quarrying, which this country needs if we are to build things again. New Zealanders are sick and tired of waiting year after year for consents to come for projects that the majority of reasonable people agree are needed. Fast track is making sure we can get on with the job.

Hon Shane Jones: Dig, baby, dig!

SPEAKER: I’ll remind people that interjections are meant to be rare and reasonable, and not sustained commentary.

Maureen Pugh: How fast is fast track really going?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, listen up: the average number of working days for a substantive decision is 126. Waitaha Hydro was not approved after 20 years. There are wind farms around the country that took six years to be approved. Auckland Port estimates their application to extend the wharf would have taken more than three years; it took five months and nine days. The next stages of Milldale were consented in five months and nine days, too; two years faster than the Resource Management Act (RMA). And this is a classic: Green Steel, a steel manufacturing plant in the Waikato using recycled steel, took seven months and 18 days. They say it would have taken six years under the RMA. These projects have been delivered quickly with environmental conditions to make sure the environment is protected. Fast track is working and the Opposition need to get on board.

Energy

Question No. 6

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:30) to the Minister for Energy: When will a decision be made on whether to proceed with an LNG import terminal?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy) (14:30): As the member will be aware, the Government made announcements in February and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) input terminal is progressing through a procurement process. Decisions will be made following that process.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: What specific price, cost-benefit ratio, or thresholds are being used to determine whether or not the LNG terminal stacks up?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, the process we’re going through is to make sure that we reduce power bills for New Zealanders, that we make sure we protect regional jobs, and we keep the lights on, unlike the previous Government’s approach—

SPEAKER: No—no. That’s enough. [Interruption] That’s quite enough—quite enough.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Thank you. What alternative measures, if any, has he asked for advice on to provide dry-year electricity security if the LNG terminal does not proceed?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, we’re working through a procurement process, but on this side of the House we are focused on affordable electricity prices, keeping the lights on, and protecting jobs, and the reality is, you can’t run an electricity system on hope that it will rain. That’s the Opposition’s strategy—

SPEAKER: No—no. No, sorry; no more of that, otherwise the Government will lose all the balance of its questions today. Answer the questions as a Minister, within the bounds of your responsibility; no attack on the Opposition.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I asked a very straight question. It was: what alternative—

SPEAKER: You can ask it again without losing one.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Thank you. What alternative measures, if any, has he asked for advice on to provide dry-year electricity security if the LNG terminal does not proceed?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, as the member will be aware, this Government is focused on security of electricity supply and we’re taking a number of actions in order to achieve that, including making sure that we have the back-up generation needed. That’s why we supported the heads of agreement between the gentailers last year; that’s why we’re supporting fast track. Ultimately, we are focused on ensuring that we protect jobs, keep the lights on, and make electricity more affordable.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is the Minister confirming to the House that he has not asked for advice on alternative measures to LNG to provide dry-year back-up security?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I’ve asked for a range of advice from officials, including around how we ensure that we keep the lights on, that we protect regional jobs, and that we make electricity more affordable for New Zealanders. We are going through a procurement process when it comes to LNG and, ultimately, we are taking a number of steps as a Government to make sure we achieve these objectives.

Simon Court: What confidence can the Minister give businesses that LNG will reduce the risk of closures, job losses, deindustrialisation—all of those things caused by energy insecurity and price volatility?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, unfortunately, after the previous Government made the decision to ban oil and gas exploration, we have seen a significant reduction in gas availability in New Zealand. It is reducing faster than was expected and that is damaging jobs, it is damaging industries across our country, and what we are focused on is making sure we do what’s needed to protect those jobs, and we need to make sure we protect those industries. Now, we can only do that if we have the energy this country needs to be able to make that happen. I can tell the member: hope is not a strategy.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Does he agree with Simon Watts, who said, “If we don’t have an LNG terminal, we haven’t got a plan B for a dry year.”?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As I said, we are working through a process. Once that process is complete, decisions will be made and they’ll be announced.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: So, no plan?

SPEAKER: Question No. 7—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Not even hope?

SPEAKER: Just a minute. Why do you have to keep on going? Take a supplementary if you need to, but it comes off your allocation. As much as you may enjoy your questions to the House, some of us don’t after your allocations are over.

Education

Question No. 7

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier) (14:35) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcement has she made in response to fuel cost pressures in education?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (14:35): It is a priority for this Government to make sure that schools stay open and students are in school, engaged in their learning. Effective from this week, the relief teacher transport allowance has been increased from 37 cents to 83 cents for cars and 15 to 31 cents for motorbikes. To support schools with these costs, we’re providing one-off cash grants of $2,500 to all schools with under 100 students. We’ve increased the conveyance allowance by 30 percent to respond to fuel cost pressures, supporting around 5,000 eligible students. And we’re replacing up to 70 diesel boilers in schools to reduce diesel dependency, boost resilience, and save around 600,000 litres of diesel per year. This is targeted, temporary, and timely in a package that provides support where it’s needed.

Katie Nimon: How will her announcement support staffing in rural areas?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Looking to the medium term, we’re also investing $2.35 million per year to grow our workforce and help ensure rural and isolated schools have a strong pipeline of teachers. This Government’s recently announced Go Rural programme offers student teachers $4,000 to cover the cost of undertaking a placement in a rural and isolated school. This has been hugely successful and oversubscribed, so yesterday I announced a further 87 places per year to support staffing in rural schools. We’re also increasing the number of places available in the Government’s Teacher Bonding Scheme by 50 places to 235 per year, supporting teachers with an additional $40,000 over five years, working in hard-to-staff schools, the majority of which are rural and isolated.

Katie Nimon: How did schools contribute to the development of this response?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I directed the Ministry of Education to pick up the phone or personally visit every single school in New Zealand so that we can understand exactly what they’re dealing with on the ground. Two issues that were consistently raised were access to relief teachers for our predominantly rural and isolated schools, because relief teachers can make choices about where they travel to work. The other was the conveyance allowance. This package directly responds to their concerns that were raised with the ministry, and we will continue to be in direct contact with schools to monitor the situation and respond where necessary.

Katie Nimon: What feedback has she had from schools?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Within minutes of the announcement, I was contacted by a principal who said, “Thank you, particularly for the funding for relief teacher petrol. Having that extra to be able to pay relievers’ travel will greatly help our situation.” Another said thank you “for the way the allowance has been allocated to support smaller and rural schools who are finding relief teachers can be a significant burden.” And Andrew King, the president of the Rural Schools Leadership Association, said on RNZ this morning, “It’s a really positive step with supporting schools, particularly our most isolated and smaller schools, with these rising costs.”

Economic Growth

Question No. 8

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (14:38) to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she stand by her statement, “I absolutely stand on the side of anyone who wants to work hard and get ahead”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister for Economic Growth) (14:38): Yes, and that’s what the Government is doing. This month, we’ve delivered additional support to hard-working New Zealand families in a way that is timely, targeted, and temporary. From 7 April, around 143,000 working families began receiving an extra $50 a week through the in-work tax credit, with a further 14,000 families now eligible for an abated rate of that tax credit. We’ve also acted to support those delivering essential services with a temporary 30 percent increase in mileage rates for home and community support workers to help offset rising fuel costs and ensure continuity of care. This is what standing on the side of people who work hard and want to get ahead looks like, and we are doing it responsibly; we are doing it in a way that does not add fuel to the inflation fire or adds excessively to debt.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim to be “on the side of those in the construction sector who wish to see more employment” when we have seen this Government reach 20,000 fewer construction jobs?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, because if you talk to those in the construction sector, they say one of the most important things for ensuring that there’s high levels of construction activity is that interest rates are lower. And on the watch of this Government, there have been successive interest rate reductions, whereas on the watch of the previous Government, they increased at such a rapid rate that it’s meant that many construction projects fell over.

Hon Ginny Andersen: If she truly is on the side of construction workers, then why are there 39,570 working-age jobseeker support clients as at the end of January 2026, who have declared construction, mining labourer, or trades worker as their previous occupation?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because the economy has been going through a challenging recovery following a period of excessively high inflation that was sustained outside of the target band for 33 months in a row, leading to a massive spike in interest rates and a very difficult economic recovery. This Government has been steering New Zealand out of that. It is also the case that we have been, like every country in the world, buffeted by the events in the Middle East, and we are working very hard to ensure that we strengthen our economy and its resilience to those global impacts.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How does her optimism help Jamie Lloyd, owner of a Wellington building company, who lost three months’ worth of work due to soaring fuel prices and has described the construction industry here in Wellington as “bleak”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, my thoughts absolutely go out to Jamie and others like him in the economy who are doing everything right. In this case, it sounds as if he’s someone who’s had the gumption to start his own business, to put his own money and time on the line, and to take risks. That is why I think it is so deeply, deeply regrettable when events such as those in the Middle East come to our shores, because it is the case that higher fuel prices are having a real impact on many. For our part, the Government is determined to ensure that we continue to have sufficient fuel supply in the country; that we mitigate the impacts of this conflict in ways that are responsible, temporary, and targeted; and that we continue to support the construction sector through the Government’s ongoing investment in infrastructure projects.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim her Government is supporting the construction sector when there have already been record job losses and, now, her Government has no clear plan in a fuel crisis which is just causing increased uncertainty across the sector?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I utterly reject the assertion made in the latter part of that question, and it’s an assertion that the Labour Party dishonourably continue to make on social media. We have a plan, we have a fuel response plan, we have published that plan, we are taking all of the measures necessary. Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with leaders from across the world, many of whom affirmed that it looks like New Zealand is doing exactly the right things and commented that, in fact, our response of ensuring that we are able to set out in advance the phases of a response plan, that we have thought about how to secure additional reserves, and that we are taking temporary and timely economic steps is the right way to be doing things.

Social Development and Employment

Question No. 9

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (14:43) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Is the civil defence payment available for people in Wellington affected by the severe weather and flooding for which a state of emergency has been declared, and, if not, why not?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (14:43): I acknowledge that many people have been affected by the recent weather events in Wellington and will still be feeling unsettled as the clean-up continues in communities. Local defence teams take the lead after an event and are primarily responsible for helping people with their immediate needs. The provision of civil defence payments is a Ministry of Social Development (MSD) operational decision that is informed by assessments by civil defence, by MSD, and by local communities. MSD continues to monitor the situation closely and is engaged with local civil defence groups to understand community needs. Existing MSD services and support have, so far, been able to meet the needs of those impacted.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: If, and when, the Wellington civil defence and emergency management group does make a formal request for the civil defence emergency payment for impacted Wellingtonians, will the Government grant it?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As I said in the answer to the primary question, there is an assessment by MSD, by local civil defence, and by local communities, and it is based on those assessments that MSD makes a decision about whether or not civil defence payments are necessary.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What support, if not the civil defence payment, is available to Wellingtonians from the Government for those people who may have lost bedding, accommodation, food, or other essentials in the severe weather and flooding?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: MSD has a range of supports and services available to New Zealanders when they face hardship, and they have been fielding inquiries and providing support as necessary.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: If people go to access that support she just mentioned, will they be receiving, essentially, loans—and, therefore, going into debt—to access the support that they need to get essentials right now?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As I said, there’s a range of support available to people who are affected by the weather events in Wellington. I would state, for the record of the House, if people are concerned about their ability, they should contact the MSD in the first instance.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Does she accept that the value of the civil defence payment for food or bedding hasn’t changed since 2013, and, if so, will she increase the payment so that people can be properly supported when affected by these increasingly common extreme weather events?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The first step is that there is an assessment by civil defence, by local communities, and by MSD as to whether or not the civil defence payments are required. That is the first step.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Point of order. Mr Speaker, the Minister made it very clear in all her answers that the civil defence payment may or may not be granted, based on an assessment. My question was about the value of the civil defence payment and about that not changing. Whether or not it is granted, the question of the value of it is separate to whether or not it will be granted. The Minister didn’t address that aspect of my question.

SPEAKER: I’m not sure that’s entirely the Minister’s responsibility, but she may wish to make a further comment.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, Mr Speaker, as I said, the civil defence payments—a decision hasn’t been made to grant them in this first instance. Where people need accommodation assistance, they are adjusted annually with the annual general adjustment.

Tourism and Hospitality

Question No. 10

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki) (14:47) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent reports has she seen on tourism in New Zealand?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality) (14:47): Data released by Stats New Zealand last week shows that New Zealand’s international visitor numbers continue to rise. Annual figures show that overseas visitor arrivals reached 3.58 million in the year to February 2026, which is an increase of 229,000 people on the previous year. This puts us at 92 percent of the pre-COVID levels. Over 408,000 overseas visitors chose to visit New Zealand in February 2016; that’s over 53,000 more than the same time a year ago. Growing tourism is a key part of our Government’s plan to fix the basics and build the future, and our progress shows that our plan is working.

Catherine Wedd: What markets have seen the strongest growth?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: We are seeing continued growth from our largest visitor market, Australia, with 1.54 million arrivals in the year to February, up 123,000 on the year prior. Chinese visitor arrivals are also up 41,700, an increase of 214 percent in February 2026 compared with the same month in 2025, as more Chinese visitors chose to take advantage of the visa waiver trial and experience New Zealand over Chinese New Year. As a country, we are seeing the flow-on of growth and confidence in our tourism and hospitality sector as more visitors are choosing New Zealand as their holiday destination. More international visitors means more customers for our businesses and, ultimately, more jobs being created across New Zealand.

Hon Shane Jones: The regions—the regions.

Catherine Wedd: How are the Government’s visa changes impacting visitor number?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: A visa waiver trial that allows eligible visitors from China and the Pacific to travel to New Zealand from Australia with a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority rather than a visa is making a difference. In December, we announced that 13,000 Chinese and Pacific travellers had already visited, with 24,000 total requests approved; that number is now at almost 67,000 visits. With an average visitor spend of $5,300 for Chinese visitors, that’s an estimated economic injection of almost $350 million for Kiwi businesses from those who have visited, with Chinese visitors making up around 65,946 of the visits on this new pathway. This visitor spending is directly going into local businesses and, Mr Shane Jones, the regions—that includes shops, eateries, accommodation, and transport. This is spending that might otherwise not have happened without this trial.

Catherine Wedd: What commentary has she seen on these reports?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Travel and Tour World says: “Australia has overtaken [key markets] to lead New Zealand’s historic tourism surge.” and “New Zealand’s strategic Government policies … have played a pivotal role in attracting these record numbers.” Otago Peninsula Trust Ecotourism Manager Hoani Langsbury said: “We’ve had reasonably solid Chinese visitor numbers through December, January, and February. It is exciting for us because Chinese visitors account for 6 percent to 8 percent of our business.” ASB economist Wesley Tanuvasa has said: “Inbound tourism remains strong. Having more of the tourism increase driven by the Chinese cohort, who are bigger spenders per day, should support growth even if [just for] a seasonal boost.” Tourism is critical to our economy, and our investments will help deliver lasting benefits for communities and businesses from one end of New Zealand to the other.

Science, Innovation and Technology

Question No. 11

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (14:51) to the Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology: Does she stand by her reported statement that science and innovation are a core part of the Government’s plan to lift productivity, support high-value jobs, and expand the economy, when about 700 jobs in the science sector have been lost since 2024?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology) (14:51): Yes. Science and innovation are a core part of our plan to lift productivity, support high-value jobs, and build the future by growing the economy. I note that the Stats New Zealand Research and Development Survey shows that employment in the sector increased from 28,200 roles in 2022 to 30,600 roles in 2024, with most of that growth in the private sector, which is, actually, where most R & D investment is made. Budget 2025 committed more than $1.8 billion to science and innovation, and our reforms are deliberately focused on maximising the value of public investment in science and building a more dynamic system that can respond to national priorities, keep pace with technological change, lift productivity, and, most importantly, support higher-value jobs across the economy.

SPEAKER: That is an exceptionally long answer. I would suggest that you edit the balance of your responses substantially.

Reuben Davidson: How does the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council proposal to cut 22 percent from primary industries and bioeconomy research, a sector forecast to deliver a record $62 billion in exports this year, lift productivity, support high-value jobs, and expand the economy?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Of course, it isn’t a cut; it is a reallocation of funding to the Advanced Technology Institute. I’d like to refer to a farmer’s weekly article from 7 April, where the AgriTechNZ CEO Brendan O’Connell said he welcomes the shift in focus to technology and science funding—describing the recognition of technology as a distinct research pillar as a defining moment. I quote from Mr O’Connell: “The idea, a significant part of our R & D should be in new tech and be applied, is a good message to send. This is where the wealth generation will be for both the agri and the tech sector.”

Reuben Davidson: Why, then, is there no publicly available workforce strategy to retain or replace the scientists being made redundant?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, of course, the focus is on ensuring that we have a strong science and innovation sector, which engages with industry, to ensure that productivity and growth in our economy occurs because two-thirds of the R & D that happens in this country happens with our businesses.

Reuben Davidson: Does cutting roles in hazard-monitoring teams risk degrading services—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Whoa—whoa, whoa. Questions have got to be heard in silence. Start again.

Reuben Davidson: Does cutting roles in hazard-monitoring teams risk degrading services that directly protect New Zealanders?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: We are very focused on ensuring that the critical work that is done in weather forecasting and climate research continues. We’re bringing NIWA and MetService together in Earth Sciences so that we can get efficiencies and ensure that we reinvest in improvements to our climate science and our weather forecasting capabilities. We need to ensure that our funding is focused on those front-line scientists doing the research.

Reuben Davidson: What assurances, then, can she give to the former Earth Sciences New Zealand geohazard analyst who now works in Italy and said he “hopes that a new Government would address these issues with science funding, and I could come back to a New Zealand with a strong science funding system in place”?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: Well, the reforms we are undertaking are absolutely focused on ensuring we have a strong science, innovation, and technology sector. Look, I realise that change is never easy for those that are directly affected by it, but we are ensuring that our public research organisations, our PROs, are financially resilient and are focused and are putting their attention to the priority areas that they should be that will ensure our economy is strong and grows.

Justice

Question No. 12

TĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Tai Tonga) (14:57) to the Minister of Justice: Does he agree that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the founding document of our contemporary nation of Aotearoa New Zealand?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice) (14:57): I agree that the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in its two languages was the document signed at the founding of our contemporary nation.

Tākuta Ferris: What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that Te Tiriti - based rights of Māori in the justice system are not adversely affected by the Government’s intention to review, amend, and repeal Te Tiriti clauses in legislation?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, as part of the coalition agreement with New Zealand First, we as a Government sought to try and bring a bit of order to the 28 or so pieces of legislation that refer the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and a host of arrangements—sometimes “give effect to”, sometimes “have regard to”, sometimes “honour”, sometimes “take account”, and sometimes referring to “the Treaty”, sometimes to “Te Tiriti”; a whole host of things. We set a group up to bring some coherency to that, and that’s what we’re doing.

Tākuta Ferris: Will he champion a suspension of the review until meaningful consultation on the potential impacts on Māori Te Tiriti - based rights in justice has been investigated and a review process that both Te Tiriti partners are happy with can be implemented; if not, why not?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, of course, as we speak, there is consultation going on on the Cabinet decisions. When the legislation is introduced in the House, it will then go off to a select committee, and all New Zealanders, including Māori, will have the opportunity to have their say.

Oral Questions to Members

Justice Committee

Question No. 1

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (14:59) to the Chairperson of the Justice Committee: Why did he announce a submission period of four weeks on the Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill after first setting a submission period of six weeks?

Hon ANDREW BAYLY (Chairperson of the Justice Committee) (14:59): As Dr Duncan Webb was briefed on 10 April, I’d just reiterate that the bill was referred to the Justice Committee on Thursday, 2 April, just prior to the two-week Easter recess. I instructed the clerk of the committee to call for submissions with a closing date proportional to the report-back date. By convention, a six-week call for submission corresponds to a six-month report back, or four weeks for a four-month report back. The clerk of the committee originally understood it to be a six-month report back and so issued a submission for the six-week period. However, shortly after the Easter break, it came to his attention that the report back was, in fact, only a four-month report back, and he contacted me and, on that basis, I instructed him to call for submissions proportional to the report-back date, which, in effect, is the four weeks. We will, of course, be confirming this at Thursday’s meeting of the Justice Committee, and I look forward to the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s contribution.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Supplementary. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Dr Duncan Webb, and nobody else.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Why did he call for submissions for the shortened period of four weeks when Speaker’s ruling 117/1 states that “a committee or chairperson should generally allow a minimum of six weeks” and there are no exceptional circumstances in this case, given the four-month referral by the House?

Hon ANDREW BAYLY: I have to dispute what the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s just stated, because under the Speaker’s rulings the committee chair can call for a submission period proportional to the report back. I know that the committee clerk actually spoke to the Speaker about this issue, and I’m fully, as the chair of the committee, entitled to do this under the power of the committee and under the Speaker’s ruling. But as I said before, I’m looking forward to confirming this at this Thursday’s meeting, and I look forward to the helpful comments from the Hon Dr Duncan Webb.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.

Bills

Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh) (15:04): The House is in committee on the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. This is the debate on the financial position of the Government and the annual reviews of departments, Offices of Parliament, Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises, as reported on by select committees.

This is a 10-hour debate. The time for this debate has been allocated to parties on a proportional basis. New Zealand National has three hours, 59 minutes; New Zealand Labour has two hours, 46 minutes; the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has one hour, 13 minutes; ACT New Zealand has 54 minutes; New Zealand First has 39 minutes; Te Pāti Māori has 24 minutes; Tākuta Ferris has five minutes.

Following a Business Committee determination, the annual review debate will be arranged by portfolio rather than sector. Specific Ministers will be available each day to respond to specific portfolios. The Government has indicated that the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Housing, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education, and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety will be available today to respond to members’ questions. Each debate will be led off by the chairperson or another member of the committee that considered annual reviews most closely related to the Minister’s portfolios. The Minister of Finance is here first, for one hour, to respond to members’ questions.

The question is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the 2024-25 financial year be noted.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Finance

RYAN HAMILTON (Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee) (15:06): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak to this annual review of the financial statements of the Government for the year ended 30 June 2025, as reported by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. These accounts matter because they tell New Zealanders plainly and transparently how the Crown is managing the public finances on their behalf. They show where revenue is coming from, where it is being spent, and the state of the Government’s balance sheet at a time of economic constraint and ongoing pressure on households and businesses.

First, on the operating position, the operating balance before gains and losses excluding ACC, or “OBEGALx”, was a deficit of $9.3 billion in 2024-25, compared with $8.8 billion the year before. Including ACC, the deficit was $14 billion. These figures make clear that fiscal pressure remains real and persistent, and that returning the books to balance will take time and discipline, not quick fixes.

Total revenue increased modestly, up to $169.8 billion, up 1.5 percent. Around half of that increase came from tax revenue, reflecting limited economic growth and policy decisions such as income tax threshold changes. Other gains came from higher sales of goods and services, particularly electricity generation, underscoring how volatile and sector-specific revenue growth can be. At the same time, expenses rose faster than revenue, reaching $183.5 billion. Much of this growth was driven by indexed benefits and rising superannuation costs as our population ages.

These are not abstract numbers; they reflect long-term structural pressures that any responsible Government must plan for. Net core Crown debt rose to $182.2 billion. Importantly, however, debt has stabilised at 41.8 percent of GDP. For the first time in several years, it has not increased relative to the size of the economy. That stabilisation matters because it signals a turning point from unchecked growth and debt towards a more sustainable trajectory.

The committee heard clearly from the Minister of Finance about the Government’s overall fiscal strategy: reducing core Crown expenses as a share of GDP, targeting around 30 percent over time, and gradually reducing debt towards 40 percent of GDP. This is not about austerity for its own sake; it is about protecting the Government’s ability to fund essential services like health, education, and superannuation, while restoring resilience through future shocks.

The audit results provide further confidence. The Auditor-General issued an unmodified opinion confirming that the financial statements fairly represent the Government’s financial position and comply with generally accepted accounting practice. While uncertainties remain around matters such as veterans’ entitlements and ongoing litigation, the accounts are being prepared and scrutinised to a high standard.

On infrastructure, the Government has committed $61.8 billion over four years, with a further $13.2 billion signalled for future Budgets. The focus is increasingly on value for money, better sequencing, and actually getting projects delivered. Halving the average cost of building a classroom is a concrete example of what disciplined capital management can achieve.

The report also touches on climate commitments, the emissions trading scheme, and the Māori economy. The Māori economy continues to grow faster than the overall economy, and targeted funding remains in place for Māori health and education. On climate policy, the Government has reiterated its commitment to domestic emissions reductions while making clear that nationally determined contributions are not treated as legal financial liabilities.

Taken together, these financial statements show a Government operating in a constrained environment, making deliberate choices to stabilise the books, to protect core services, and to lay the groundwork for stronger growth as economic conditions improve. The challenge is now to maintain fiscal discipline while delivering real outcomes for New Zealanders in the midst of a really challenging environment in the current fuel crisis. Thank you.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:10): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I just want to acknowledge the deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Ryan Hamilton, for his summary of our report. I also want to acknowledge the previous chair, the now Hon Cameron Brewer, and to congratulate him on his promotion.

For members on the other side of the Chamber—because we know that they’re tired of voting—I will say that members on this side of the Chamber will probably be putting forward two potential nominations, and one is Nancy Lu. For the first time, we believe that Nancy is very capable of being the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, having come from PricewaterhouseCoopers and having been an auditor and an accountant. The second one, though—which might surprise some members—is Todd Stephenson. Todd is a very practical member on that select committee, and so we’re just trying to toss up, but we just thought that we’d give you a heads-up so that you can prepare for your votes tomorrow to make sure that you have your numbers lined up.

To the committee, I say that this is, of course, Budget 2024 and a previous review of the last financial year. For those who remember, Budget 2024 was when there were tax cuts for landlords and tobacco companies. There was support, supposedly, for Kiwi families and businesses, and that’s where my first question to the Minister of Finance is: how many families have actually received the full $250 that was promised in Budget 2024?

Another question is: how many actual, individual families received the full $250? Before the election, the Minister promised that 130,000 families would benefit from FamilyBoost, and so my third question is: how many unique families have actually benefited from FamilyBoost, and will we ever know how many families actually received the full $250 that the Prime Minister promised that the average family would get? I’m happy to continue the questioning so that the Minister can get some advice, because, quite clearly, she’s still struggling to find the one family that received the full $250.

We go to the forecast that we received in Budget 2024. In the 2024 update, it was the first major update by this Government and, since then, growth has continually been downgraded or revised down over this time and the effects of the conflict in the Middle East have actually not yet been factored in. When we look at the books for the 2024 period and we look at what’s happened since the books have been released in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, we can see that growth has been reducing, and so the question that I have to the Minister is a very, very basic question: have economic forecasts got better or worse since Budget 2024?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:13): I just want to correct a statement which the member Barbara Edmonds made, I think, in error, and it would probably be an error that she wouldn’t want to repeat. It has been something that has been repeated in this House many times, however. She has referred to tax cuts for tobacco companies. It is the case that in the Budget, forecasters estimated a reduction in tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes, and that reflected the fact that their view was that increasing the sale of heated tobacco products would mean fewer people would be smoking. What that number in the Budget numbers reflects is the Government progressing its strategy to see fewer people smoking, and to characterise that as a tax cut on cigarettes is, I think, misleading in a way that would be misleading and it is something that has been repeated by many people within that member’s party.

I want to emphasise again that the policy decision was to work to reduce the number of people smoking. Therefore, it is reflected in the Estimates that that is likely to occur and, therefore, that there would be a reduction in the revenue obtained by the Government from cigarette sales. As I say, there would be many members of this House who would agree with me that a day on which we are receiving zero revenue from having zero people smoking is a good thing. But, actually, the Labour Party’s position seems to be that they want more revenue from smoking, on the back of more people smoking. I do not think that is a responsible position. It’s not our Government’s policy to drive more people into smoking in order to fill the Government coffers. It is, obviously, the corollary of the accusation that the member dishonourably just made.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Point of order. I get that the Minister’s a little bit tense today, given the issues—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): What is the point of order?

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Well, the Minister just likes to say that I’m dishonourable and made that comment. I take personal offence to that.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): A fair point of order. Minister.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: I withdraw and apologise and encourage the member to correct her statement.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): No, no, no.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:15): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s really clear that it’s been a difficult day for the Minister of Finance—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Just stick to the annual reviews.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: For example, the Minister of Finance saying tax cuts for cigarettes is, again, wrong. I said, “tax cuts for tobacco companies”. To align the Minister with the comments she just made, what about the smoke-free generation rules that your Government revoked and repealed? What was the economic impact on the health system as a result of the repealing of that particular piece of legislation, given the Minister’s last comments? [Member sits]

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Madam Chair?

Chlöe Swarbrick: E te Māngai?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’m sorry, she called first—the Hon Barbara Edmonds.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: That’s all right. Going to another particular area in relation to Budget 2024 and to the statements by the Minister of Finance, where there is a long, long list in the Hansard where she makes the quote “There will be no cut to front-line services.”—a long, long list, within Hansard, where you’ve heard the Minister of Finance, both in the media and in this House, talk about no cuts to front-line services. My question is: in Budget 2024, the actual proof is that we saw a lot of cuts to front-line services, so does the Minister stand by her statement that there will be no cuts to front-line services? Is she confident that she kept that promise to New Zealanders, and have there been any front-line service cuts since Budget 2024?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:17): As I have answered in this House—probably as many times as the Hansard quotes that she’s referring to—definitions of front-line services tend to vary, with that member seeming to count absolutely everything the Government funds as a front-line service. It is the case that this Government has delivered $43 billion in savings in public expenditure across two Budgets. That has been a necessary step to help repair books left in tatters by the last Government. I want to acknowledge that making those savings is challenging, and it has involved difficult trade-offs from every Minister in our Government. What I would say to the member is that, if she wants to avoid a situation in which debt escalates for ever and in which New Zealanders need to be taxed more, making those sorts of savings is necessary.

In terms of our investment in front-line services, we have, across all of our Budget Policy Statements, emphasised areas that we will focus additional expenditure in. I think they reflect the priorities of New Zealanders. They are health, where we have committed increases in funding for front-line health services above and beyond population and inflationary pressures. They are education, where we have made significant investments, including the biggest investment ever in additional resources for children with additional needs. They have included investments in law and order, where not only have we put investments in hiring more front-line officers but we have also ensured there is more funding available to the Police and the justice system so that we can have sentences that reflect the gravity of some crimes. We’ve also ensured, in each Budget, that we’ve invested more in the public infrastructure on which New Zealanders depend. We have stood by the words I’ve used in this House, which is a focus on the front-line services that New Zealanders care about while also delivering the prudent savings that are clearly necessary if we’re not going to leave the books in tatters, as the last lot did.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (15:19): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou te Whare. I just want to take us back to the hearings that we initially had about these Budget proposals with the Minister of Finance. She may recall that, in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I asked her questions about her intention, as laid out, to crunch the size of Government spending substantially in record time. I asked her, at that point in time, about the billions of dollars she was intent on sucking out of the economy here in Aotearoa New Zealand and whether that gap would end up being filled by the private sector. I don’t believe she really answered that question at that time, and instead she referred to how a Government Budget was akin to a household budget—a longstanding metaphor that has been proven incorrect time and time again.

We did, in fact, end up seeing that the private sector didn’t fill that gap. In fact, the Government ended up, through its fiscal strategy, kneecapping the very growth and productivity that it so frequently likes to crow about. I’d just like to put that question to the Minister again: whether, looking back, she believes that the Government’s decision to suck billions of dollars of investment out of the economy was ultimately filled by the private sector. Because what we’ve seen in reality is that it wasn’t. We’ve ended up with record-high unemployment—the highest in 10 years. We’ve also ended up with, by some figures, 15,000 construction sector jobs lost, and, obviously, as we all well know, this Government waving goodbye to the 200-plus New Zealanders leaving the country every single day.

I also just want to pick up on some of the comments from the deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who spoke about how this Budget apparently set the scene for a more resilient country. In fact, the reality is borne out right now. As this capital city is in the midst of a state of emergency—a climate-change - charged weather event—we are seeing the reality of this Government’s slashing of spending and investment in resilience laid bare for all to see. To give some context to what I’m talking about here, IAG said, in their report on their natural hazards - related claims—and I quote—“Over a 15-year timeline, a storm typically affected parts of the country once every 19 days. In the last 12 months, that frequency has more than doubled to once every eight days, making storms a near weekly occurrence.”

This is important to contextualise given the questions that I put to our Prime Minister in question time just today, where he affirmed that it his view and the Government’s view—thankfully we can at least agree on this very basic fact—that climate change is increasing the severity and the frequency of the extreme weather that we are currently seeing. Yet, he didn’t address at all the fact that this Government knows—the Prime Minister knows, and the Minister of Finance definitely knows, and we have reflected in an Official Information Act response from the Ministry for the Environment—that they have made decisions to cut flood protection funding across this country by 41 percent compared to the former Government. The only thing that they can claim in the space of climate adaptation—which, notably, they all also know—is that, per a Cabinet decision in, I believe, October last year, they delayed any meaningful decisions on cost sharing with regard to climate adaptation, therefore kicking the can further and further down the road.

The question I want to ask the Prime Minister—sorry, the Minister of Finance; a slip of the tongue that makes sense in the context of today’s political events—is about that resilience. On top of that point of reflection, on the sucking of all of that investment out of the economy and the flow-on effects with regard to business confidence in investment and otherwise, is that point of resilience. The Government has decided to also cut, and did in its initial Budget, $6 billion from climate emergency response funding and from resilience—from the likes of that flood protection and otherwise—which has not only undermined our ability to mitigate climate-changing emissions but also to adapt to the impacts of climate change. In turn, that has led to a statement from Fitch, one of the credit ratings agencies that the Minister often likes to cite, in its warning about a potential credit downgrade on its way, that—and I quote—“The Iran war poses some risks to the New Zealand economy given its substantial dependence on energy imports.” Can the Minister of Finance clearly articulate for us how exactly this Government has apparently increased our resilience while actively subsidising new fossil-fuel production and cutting investment in renewable energy generation?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:24): Well, I want to take us back to the first set of questions, which were revealing of deep problems in that member’s economic analysis—in fact, deep problems in the economic analysis of the entire socialist project and agenda her party represents. She described the Government’s spending less as “sucking money out of the economy”. Now, I want to be clear with the member about where the money that Government spends comes from: it comes from the tax that working New Zealanders pay. What the member is actually saying is that, in her book, the way to grow an economy is to suck more money out of the pockets of working people. I stand proudly on the side of the House that recognises that that is no recipe for growth, job creation, and prosperity. That is a recipe for making our people poorer.

I’m very proud to be on the side of the House that took the judicious measure of adjusting tax brackets for the inflation that had robbed too many New Zealanders of their hard-earned cash. It is of deep concern to me that members on the other side of the House, while claiming they care about the cost of living faced by New Zealanders, still oppose the personal income tax reduction our Government delivered that has ensured New Zealand families are much better off financially each week when they get paid. That side of the House would take that money back off them in a second and would waste it on their own pet projects.

In the second part of the question, the member remembered she’s not just a socialist, she’s also a Green, and asked about the environment. It is the case that this Government has been intent on ensuring New Zealand has increased resilience, in part by promoting more investment in renewable electricity generation. In answer to the member’s question, one of the most important things we have done is introduce the fast-track legislation, which she opposes, which has seen multiple renewable energy projects—solar farms, wind farms, and, today, a project on the West Coast—and more investment in renewable energy projects that would otherwise have been caught up in the bureaucratic processes that member’s party prefers. We stand on the side of the electrification of New Zealand, investing in a charging network for electric vehicles, and ensuring that we don’t just talk about renewable energy, we make sure that it can get through the red tape and it can get done, which is what fast track has been all about.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (15:27): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Minister for answering some of the questions put forward by colleagues. Given the Minsiter’s proclaimed concern for working families and their pockets, we’d like the answer that we’re still waiting for, to the question “How many families have received the full $250 a fortnight that was promised to them?”, in terms of that relief that the Hon Barbara Edmonds asked about.

The other set of questions I’d like to put to the Minister—I’ll rattle through a couple of them in this contribution—are on the perennial question that the Finance and Expenditure Committee concern themselves with, and that is how we account for our climate obligations. I’m only sorry that Hon Dr Deborah Russell isn’t here to take this call on the accounting principles and constructive obligations and the way that it should appear in the Crown accounts. We heard from Treasury that they will be looking at a range of decisions that the Government will make, in making that decision about whether that would transfer from a fiscal liability to a constructive obligation on the Government. I’d be keen to hear from the Minister what she considers to be those trigger points, in terms of Government decision making, to see that liability needing to be laid bare in the Crown accounts.

We did hear from Treasury that they won’t be doing an update on the 2023 joint work that was done with the Ministry for the Environment, which was looking at the economic and fiscal assessment that was done, and that laid out what the liability for New Zealand would be given its current emissions track. This was last done in 2023, and this Government has not had such a piece of work done. We’ve heard that won’t be done before this year’s Budget, but the question is: why won’t that work be done before this year’s Budget? It is an important piece of our economic understanding. Treasury did say that they could put it as part of the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update, or PREFU. My question to the Minister is: why not the Budget, but PREFU? That seems to be an anomaly—that you’re casting a Budget in that year—when you’re intending to produce that information in only a few short months.

The other question I have: the Minister seems vitally concerned about the electrification of the economy—of course, the fast track of electricity project is something that had started under Labour, and indeed many that are going through the fast track—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: There were many, many, many projects that went through fast-track processes under Labour, and of course many of the ones that are progressing now actually had begun—if the Minister realises how long it takes to put together a renewable energy process.

Of course, we’re talking about Budget 2024, and Budget 2024 cut $178 million from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s budget. This was money that was largely to reduce household electricity bills, in the form of doing things like the electrification of households, having hot water heat pumps, so we could really take pressure off families. In a year when the Government had $790 million - odd in tax cuts for landlords, $178 million was sliced from initiatives that could have directly helped families with the cost of living. It could have helped them with their power bills. Has the Minister since received any other advice from Ministers across the Government about what we might have to do to help families afford to heat their homes?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:31): In answer to the latter question, one of the bits of advice I’ve had is that if the member hadn’t banned oil and gas exploration for New Zealand, we would most likely have more sufficient gas supply and not the acute electricity price increases that we were left with. In terms of—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: No one believes you when you say that.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: She just said that no one believes me when I say that. What she believes is that banning oil and gas exploration was good for New Zealand’s fuel resilience, cutting off the very source of domestically produced gas that, right now, would mean we were more resilient.

In answer to the other part of the member’s speech, I can confirm that 87,444 unique families have received the FamilyBoost childcare tax credit so far, and I do want to thank the member and her party for supporting the most recent legislation, which expanded that scheme and which has seen that, in the December quarter, at least 11,068 families received at least $150 a fortnight—

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is that all?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In answer to the question that the member asked—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Oh, $150?

Hon Barbara Edmonds: You promised 21,000.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: And here they quibble—here they quibble. I think the message I take from it is that they would actually take that money away from those New Zealand families and the people who have been very, very appreciative, at a time of life that’s very expensive, when you’ve got young kids, big early childcare costs, mum and dad are both trying to work—actually, that tax credit has been incredibly, materially significant to many families.

Finally, in answer to the question about the constructive obligation for potentially paying international countries for our Paris obligation, our Government has taken the same advice from the Auditor-General and the Treasury that the member took when she was the Associate Minister of Finance, which is to recognise that there is no constructive obligation unless the Government commits that it will sign a cheque. I’m proud that I haven’t committed that I will be signing a cheque to send billions of dollars offshore, and if that member wants to take that position to the campaign trail, I’d encourage her to do so.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance) (15:33): I note the Minister of Finance refers to some disdain from the Opposition benches to the oil and gas exploration ban of 2018. She was even challenged by a Labour member saying, “No one believes you.”, which is not really good form in Parliament.

Here’s the reason why they should believe the Minister. You see, there are people who say that a ban in 2018 can’t possibly have led to a restriction in oil and gas availability today, because it takes 15 years for a new well—and that is true—but sometimes you meet people who grab on to one fact and hold it so tightly they squeeze out any relevance it had. That is what’s happened in this case.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): As it relates to the year in review.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Absolutely, Madam Chair. This Government is facing economic challenge in part because of that precise action. It is not because there are no new wells allowed; it’s because of the old wells that don’t produce. It’s because people believe that somehow it just sort of pops out of the ground like a miracle.

The difference is that some of us on this side of the House go out and meet the people who run the engineering shops, who put in place the infrastructure, who actually drill the wells and employ the people to keep those wells pumping and producing. When the Government of the day comes along and says, “You’re out of here; you have no future in this country.”, all those people leave. That also affects other statistics and other economic measures.

I was in New Plymouth last week, and there’s a lot of people there who still commute to Australia, where they’re welcome to work. So long as that vote of no confidence, that banishment of a whole industry, a whole lot of people and their skills and their capital, is casting a long shadow over this country, it doesn’t matter if there are any new wells, because they destroyed all the confidence required to keep producing in the old ones. That’s a simple fact relevant to this debate that the other side can’t quite grasp, but they hold on to it because it’s one of the very few arguments they have.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:36): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Now, the Minister has already mentioned our regional development, and I had a question just in relation to whether she felt that she had her priorities right. From many points of view, including on this side of the House, there is a view that the Budget failed to keep people in work, particularly in the regions, with unemployment now expected to be even higher than forecast. If we look by region, in Northland there are 2,200 fewer jobs there now; the Hawke’s Bay, 9,400 fewer jobs; Taranaki, 6,300 fewer jobs; Tasman, Nelson, Marlborough, 2,600 fewer jobs; Southland, 4,200 fewer jobs. That’s not taking into account the recent announcements from McCain and from Wattie’s to shut down their factories that will be operating in the Hawke’s Bay.

My question to the Minister is: did she get her priorities right in the Budget, given the record levels of job losses that New Zealanders have sustained right across the regions?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) (15:37): I just wanted to respond to a few of the points that the Minister of Finance made there, amongst the ad hominem attacks against me, particularly the points that I made about how, as we were having the discussions in the Finance and Expenditure Committee almost about two years ago—

Hon David Seymour: It’s not about you, Chlöe; it’s your socialist views.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —when I spoke about the Government’s intention to rapidly crunch the size of the economy and I said that it was sucking money out of the economy, the Minister then went on to wax lyrical about how this money comes from New Zealand taxpayers. I think we all know that. All Governments, of all stripes, tax and spend.

The fundamental kind of question here is about how we want to use our collective resources. The points that I am making—the point that the Green Party is making—is that you do not grow when you starve. That is the approach that this Government has taken to our economy. We said it two years ago when they first came to power and deployed the beginning of their fiscal strategy, which was, effectively, to start to starve our public services—to then start a process by which we would see them fail and then, eventually, get to a point where they should say, “Hey, we should privatise that.”

The Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are currently heckling at me about the fact that this is, apparently, socialism—

Hon Nicola Willis: Yep, it is.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —for us to say that what we want to do is—God forbid—believe that New Zealanders should have a guaranteed basic standard of living, that the Green Party puts forward a plan that is evidence based, where we show everybody the money for how we would fix the tax system, which currently sees those in the top—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can the member come back to the 2024-25 year under review.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Madam Chair, I would love to. However, we are in a situation where we have a Minister of Finance who is actively attacking me for our proposals and stating that they are socialism. I think it is actually incredibly important for us to lay out exactly what those plans are. Those plans are to rebuild a country that this Government is currently—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The member will come back to the review year, please.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: So, to the point that was raised by one of my colleagues with regard to the constructive liabilities under the Paris Agreement, I just really actually think it’s important to spell this out—

Hon Shane Jones: Fiction! Fiction!

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —as one of the Ministers of Cabinet currently yells out that the Paris Agreement is fiction. As that Minister of Cabinet yells out that this is fiction, we also have a Prime Minister who says that we are committed to meeting our obligations under the Paris Agreement. What that means is that we have to meet something called our nationally determined contributions, which former National Governments have signed us up to, and this one reaffirmed us to. Those nationally determined contributions rely on us reducing our emissions here at home, domestically, or paying other countries to reduce their emissions.

The point that we are making here is that you cannot have two things be true in the instance of, on the one hand, saying that we are going to meet our nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement when the Ministry for the Environment and Treasury are making it abundantly clear, as of two years ago, that we cannot do that domestically, and then also say that we’re not going to do offshore mitigation. Those two things do not logically marry. The Minister of Finance knows this. I know that she is an incredibly intelligent person, despite all of the things that she’d like to say about me. I know that she knows you cannot, on the one hand, say you are going to meet our nationally determined contribution while also knowing that we cannot do that through domestic mitigation—which this Government has also slashed—and then not say that we are going to do that offshore mitigation.

My basic, fundamental question to the Minister, which I have not been able to get an answer out of her or any Government Minister on in the last two years, is: is this Government going to meet our entire nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement domestically or not?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:41): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to respond to the Minister of Finance in relation to some of the comments she made around FamilyBoost, because we still don’t have the answer to the question of how many of the families the Minister promised, and Christopher Luxon promised, $250 have actually received the full $250.

Now, the Minister of Finance likes to say that the Opposition and this side of the House are just quibbling; we’re not quibbling about being able to afford an ice cream at a movie theatre. What we are fighting for is the fact that so many New Zealanders are scraping by today, which is why our food banks have huge demand—more than they have ever seen. That’s why our financial capability budget service providers are struggling to help the families in need, and they have huge wait-lists.

It comes back to the promise that the Minister of Finance—that Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon—made to everyday New Zealanders at Budget 2024, and at almost every election debate before that: that families were going to get, on average, $250. How many families have actually received that $250? Then, at Budget 2024, the Minister of Finance said that 21,000 families would get the full $250. Well, today, how does that math up? How does that math up with what the Minister said today, that 11,000 have got $150? We are fighting for every single one of those families to get what that Minister promised them: $250. So how many families? Just looking for one, at least. How many families have received the full $250 that the Minister promised them?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:43): First of all, in answer to Chlöe Swarbrick’s and, implicitly, the Labour Party’s position—which is, essentially, a view that says if only we had taxed people more in the past two years, if only we had borrowed more, everything would be better—what I would say is that, actually, I think it would be the very reverse. If we had introduced the programme of capital gains taxes, wealth taxes, universal beneficiary increases, the economy would be a lot worse off, not least because some of the most productive investors in the country would have simply left and taken the jobs they create with them, but also because that would be an economy which actually punishes the work effort and entrepreneurialism which we need in order to prosper. To argue that we should be borrowing more in the same set of remarks in which Chlöe Swarbrick notes the Fitch report, which puts New Zealand on watch, saying that, actually, fiscal sustainability matters, is obviously inherently contradictory.

In terms of Barbara Edmond’s rant, once again she’s been a bit loose, because, actually, the $150 I referred to in terms of the FamilyBoost payment is, of course, not the only tax reduction hard-working families have received from our Government, is it? No, because what they also received was adjustments to the tax threshold through which they pay personal income tax, and a range of adjustments in the Working for Families scheme to target more support at working families, which means there are many families who will have received, through those reductions, $100 a week, which they could add on to the $150 they’ve received through FamilyBoost.

It is also wrong for the member to claim that I promised a certain number of people would get $250. I did not. What I said was that that was the maximum amount a family could receive as a result of our tax package. That remains true, because guess what we did? We delivered on every single one of those commitments that supported that $250 figure, which I am proud of and which I think that member should hang her head in shame about because she opposed every single one of those measures to ensure working families could have more cash in their bank accounts to meet the needs of them and their kids.

Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (15:46): What indicators were there prior to the war in Iran that the economy was in recovery mode?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:46): Well, it is one of those memories that I will have for ever: Treasury coming in to give me their preliminary forecasts for this year’s Budget in exactly the same week that we watched the conflict in the Middle East take off.

What they were able to share with me at that time was that the signs of an economic recovery had taken such hold—in terms of business confidence, consumer confidence, investment intentions, and employment intentions—that they were forecasting 3 percent growth for the coming year, which is an extremely healthy level of growth. They were forecasting lower unemployment. They were forecasting a return to balanced books. They were forecasting a lower debt track.

That is yesterday; we’re now in today. It is the case that the conflict in the Middle East will mean those forecasts aren’t as good as they could have been, but it does endorse the position of this Government, which is that taking measures to address the underlying productivity challenge that we face is the right approach to strengthening and growing this economy while keeping discipline on the public finances.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (15:47): Thank you, Madam Chair. Recently, I’ve had the privilege of sitting on the select committee inquiry into online harm for young New Zealanders, and I won’t go into great detail other than to say that there is a lot of it and that it is very real. My question to the Minister is pretty straightforward. It’s really about the changes that she made to the Department of Internal Affairs Digital Safety programme funding. Were those cuts or were those savings?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:48): Just while the Minister’s getting some advice around the Department of Internal Affairs—was it cuts or reprioritisations, or some other terminology, to the Digital Safety programme—I actually want to ask about the State-owned enterprises.

Now, State-owned enterprises were traversed a lot during the annual review with Treasury. A lot of members in the committee were quite concerned around and were trying to understand the parameters of that work. I just want to ask the Minister: has there been an update to the advice that she has received? How far along are Treasury in relation to that piece of work, and can she still assure Parliament—because Treasury provided some form of assurance. They said the grey area is that sometimes Ministers will commission advice in good faith, thinking they can progress it through Cabinet, but for whatever set of reasons it will shift on to a party track. I just want to ask the Minister if she I can assure the committee—because Treasury tried to in the select committee—that that work in relation to State-owned enterprises will not go along a party track.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:49): I can confirm that the State-owned enterprises (SOEs) work that public officials are working on is for a Government purpose. In terms of the advice I’ve received around SOEs, one of the bits of advice I’ve received is that the dividends we currently receive from SOEs are a very important support to our Budgets and our ability to invest more in education, health, and law and order. I have been advised that parties who proposed that they would take those dividends and, instead, invest them in other ways, as that member has promoted, would in fact be creating a significant hole in the Government finances. They would be taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from health, education, and other essential front-line services.

To be fair, if parties promised they were going to use the dividends for one purpose and then they were going to fill that hole, they could fill that hole—with more tax and more borrowing. So just front up on that.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (15:50): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m still interested to know: we know that the Minister of Finance has said things such as she’s wanting to create the conditions for jobs and that she’s going for growth, and also things like the economy is stronger when more people are working. Well, I put it to her that there are 32,000 fewer jobs under her Government, and I still haven’t heard a response as to the 9,400 people in Hawke’s Bay who no longer have a job; the 6,300 in Taranaki who don’t have work; and in Tasman and Marlborough, the 2,600 there.

I would like to understand why this approach has been taken that has actually enabled unemployment to grow, particularly at a time of a cost of living crisis, when we know Kiwis are already doing it tough, particularly in the regions. There seems to be absolutely no plan to help those industries, particularly in manufacturing, that have had significant impact from the bad choices that this Government has made.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:51): It’s like that member has simultaneously discovered that jobs matter and that numbers matter! I’m glad that she’s got a focus on numbers, because it’s certainly not a normal theme from her party.

In terms of jobs and job creation, it is absolutely the case that one of the very reasons I care about growth in the economy—one of the very reasons I care about productivity—is that you don’t get job creation in a sustainable way unless you are dealing with the underlying fundamentals of an economy. One of the things that has been observed, actually, for successive decades in the New Zealand economy is that we prevent some investment that could create jobs through our own regulation and red tape, which is why the Government’s fast-track initiative, which has allowed the fast tracking of major developments that support thousands of jobs, has been so important.

Today, the seventh major housing project was announced through the fast-track process: Ashbourne in the Waikato. The member mentioned Nelson Tasman. Well, there, we’ve got another housing development under way, which is seeing people in jobs constructing those houses and will in future see families living in those homes. I think it’s pretty cute that the member’s colleague earlier in this debate suggested that actually, guess what guys, they’re all on board fast track now. Well, they voted against it at every reading. They opposed it, and now they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too.

If you’re on the side of job creation, you have to also be on the side of encouraging investment. That’s why we’ve got the Investment Boost policy, to encourage firms to make investments. You also have to be on the side of education and ensuring you’ve got basic standards of literacy and numeracy in your schools, which, again, that member opposes. She prefers to line up with those members of the unions who don’t want that. It’s why you actually have to pursue free-trade agreements, because, actually, that’s what ensures this will be an economy that flourishes into the future.

I find it hard to take that member seriously when she says she cares about job creation, when every initiative this Government takes to support job creation, her party opposes.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (15:53): Madam Chair, a question to the Minister of Finance: obviously there were a lot of changes made through that 2024 Budget, in terms of some systemic changes and re-prioritisations. What do you think, looking back now, has had the biggest impact in terms of providing the buffer zone that we now are experiencing through the fuel crisis?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:53): Well, it’s a very good question because, across that $43 billion worth of savings, there are a number of items which have been very significant. One of those is the ongoing drive from the Government to be more efficient with our own shop, which is to say those who serve the Government and its own policy development and analysis. In the Public Service, we’ve asked them to do that more efficiently, and we’ve had significant reductions in the back-office bureaucracy, which has allowed us to invest more in front-line services.

Another significant change we have made is to ensure that New Zealand’s pay equity regime, going forward, is more akin to those around the rest of the world and is something that is fiscally sustainable. That delivered around $12 billion worth of savings, and it is the case that any party who says they’re going back to the settings that were there previously needs to find $12 billion. There’s a hole in your Budget, the Hon Barbara Edmonds.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) (15:54): Thank you, Madam Chair. Talking about a hole in a Budget, given the supposed savings—and I note some of Treasury’s comments in the actual annual review around fiscal consolidation; we’ll let the Minister have a look at the transcripts there, around holes. But, in relation to the natural hazards insurance levy, we asked Treasury at the time whether they were looking at an increase in the levy. For those members who are not much aware, with the insurance industry, roughly around 460, depending on the type of policy an insurer will have, there will be part of it that is the natural hazards levy. I think it’s about 16c in every dollar. Now, that goes towards the funds where, in the case of a huge natural hazard and it meets certain criteria, the Natural Hazards Commission will actually pay out the first amount of that particular loss for that insured person.

The reason why I’m raising this today is, given the state of emergency here in Wellington, the weather events that we’ve seen over the last fortnight, including the cyclone that hit parts of the North Island a couple of weekends ago—the events and the downpours that we’ve seen, including in my current electorate of Mana and parts of Porirua. At the time, Treasury, as part of the annual review in late December last year, they said that they were getting advice in relation to whether the natural hazards insurance levy is going to increase. A general, very genuine question to the Minister: how is that advice progressing, and will we see an increase to the natural hazards insurance levy? If not, what support is the Government looking to provide to the Natural Hazards Commission if they choose not to increase it?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (15:56): I welcome what the member herself characterised as her first genuine question. As the member knows, we were faced as a Government with a choice to hike the levies on insurance policies for New Zealand homeowners by around $200 a year. I was reluctant to progress that at a time when I knew New Zealanders were facing significant cost of living pressures, but also where I was not able to access clear data about the uptake of insurance products and whether or not increasing prices for insurance was impacting on uptake. It’s actually most important to the Crown that people continue to take out insurance, otherwise we have a significant potential liability there.

We are doing a review, together with the insurance sector and regulators, to look at what has been driving cost increases in insurance, what options there are for keeping those cost pressures lower, and ensuring adequate uptake of insurance into the future. That review is progressing well, and I’m grateful that the member’s party has supported it.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Finance) (15:57): We’ve heard a lot in this debate about the ideology of socialism and the idea that spending money is a kind of aroha, or love; that the more money that is spent, the more the Government loves the people. Perhaps we’ve even heard about the warmth of collectivism. But what we may have missed is some basic facts about the year in question. In that year, Government spending went from 33 point—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Point of order, Madam Chair. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to check, in terms of the Deputy Prime Minister’s lapel pin. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Thank you.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I always knew that the Green Party focused on small things, but I didn’t know they were focused on something this small. Perhaps it is the focus also of a small man and a small mind, but, as I was saying, this year that we’re talking about—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Commenting on points of order.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Sorry, Madam Chair; I was just trying to help. The proportion of the economy that was taken by Government went down over this year from 33.1 percent to 32.5 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but 0.6 of a percent of the whole economy is about $2.5 billion. This is about doing more with less to get actual results, rather than the belief that if a politician spends more of other taxpayers’ money, they must love the people more. If you really care about the people and their outcomes, you set some goals and you set out to achieve them. This Government did that, and we have it publicly and transparently out there.

What did we achieve in the time that this money was being spent? Well, the number one goal was shorter stays in emergency departments. The idea that 95 percent of people get admitted, discharged, or transferred within six hours. That’s been a tiny proportion in the past, but it rose to 74 percent. We got six points closer to our goal that year. We said there should be shorter wait-times for elective treatment. That went from 62 percent up to 66 percent. We’re dealing more with less and getting better outcomes.

We reduced violent crime from 185,000 crimes at the end of 2023 down to 135,000 by October 2025, when this financial year was under way. That is a massive, 50,000 decrease in violent crimes that people are a victim of, because we put the money—we didn’t just say we put money—into law and order. We actually got results with it.

I could keep going: increased student attendance—something that I happen to be personally responsible for in this Government, or at least the policy; not for every single child, I just want to stress! The fact is that we had only 47 percent of children attending in term 3, 2023, but we got that to 58.4 percent in term 2, 2025. Over the period that this particular Budget was spent, in every single area we can point to improvements in health and crime and education, all the while spending less money.

Why does that matter? Because, when the Government takes less, people eat more. It takes pressure off inflation, and hasn’t that been valuable as we’ve had to absorb this shock from the conflicts in the Middle East pushing up the price of energy? It means, with lower inflation, we don’t have the high interest rates that people suffered for many years after the last spending blowout. And, with lower interest rates, you actually get jobs created and possibility for people in their lives, so that they can feel like their efforts make a difference and they can feel good about themselves.

That’s what it’s all about, and this Government actually fronts up with the facts that we are spending less money and we are getting better results for the hard-earned taxpayer money that we spend. And we publish the data right across the board, so people know that they can trust us. That’s the question people are going to have to ask themselves as this year goes on: who do you trust? The people who can give you the numbers and show they’ve delivered, or that lot over there, who raise petty points of order about something as small as a pin?

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Rules are rules. Learn your rules. And what’s your question? What’s the question?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): It would appear that the supply of questions that, I presume, the Minister is not answering has dried up, so we’ll now move on to the next topic. Thank you, Minister.

The Minister of Transport is now available for one hour to respond to members’ questions.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Transport

ANDY FOSTER (Chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee) (16:03): Mr Chair, thanks. I rise as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. We reported back to the House 20 review reports, and 11 of those relate to transport. I’m only going to focus on two of those, but I did want to start off just by saying thank you to the excellent Transport and Infrastructure Committee, who work really collegially and constructively together.

The two areas I wanted to focus on, in the time I’ve got available, the first one of those, interestingly, is the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC). The reason I’m focusing on that, if you look at the recommendation that’s come back to the House, is that normally we just say to the House, “Please can you note the report?” For this one, we’ve actually said—and I quote—“The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has conducted the annual review of the Transport Accident Investigation Commission and recommends to the Government that it investigate how recommendations made by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission could be better followed up and consider empowering the commission to do so.”

We had a really interesting session with TAIC. What they do is they investigate transport accidents. They’re often very serious situations—they could be maritime; they could be aviation—and it’s really good that the name of the organisation describes exactly what it does. It’s pretty understandable. It looks at systemic safety issues. It has a no-blame focus. It’s really looking at what went wrong, how you fix it, and it often communicates with the organisations who are involved in it during the process. Quite often, they will fix the things during that process, which is great, and they then produce a final report.

What did concern us, and this is why we’ve made the recommendation we have, is that once they’ve produced their report, that’s it. They have no further role. They have no statutory ability to do anything, so they can’t actually follow up on their own recommendations. What we’ve said is that we’re concerned to hear that neither the commission nor any other agency is legally required to follow up on the recommendations that the commission makes in its reports. Indeed, TAIC told us that, once it publishes a report, it has reached the end of its remit and cannot revisit an issue unless a new accident or incident occurs. It can neither monitor nor undertake enforcement.

What they said is that they want to be seen as a credible voice of safety and that their role and recommendations are treated similarly to the Ombudsman. But the Ombudsman can make a report to this House; TAIC cannot. It’s the issue of visibility, so that’s why we have made the recommendation we have to think about whether, in fact, TAIC could have a role, which was somewhat enhanced, to at least say, “Hey, we made some recommendations. We think that these recommendations haven’t been acted on, and we want the House to have a look at that to make sure that these recommendations are acted on.”

TAIC’s vision is about no repeat accidents, ever, and, of course, if you’ve made recommendations and nobody does anything about it, what’s going to happen? The likelihood is that those accidents may well be repeated. So we make that recommendation not just to note the report but also to say, “Hey, we actually think that the House needs to give consideration or the executive needs to give some consideration to changing the powers of TAIC so, at least, it can make recommendations to the House to think about its recommendations which have not, necessarily, been acted upon.”

Just in the time I’ve got available, the other one I wanted to mention was the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). Clearly, there is huge pressure on funding. We can’t do everything we want to do as a nation. The agency is looking at different funding tools, as is the Ministry of Transport, which is great to see, but one of the things we particularly looked at was the maintenance of transport assets. Of course, we had a really good debate in this House not that long ago, following the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission’s excellent report on the National Infrastructure Plan. One of the key messages there was that we need to look after the existing assets before we build lots of nice shiny, bright new things.

Now, more investment is being made in the maintenance of the roading network, but it’s quite clear that more needs to be done. We’ve got the Pothole Prevention Fund—probably misnamed; it’s about, you know, rehabilitation and fixing of roads, which is a good thing—but the other bit, which we did note, and there was quite a lot of discussion about this, was bridges. I look at the Minister for the South Island over there; he’s smiling. Right across the country, not only on State highways but also on local roads, there is not enough money to fix what NZTA describes as a bow wave of need for investment in bridges which are getting to the end of their lives. It’s really important that we consider those and where we put the money—the limited amount of money—that there is to maintain the roading assets.

The other point I’d like to make, in the last few seconds I’ve got there, is that we did have quite a discussion about special purpose roads, and it’s pleasing to see that NZTA were thinking about whether, in fact, they did need to hand back the last handful of those to the poor cash-strapped councils, which have got to look after those if NZTA doesn’t do that. The key focus there, for the NZTA and in the transport area, is the amount of money we’ve got to do what is an impossibly large task, how we prioritise, and how we make sure we get the best possible value for money. I appreciate any comments that the Minister might like to make in response.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:08): Kia orana, Mr Chair. I just want to acknowledge the chair of the committee, Mr Foster, for his fair summation on some of the issues that were covered. I have a number of questions that I want to put to the Minister, but before I do that, I want to just provide a few comments, which is the prerogative of any member, but also because these were issues that were covered as part of the annual review hearing.

This is a Government that came into office with one message on transport: roads, roads, roads. They cancelled the new ferries, they halved the cycling budget, and they gutted public transport subsidies—all so they could announce a $56 billion motorway programme they have no credible plan to fund and no realistic time frame to build within. Meanwhile, of course, the bills keep coming: the $671 million in sunk costs on cancelled ferries; billions of dollars in cost blowouts on highways that haven’t even broken ground; a Pothole Prevention Fund; the pothole patrol, where four in 10 repairs have to be repeatedly fixed again, again, again, again.

New Zealanders were promised competent infrastructure delivery. What they got from this Government was wishful thinking dressed up as a plan. Then, of course, the fuel crisis came along: petrol and diesel prices are high, Air New Zealand cut over 1,000 flights, the Interslander keeps breaking down to the point that often there is one vessel crossing the resilient strait and regional communities are left stranded, literally stranded.

This Government has had two years to build resilience into our transport system. Instead, they have spent their time dismantling every tool that would have helped. They scrapped cheaper public transport fares, they cut walking and cycling investment, and ignored their own officials’ advice who warned them that this approach was wrong. Every expert response to an oil shock—be it public transport, more active travel options, less car dependence—is a policy that this Government killed. They didn’t just fail to prepare, they actively made us more vulnerable. New Zealanders deserve better, and they certainly know it.

So when the Minister looks at the GPS (Government policy statement) on land transport, what is contained there is the fuel crisis has basically changed the context of the GPS. The petrol and diesel costs are now the dominant transport costs for transport when it comes to households and businesses, and there are no provisions in the GPS for responding to what is a current disruption, or seeking to accelerate modal shifts. So my first question to the Minister is: given the fuel crisis, will he and his Government review the GPS settings rather than wait for the next review to allow greater investment in public transport and active modes that reduce dependence on fossil fuels?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:11): Well, goodness me, that was quite a rant. A few, frankly, facile and incorrect statements there. Firstly, public transport spending is up in the GPS period, so the assertion from the member that public transport has been cut is wrong. There is a sizable increase in public transport in this GPS period. To give you the actual numbers: $21-24 billion in the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF), $1.32 billion of NLTF funding for public transport, up to $1.87 billion in this year’s period. So that’s, if my maths is correct, around half a billion dollars more. Local share has gone up as well. Overall, the total spend across the national land transport plan period is $3.6 billion in this period, up from $2.55 billion. So this idea that public transport has been cut is just completely wrong.

Is it correct that there are public transport authorities that want to do more services than there is money available? Yes, that was the case under the previous Government. In the unlikely event that member ever finds himself the Minister, he will find himself in exactly the same position.

The member says that this Government has advanced only roads. Again, completely incorrect. Just a couple of weeks ago, the final stage for the Eastern Busway was signed off—a joint project between Auckland Council and the Government. The Government is advancing the Northwest Rapid Transit project, which is the next step on the Auckland Rapid Transit project. This Government is advancing the level crossings removal programme in Auckland to take advantage of the City Rail Link, which I note is something the last Government did nothing about, even after six years when it was obvious to all and sundry—back in 2017—that it was fine to build a $5.5 billion underground rail link, but the real way to optimise the use of that was to sort out the level crossings on the eastern and western and southern lines. Nothing happened until this Government came in and worked with Auckland Council, and that work is now progressing, which is really good.

There’s any number of other things I could point to. This Government is fixing the shambles of the national ticketing system that the previous Government oversaw in a hopeless—

Tangi Utikere: How’s that coming along?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it’s coming on really well. I’ve just put out a press release about it: 1 million tags in Christchurch, down in Ōtautahi Christchurch; 200,000 individual users soon to roll out into other parts of the country. I’m not going to accept the programme’s perfect; we inherited a dog. I have taken action as Minister to fix the programme and we are now making good progress on it. When it’s eventually done, by the end of 2027, New Zealand will have a world-leading national ticketing system. Should you need to fly from Auckland to Wellington and take the bus to Auckland Airport and then take the bus from Wellington—and if you’ve got enough hours in your day and you want to fly to Christchurch and do the same thing and use the same credit card or the same Motu Move card, which is what it’s going to be called, you can.

A lot of emphasis placed on the fact that you can use the same card everywhere in the country. That’s sort of interesting, but, you know, not that many people are going to do that. Maybe some MPs will; I’m sure Julie Anne Genter will get the card out and use it. But the actual exciting thing is that unlike most other places in the world—in fact, I think I’m right in saying nowhere else in the world—you will be able to use your credit card and get the concessions. Everyone goes on about the fact that you should just be able to use your credit card on the buses. Well, you know, that’s great, and you can do that; in fact, you can do that now. But the real point is getting the concessions on the credit card, so that if you’re a student or you’re a community services card holder, or any of the other different concessions, you’ll be able to use it. Part of the challenge has been synthesising the concessions down, because the IT project is so complicated. Because—

Tangi Utikere: You said it was a mistake.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, I didn’t say it was a mistake. I said it was a mistake to roll it out the way you useless guys rolled it out. What we are now doing is fixing it. The member claims there have been “billions of dollars”—this is a direct quote—“billions of dollars of blow-out on roads.” Well, I’d like the member to actually provide some evidence for that. Actually, what we are doing is getting on with the job of delivering good value-for-money projects. Yes, there are some overruns, but not to the extent of billions of dollars. One of the overruns within the Penlink project, for example, is because of that Government’s focus on building world-leading sort of eco-friendly bridges and all this sort of stuff that, of course, drives up cost.

In relation to the member’s actual question, as opposed to the assertions not based on fact, there is an enormous amount of resilience being built into the system. Now, some of that money was appropriated by the previous Government—that should be acknowledged. Some of it has come under this Government as well. I direct the member to the work the Transport Agency is doing on the Brynderwyns and the Mangamukas, for example, where we have seen real progress, and on the East Coast post - Cyclone Gabrielle. Clearly, there is more work to do there and not all of those projects have finished yet, but many of them have indeed finished and are being built right now. I’m looking forward to the Waikare Gorge replacement—

Katie Nimon: That’s right.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —it was a very large project—acknowledging the hard-working MP for Napier, Katie Nimon—and I’m looking forward to turning the sod on that later in the year.

So the member paints, as always, a very negative picture about life, but actually I’d encourage him to look on the bright side of life as there’s a group of amazing things happening out there in the country.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:17): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the Minister for his contribution. I did want to ask a couple of questions of clarification about the numbers he just gave us. I believe he said $1.8 billion—was that annual or over the three-year period? Is that for public transport services and infrastructure or just services? I did want to know whether the relative increase in public transport service funding kept up with the pace of inflation from the previous three-year period. As we all understand, there was quite a significant period of increased costs, and therefore providing a greater sum of money may not result in a greater provision of service.

We recently received answers from the Minister stating that about $200 million of funding was declined for towns right around the country—like New Plymouth and Dunedin, Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, Nelson—had funding declined for improved or expanded public transport services, which would probably really come in handy right now. Is the Government looking at, in its response to the fuel crisis, enabling funding of additional services in those smaller towns where maybe congestion isn’t an issue, but actually not having access by frequent, reliable public transport services is an issue?

The councils have done a lot of work. We’ve seen it be successful in places like Queenstown, where fares were lowered, service frequency increased, and then patronage went up and it gave people more options to get around the Queenstown Lakes area without having to rely on their own cars. That’s something that could happen in Dunedin and New Plymouth and Nelson and other places.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:19): In relation to the member’s last point, those are operational decisions for the Transport Agency in conjunction with the public transport authorities. I think it would be fair to say, from the central government point of view, our focus at the moment is on looking at any additional support that’s required from the Crown to enable existing services to run. There’s just no doubt—and I’ve talked publicly about this; the member will be aware of it—that the diesel price spike has placed real pressure on services. Now, as the member knows from her own time in this chair, there’s a complicated funding mix between public transport authorities and central government. The Minister is not involved in exactly all of that, but we are looking at whether or not we need to provide a bit of extra support.

In relation to the member’s question, the answer is no, not from a central government point of view, but the Transport Agency may well be talking to some public transport authorities around some services. The public transport budget—as, again, I’ve told the member before—is always oversubscribed. There are always additional things that people want, in the same way that the National Land Transport State highway activity class is always oversubscribed and, frankly, the walking and cycling activity class, as we heard from the chair. We’ve got real funding constraints and they’re not going away anytime soon, so you’ve got to prioritise.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): From the Chair, I will encourage the short back and forths.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:21): Noting that there may be more demand for funding than there is available, $200 million in the context of the National Land Transport Programme is only 0.6 percent of that transport budget. It’s a relatively small amount of money that could make a big difference in the context of a fuel crisis.

In previous terms of Government, when there’s been the COVID pandemic, the Crown made available funding to subsidise public transport services to make them free during certain levels of lockdown. That didn’t need to go through the New Zealand Transport Agency process to get approval because it was Crown funding. So I guess my question is: is there going to be consideration from the Government of reconsidering services that have already been worked up and proposed by local councils, but maybe funding them in a different way so that they could maybe be up and operational by the end of this year in order to help people with what is likely to be an extended period of higher prices at the pump?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:22): Well, whether or not it is an extended period or not, time will tell. I mean, that is part of the challenge, that we’re dealing with a situation where it’s a day-by-day proposition. I’ve just been advised that public transport capacity issues have not been raised by public transport authorities, at least yet, which is positive. We are seeing an uptick in public transport usage in our major cities, which is great. Yes, it’s true, the Crown could make an additional contribution into the National Land Transport Fund or by another means in order to expand services; as I’ve said, we’re not looking to do that right now. Our focus is on maintaining existing services and helping public transport authorities deal with the cost pressures they are facing. As the member knows, the Government is in a very constrained funding environment, fiscally. Every dollar that we spend on that has to come from somewhere. I’m not ruling it out but that’s not our focus at the moment. But I understand where the member is coming from.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:23): Thanks, Minister, for that answer. While capacity may not be an issue in places where there is already well-established use of public transport, I guess, just to make clear, my question was getting more at those regional towns in New Zealand that haven’t had a viable public transport network. Therefore, there’s no capacity issue because there aren’t really significant services in the first place. But putting those services out there might make a big difference to people’s ability to get around using less fuel.

My other question, now, comes to the amount of money that we’re spending in the financial year under review and maybe in the coming year on preparing for roads of national significance. Can the Minister give us an approximate figure on how much is being spent just on planning and land acquisition for highways that may be phased quite late in the piece?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:24): Well, I mean, the number I announced, from memory, in October last year is about $1.3 billion over the next few years. The breakdown of that will vary by project. If the member puts a written question to me in writing, I can get back to her with the full breakdown. Every project is a bit different between consenting designations, land acquisition, geotech work, things like that. The Transport Agency will have spent some of that money already, probably a reasonable amount, but if the member puts it in writing, I can get back to her on the exact breakdown.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (16:24): Thank you, Mr Chair. We know demand for Total Mobility, as a scheme, increased quite significantly after Labour made the scheme more accessible to disabled users. Now, with the changes that the Minister is making, that will mean that Total Mobility users will have to pay more for the trips that they make. Is the Minister saying that was wrong; that making the scheme more accessible to disabled people was wrong? That disabled people should have fewer transport options and be forced to prioritise which parts of their life that they can afford to participate in, particularly when we’re in the midst of a cost of living crisis?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:25): I thank the member for her question around Total Mobility, which is a very important scheme, and I know the member has some knowledge of it. The Government supports Total Mobility and there would be many MPs who are familiar with the scheme. What we’ve been grappling with, as I hope the member will appreciate, is quite big increases in costs that weren’t funded. I’m not deliberately having a go at the member, but the previous Government’s decision to increase the subsidy from 50 percent to 75 percent unsurprisingly had an impact on demand because you’ve made things cheaper, which is logical, but the baseline funding for Total Mobility from the Crown stayed flat even as demand went up like that—another, as we say, “fiscal cliff”.

The numbers I’ve got here: in 2024-2025 there were 3 million trips, up from 1.8 million in 2018. That is an unsustainable increase in cost. What we have consulted on—we have not yet made decisions, but what we have proposed is reducing the fare subsidy from 75 percent to 65 percent; so still more generous than what it was pre-2022. I think it’s important to note that prior to 2022, the subsidy was 50 percent and it’s now going to be 65 percent, so still generous. We can argue about whether or not it should be 75 or 65 percent, but that does save some money. Then the other thing to note here is that there is a very complicated funding system, between 30 percent from the National Land Transport Fund, Crown funding of 25 percent, local government funds 20 percent, and the Total Mobility user funds 25 percent, all of which adds up to, currently, 75. That’s four different funding pots. It’s a complicated scheme.

We’re essentially proposing to reduce down the Crown funding amount and also work with the public transport authorities around some trip caps. I won’t bore the member with the details, but the short point is we think we can make the scheme fiscally sustainable, both for the Crown but also for the public transport authorities. Because the real danger is that unless they are helped, they will just withdraw from Total Mobility, which means we end up in a situation where there is a very generous Crown subsidy for a limited number of people and only some regions who can access Total Mobility.

So what we’ve, essentially, decided to do is reduce down the Crown subsidy a bit from 75 percent to 65 percent—still more generous than what it was in 2022—and work with the public transport authorities to make sure we still have countrywide application of Total Mobility so that someone in Invercargill and someone in Kaikohe can access Total Mobility, but the scheme is, at least, sustainable. These are the trade-offs that you have to make in Government and, respectfully, they are trade-offs that, sometimes, some members of the other side of the House don’t ever want to actually acknowledge. But governing is, actually, sometimes about making some quite tough decisions.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) (16:28): I absolutely acknowledge that being in Government is about making decisions and that there are trade-offs, that there is a cost to the Total Mobility scheme, and someone needs to bear that cost, ultimately. I also take the point that the Minister wants to reduce the cost to the Crown. However, has there been any modelling done, including social impact modelling, on Total Mobility users who will be forced to reduce the trips that they make or to cancel trips that they take as a result of these choices that this Government is making?

For example—there are many examples, I’ll pick one: a single mum who is blind, who has said that she needs to now make a choice between either travelling to her workplace or dropping off and picking up her kids at school. There are others who say that on the table are choices around whether they make their medical appointments or not because of the increase in cost to them. So my question to the Minister is around modelling. Has any modelling, including social impact modelling, been done so that we can understand what the flow-on effects and cost burdens are to disabled people and flow-on costs to the Crown as an example of people missing their medical appointments and so on?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:30): The short answer is there hasn’t been any social impact modelling done that I’m aware of. There has been modelling done around the cost impacts, which I’ve just explained, because to do the modelling as to how the next five, six years are going to play out in terms of the fiscal impacts we’ve just been talking about—there has been some modelling done around that, and I’m fairly sure that was released as part of the consultation document that we put out at the end of last year. It’s also important to note that we haven’t yet made decisions on this, but we will soon, in due course. The submissions have now closed, and we’ll be making decisions in due course.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:30): Thank you. Going back to public transport in the context of the fossil fuel crisis, my understanding is that private operators like ferry operators are currently having to wear the much higher diesel costs, and councils certainly aren’t in a great position to be able to make up the additional costs that might be needed to run services. Will the Government be considering how they can help support councils and operators to pay for higher diesel costs for public transport given there’s now higher demand for public transport?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:31): Yes, as I said, like, five minutes ago and have said publicly.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:31): OK. So I think there’s about a three-month lag between when the costs might be increasing and when the indexation might occur for altering contracts, but you’re saying that the Government will be talking to councils about helping meet the additional diesel costs of operating those services?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:32): Again, yes, and they are already doing that. The public transport authorities are already talking to the New Zealand Transport Agency regularly, and the Government is, as I said, like, twice now—we are considering what extra support may be required from the Crown, and once we’ve bottomed that out, we’ll announce it.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:32): And will the Government be looking at other opportunities to support local councils with bus priority, which might help assist in terms of ensuring a service uses less fuel and is less likely to get stuck in traffic, so the same amount of buses can achieve more?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:32): I mean, if necessary, I suppose would be the real point. I mean, it’s not quite as simple as just saying, “Oh, well, we’re going to do a bus priority lane.”—if only it were that simple. I mean, I’m generally in favour of bus priority where it makes sense. I wouldn’t say we would do it in response to the current fuel crisis, but if the situation persists and the case can be made, then I’m sure the transport agency will look at it with the councils. So I’m not ruling it out, but it’s not something immediately top of mind for us in response to the fuel crisis.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:33): Well, I wondered if the Government might want to consider that. I think it has been recommended by the International Energy Agency, but particularly if VKT—vehicle kilometres travelled—is down on highways and the harbour bridge, that might mean that there’s more capacity and you could take a lane instantly, which would help with the public transport services not getting stuck. The same amount of lanes can carry the total number of cars, and bus lanes can carry many more people and therefore it makes it more attractive to take the bus, which makes the bus more efficient, but also it uses less diesel.

Anyway, I guess I want to know: how constrained is the New Zealand Transport Agency by the current Government policy statement and National Land Transport Programme in responding to councils and responding to the fossil fuel crisis? Are they able to consider more flexible new requests for funding for either public transport priority or running of services?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:34): Yeah, I mean, as I’ve sort of said a couple of times now, we’re in a very difficult funding environment. The public transport services activity class does not have a lot of headroom in it, which is precisely why we are considering a bit of extra support, as I’ve said, in relation to the diesel costs, which will eventually hit councils, or the public transport authorities. So we are considering that, but there’s not a lot of headroom in the existing funding settings. Successive Governments’ decisions to delay fuel tax increases since 2020, which have meant that National Land Transport Fund revenue has fallen in real terms, have had an impact. As I’ve said repeatedly to the entire country, things that you buy have to be paid for, and, you know, we’re in a difficult situation.

The other thing I’d note, also—worth bearing in mind—is that the Government’s facing a double crunch because people are driving less because of the fuel price, diesel and petrol, and therefore there’s less revenue coming in in terms of the National Land Transport Fund; it’s hypothecated, petrol tax and road-user charge. People are driving less, or they’re purchasing less petrol, so we’re being hit on the revenue front, and we’re also being hit on the cost front in terms of the price of diesel as well.

So, you know, it’s not a happy funding picture; it’s not a happy situation, but, you know, these are why you get into the gig, right: to get into the job, to try and deal with these issues.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:36): Does the Minister of Transport think that, potentially, some of the planning for highway projects could be deferred to free up more funding for more urgent needs like increasing public transport services—one—and, two, I think earlier the Minister said in response to Mr Utikere’s contribution that it wasn’t true that there’d been blowouts on highways. I think my colleague Mr Utikere was probably referring to the difference in the anticipated cost of 17 roads of national significance in the National Party campaign versus what we now know they will cost, which is over $50 billion as opposed to $17 billion. What impact will rising fuel prices have on the cost of delivering those roads and the cost of bitumen repairing roads?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:36): Yeah, in terms of the first question, possibly, what we’re not looking to do is roll out more public transport subsidies, which I think the member’s also called for. You do hear every now and then people saying, you know, we should make public transport free and all the rest of it. As I think the member knows—or I hope she knows—the biggest driver of public transport uptake is not actually cost. Obviously, cost makes a difference on the margins—if something is free, more people will use it, on the margins—but the biggest driver is actually just frequency and reliability. If you know the train’s going to turn up on time and it takes you where you want to go, you’ll take it. If it’s unreliable, like we’ve experienced in Wellington over the last five or so years—or 10 years, even, thanks to successive years of under-investment in maintenance on the rail network—you won’t, and there’s been an impact on service levels and therefore patronage as a result.

So we’re going through a prioritisation exercise on the roads of national significance at the moment. I’ve talked very openly around how they are very expensive and they can’t all be built at the same time, and that there’s a continuum of projects and there’s any number of different things to take into account, from readiness to actually start construction through to getting a regional spread through to benefit-cost ratio (BCR) which I know the member and I have talked about before and is not a be-all and end-all but is, obviously, a useful guide to what you should be investing in. You know, I’m not a purist on BCRs, and I don’t think the member is either. So we’re giving some thought to that.

In relation to what the fuel price does to the economic viability of some of these projects, that, I’m sure, will be taken into consideration in due course by the transport agency. I think it’s probably too early to tell. If diesel stays high for a long period of time, that will push up the cost of some of the projects, so that will have an impact, but we just don’t know exactly. We are dealing with a very volatile—by definition—and uncertain environment, and we’re just trying to steer the country through that responsibly in the national interest.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:39): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Hon Julie Anne Genter for, indeed, clarifying the position that I’d articulated there—spot on. The Minister of Transport is right: these are very, very expensive proposed roads. So my next set of questions are on the roads of National Party significance. Whilst the Minister has said that he is not a purist on benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) there’s one thing that has changed in recent times, and that is the methodology when it comes to the BCRs for each of the roads of national signficance.

Now, some critics will argue that the methodology actually has, perhaps, been changed to get the answer that the Government would like in terms of these projects being able to just scrape across the minimum threshold, but when we do look at the minimum threshold, there are several projects that have just barely cleared the line. I won’t go through each of them and what the benefit-cost ratio is for untolled versus tolled options there, but there is also, I think, a transparency problem when it comes to the roads of national significance, because, certainly, the requests that have been put through to the Minister’s own ministry show there are number of documents have been redacted in full. That really doesn’t provide a lot of certainty or comfort around where some of these proposals sit.

I guess my question to the Minister is: given some of those key documents from his own ministry around the funding and financing of some of those RONS projects have been withheld, why is it that the basic level of information is being withheld from the public, and can we expect that information to be shared more broadly? The Minister has talked about a prioritisation process that he is going through, but in terms of making that information transparently available to the public, what are his immediate actions in that space?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:41): Well, there’s a vast swathe of information available online. I don’t know if the member has seen it, but there are investment cases and there are detailed appendices. There’s all sorts of stuff available, including benefit-cost ratios (BCRs), by the way. The reason the member knows about all the BCRs is that they’re publicly available. If the member has got an issue with some stuff that he claims should be available that aren’t, then I’m happy to have a look at it. Flick me an email. There will be reasons why things are withheld. The New Zealand Transport Agency, when it builds roads, is obviously dealing with the private sector and engaging in contracts—often very expensive contracts—so there will often be commercial reasons for it. Those will be decisions for the agency, not for me, but I’m always happy to make things available. I generally follow a pretty open process on these things, as I hope the member appreciates.

On the BCR, yes, the methodology changed. I didn’t change it. In fact, Ministers didn’t change it. The transport agency didn’t change it either. The Treasury did. Your questions are best directed to them, and I’m sure they’ll address them if you ask them. Essentially, what they did was—it’s not just about roads, by the way; this is for many projects—look at them over a longer time period, and they lowered the discount rate. The effect of that is, I think, to make projects have higher BCRs, and that would be the criticism against them. Also—again, I can’t speak for the Treasury here, because I’m not a BCR expert—they would say to you that it’s justifiable, and you should talk to them about it.

The reason why you shouldn’t be pure about BCRs is that, by definition, they find it hard to capture the dynamic effects of investment. In particular, they tend to under-do some of the benefits that, I think, intuitively we all kind of know happens. The two classic examples I point to are the original Harbour Bridge, which had a BCR of 1.2 or 1.3 when it was built in the 50s and 60s. Well, it’s sort of hard to imagine Auckland without the Harbour Bridge. Then the other one—and this is the better example—is the Northern Busway, which is the single most successful transport project built in New Zealand history, which was quite controversial at the time because everyone said, “Oh, no one will ever get a bus over to the North Shore. Why would we?”

Hon Julie Anne Genter: The Greens supported it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, well, I know you supported it. Well done! You get at least something right! Those calls that we’ll all run out of oil by 2015, which you used to put out in press releases in 2008, haven’t quite worked out, but, anyway, you can’t always be right. I’ll accept you’re right about that one.

On the Northern Busway, 40 percent of people who cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge these days—from Dan Bidois’ electorate into Chlöe Swarbrick’s, actually—cross on a bus. It’s pretty fantastic when you think about it. The Northern Busway—I forget the exact amount; I think it was about $80 or $90 million back in the day—had a BCR of like 1.3. Well, that has given the bridge years and years and years of life and has massively reduced congestion. I suspect the actual BCR of that project is like 10 to 1—possibly higher.

Grant McCallum: Like the Northern expressway.

Andy Foster: There will be great economic benefit.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): This is not a lobbying opportunity, I might add, for members.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! Anyway, my point is you shouldn’t be purist about BCRs.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:44): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the Minister for his comments there. I want to talk about the pothole patrol, which, look, I appreciate—

Hon Chris Bishop: What’s that?

TANGI UTIKERE: Well, Minister, this was Simeon Brown’s pothole patrol, which, I appreciate, you inherited. He established and you inherited the pothole patrol. What the patrol has actually found out, of course, is that many of these potholes have been fixed not just once but two, three, four, and sometimes five times. Minister, are you satisfied that this is a good use of public expenditure, given the pothole patrol is going out to the same spots to fill the same holes when people expect it to be done once and done right? That’s the first question.

The second question is just in terms of the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA’s) change to maintenance contract, which, I understand, back in December of 2025, that there was this complete overhaul of the integrated delivery model, which is how NZTA contracts maintenance; that these preferred suppliers were named in December of last year, and that those contracts are going live on 1 May. The question there, really, is: that’s an interesting model to go live at scale in a shorter, perhaps, period of time, but does he have some confidence that there are not going to be any issues with the roll-out of that particular delivery model?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:46): Look, the short answer on the second question is no, because I don’t know a lot about it. It’s really an operational decision for the agency. If the member has specific questions about it, I’m happy to look at it, but, by definition, I don’t get involved in operational decisions like that. The member’s very Negative Nelly on potholes. I should put the pothole patrol on to the Labour Party funding hole. We might have to go back and fix that literally 10 times, but, anyway, I digress.

The member and I have talked about this before. I’m not a pothole expert. I don’t think the member is either, to be honest. I’m advised that the key is to get out and do a bit of a once-over, and if you can fix them the first time, you can, but do some work, and then come back and do a proper job. Of course, there will be cases in which people go back and repair them. In 2018, there were 39,000 potholes repaired on the State highway network. I strongly suspect the numbers are literally exactly the same. The key is getting them done in a timely way. We set a target, and 98 percent of potholes in 2024 and 2025 were fixable in 24 hours, which is fantastic and has proven to be very popular with the public. I’m not a pothole expert, and if member has specific questions about how we repair a pothole, I suggest he talks to the transport agency.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:47): I just have one other area of questioning, which is around transport, but it’s really around the future of school buses.

Hon Chris Bishop: Oh, yes.

TANGI UTIKERE: Yes—the Minister says yes, because he knows that this is a really important issue to rural communities all around the country. Whilst it’s good for communities like the East Coast, where the school review has been put on hold, it is not good news for communities in the wider Manawatū, Rangitīkei, Tararua, and beyond area. Does the Minister think that it’s fair for communities like that to, effectively, suffer the results of the Government putting things on hold but actually not wanting to go back and address what are real concerns from communities about getting them to school? We heard from Minister Seymour earlier about barriers to school attendance. This is another one. Does the Minister of Transport see this as an issue for those existing communities, and what does he intend to do about it?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): The member is aware that that’s in the education portfolio.

TANGI UTIKERE: I am, but the Minister seems happy to take the question.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:49): Well, I was going to make that point, because I think the member’s embarrassed himself. I have no ministerial responsibility for school buses. Neither does the transport agency—

Tangi Utikere: The question is if you are concerned about it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I’m responsible for the appropriations. The New Zealand Transport Agency does not have responsibility for it. Neither, by the way, does the Ministry of Transport. When the Minister of Education appears, if you can be bothered, turn up and ask some questions of her.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (16:49): This is my final area of questioning. I was interested to hear the Minister’s views on benefit-cost ratios. I think the Minister would probably agree that the usefulness in that is comparing different types of projects or different potential transport solutions. However, the way the current Government policy statement (GPS) is set up, it sets aside the largest share of funding that’s going on new infrastructure or new projects just to be on State highways, and the vast majority of the public transport services and infrastructure budget is to maintain existing services, not to increase services.

So it makes it very difficult—it doesn’t really matter what your discount rate is in your evaluation period; if we’re not able to evaluate the relative benefit of spending billions on new State highways, compared to other things like investing in better public transport services, in maintaining and improving safety across the entire road network, and using our existing road assets better through things like congestion pricing or time-of-use charging, then we can’t really make those trade-offs. So I’m interested in what the Minister is going to do to enable us to have an approach that enables a more rational assessment of the use of money, rather than dictating it through the GPS, as the current Government has done.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:51): Well, the member raises an interesting series of issues around transport funding and assurance and the system. What can I say here? I think it would be fair to say that no one is wildly satisfied with the status quo, but changing the system is a big call and is something that requires quite a bit of consideration. I know the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has made some suggestions around changing the settings. We will be having a look at that as part of the response to the plan.

One thing I think that would be useful to do is move to 10-year windows for transport funding. The three-year thing works for no one. It doesn’t really work for central government; it certainly doesn’t work for local councils, who spend their life—as far as I can see—chasing their tail developing regional land transport plans, arguing amongst themselves as mayors. And because we’ve got so many councils and so many mayors, that takes a while. Then they make all their submissions and then they argue again with the New Zealand Transport Agency. Sometimes these are arguments over, like, $1 billion—not $1 billion; sometimes they are. But more often than not it’s $1 million here, $2 million here, this bridge upgrade. I mean, it’s like, just get on with it. If you had a sort of steady State pathway over 10 years, that would be easier.

Now, it is actually difficult to do that because of the way it intersects with the Treasury four-year forecast and rules and the capital allowances and things like that. So I suppose that’s kind of a long way of saying the member raises an interesting issue. We don’t have any active policy work under way on it, but it is definitely true that we need to make some improvements over time and I’m very aware of the problems the member raises.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:53): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve got another question, which is in aviation. I know that Minister Meager is here, so I’ll ask the question in anticipation of a response there.

This is around regional routes and regional connectivity. Obviously, regional routes in the aviation sector are the most vulnerable when it comes to times of crisis. Now, we know that the Government had announced a concessionary loans package, and what we’re hearing from aviation providers, airports, and mayors from around the place is that that is no longer satisfactory in terms of meeting the demand and need that’s there.

So my question to the Minister is two questions. Firstly, obviously, Air New Zealand is majority owned by the Crown, so whether there has been any briefing provided around the possibility of that airline requiring any further Crown support; and if so, on what sort of terms that would look like? The other is just in terms of Government plans to secure current permanent routes that exist out in the regions to ensure that they are not compromised.

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (16:54): Thank you, Mr Chair—thank you for the opportunity. I’m going to start by disappointing the member. In regards to Air New Zealand, that’s questions that would need to go to the shareholding Minister. So I don’t receive the briefings in regards to Air New Zealand’s needs. I acknowledge and sympathise with the wider points, which is that the regional connectivity funding which has been available through Minister Jones’ Regional Infrastructure Fund is to stabilise what was already a vulnerable regional airline sector prior to the current fuel crisis. We continue with that funding allocation, but we’re under no illusions as to the fact that it was to provide stability and we need to look further at what we can do to continue to provide confidence in the airline sector.

In terms of the routes and providing confidence there, I engage with both Air New Zealand and all regional airlines, really, on a regular basis. In terms of Air New Zealand, they have provided me with reassurances consistently that the changes they are making to their routes right now are temporary to address the current fuel crisis. In terms of the regional airlines, similarly. However, the regionals are in a difficult spot because, of course, they run much fewer routes, so therefore they’ve got less room to move. We’re keeping in constant communication with them. We’re really hoping that this will be an industry-led but partnership response between Government, and maintaining regional connectivity is our number one priority.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (16:55): Thank you, and I thank the Minister for his response around that. Just one final question from me, which is back to Minister Bishop, which is around the changes when it comes to road safety, in relation specifically to speed limit changes. I’m just interested in whether he’s aware as to whether there have been measurements taken in terms of the change in crash rates on roads where speed limits were reinstated at a different level; and, if so, whether there is an ability to have that data released to the public?

The other is just there are some road safety organisations when it comes to concerns around the changes to practical driving tests and replacing the second practical driving test. Just a final question about the evidence that the Government has relied on to ensure that that’s not going to increase crash or safety risk considerations amongst those who are newly licensed drivers?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Transport) (16:56): On the first question, I’m advised that it’s too early to say in relation to the speed limit changes. The New Zealand Transport Agency is monitoring it, obviously, but too early to draw any conclusions. On the second, in relation to changes to the graduated driver licensing, we worked quite hard as part of the package to, I think, come up with a balanced package where the abolition of the second practical test to go from your restricted to your full licence is balanced out by a longer period earlier on in the process and the addition of a couple of—I forget exactly what we added in at the practical restricted test—

Hon James Meager: Hours. To reduce the time you can take hours, rather than just—

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, no, I’m just trying to remember. We added something to the actual test—I think it might be hazard monitoring. Anyway, I forget which, but it’s all publicly available. We did come up with a relatively balanced package, I think, that responded to some of the feedback that came through from groups like the AA and others at the time. It’s been pretty widely welcomed. It hasn’t come into effect yet, obviously, but from memory it’s early 2027. We’ve pushed the date out, as well, because there’s a range of logistics to get right over the balance of the year. So that will come into effect early next year.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just for your information, this session with the transport Minister is at 5.03 p.m.—this is the scheduled finish. But in the absence of any activity from any participants, we’ll say the time with the Minister of Transport is now ended. The Minister of Housing is now available for one hour to respond to members’ questions. I’ll give the call to the chairman, Joseph Mooney.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Housing

JOSEPH MOONEY (Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee) (16:58): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I rise to speak as the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee for the annual reviews of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Kāinga Ora for 2024 and 2025. These two entities sit at the heart of our housing system and our committee has conducted thorough examinations of both.

Starting with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the ministry has undergone significant change this year. Its revenue fell nearly 14 percent and staff numbers dropped from 390 to 292. Despite that, the Auditor-General rated its management controls as very good. A very credible result during a period of restructuring.

On the Government’s housing commitments, Budget 2024 funded 1,500 new social homes to be delivered by June 2028. Budget 2025 funded a further 550 to 600 in Auckland to be completed by June 2026. As of December 2025, 266 houses across both commitments had been completed.

In homelessness, the picture was mixed, and the committee took a careful look at it. The latest homelessness insights data shows the number of people who are living without shelter increased in Auckland, Thames, Hamilton, and Christchurch between March and December 2025; however, in Wellington, Porirua numbers decreased; in several other centres—Whakatāne, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Masterton, and Palmerston North—they remained the same.

On Housing First, a programme supporting the most chronically homeless, the Minister announced 300 additional homes. By December, 90 had been released and 44 households housed. The programme is working better in Auckland, we heard, than Wellington, largely because there are more community housing providers to partner with there. The ministry encouraged private landlords to consider working with Housing First providers, and the committee endorsed that. The ministry also manages around 6,000 transitional housing units nationally, at over 90 percent occupancy, with the Priority One fast track helping move families with children into more permanent housing.

We’re also encouraged by the ministry’s improved approach to data and forecasting long-term need, noting that it had not always accurately predicted future growth in places like my region in Queenstown Lakes. We’re encouraged that they are looking at a broader range of metrics rather than just Statistics New Zealand to inform their future data projections.

In terms of Kāinga Ora, this is an organisation in the middle of a major reset. I want to acknowledge the scale of that work. It has reduced staff by a third, from nearly 3,400 to around 2,285, and exceeded cost-saving targets by $170 million and its peak debt is now predicted to be over $1.5 billion lower than its reset plan forecast, while delivering the same build outcomes. That’s a significant achievement. In 2024/25, it delivered 4,300 new and upgraded homes, exceeding the Minister’s revised target. Its average build cost has trended down from $3,473 per square metre in 2023/24, to $3,290 in the first quarter of 2025. It is doing this through standardised repeatable designs, practical homes that are warm, insulated, and better than hotel rooms.

There are areas to watch. Debt remains at nearly $18 billion and forecast to rise further. The IT system was described to us as “tied together with string” and in need of modernisation urgently. We want to see audit rating and financial systems and controls improved from “needs improvement”, where it has sat for two years.

Together, we saw a programme of major reset happening across the housing sector, which is crucial for this country. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:02): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to ask questions of the Minister of Housing. I start with reference to what was in the report and what the chair of the committee just referred to, and that was the financial commitment in Budget 2024 of 1,500 social housing places and an additional 550 for Auckland in Budget 2025. The figures that were included in the report were up to date as of December. Could the Minister, please, give us an update as to how many of those places that were funded in those Budgets have been completed?

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (17:02): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m going to start with local housing – related questions in relation to this appropriation.

The first question I have is on Arlington. The Minister of Housing will remember that when he came to the select committee to answer questions on this Budget, he was asked, “What is happening with the 300 homes that had been promised in the Arlington complex here in Mt Cook in Wellington?” He said, at the time—I believe this was last year—that a decision would come in due course. Now, I’ve had feedback that there has indeed been movement on the site and, of course, there are whispers going around that there has been a decision that has been arrived at. Can the Minister, please, share with us what those plans are? Arlington was a large omission in this particular Budget, and our community are still waiting for answers.

Now, the other thing that was in the 2024/25 Budget was a lack of certainty or clarity about the destiny, or the future going forward, for single-site supported housing, in terms of Te Ō in Mt Cook. That is housing for complex, high-needs tenants who rely on both housing and having wraparound support for them. According to the Wellington City Mission, they are not sure about their future going forward and have not got funding. I would like to ask the Minister and his officials, through the Chair: what is the plan going forward for single-site supported housing, given that there are no Budget commitments to it in the 2024/25 Budget, and how are these models meant to proceed? This is housing for people with the highest, most complex social needs. These are people that are grappling with severe mental health issues, severe addition issues—and where are they going to go afterwards if they don’t have access to single-site supported housing?

Finally, on local housing issues in relation to this 2024/25 Budget, the Dixon Street Flats—that’s something that’s written about in the text of the document from Kāinga Ora. Dixon Street Flats were owned by Kāinga Ora; they sold those in an agreement back to the iwi for a certain amount, and then the iwi went on—I think it was a mere days or weeks later—and sold it for, like, double, triple the price that Kāinga Ora sold it for. That’s a pretty poor financial decision for the Crown. I don’t know whether you were involved in that decision, Minister, but I’d like to know: how did such a poor financial decision get made in the first place, where you had who the Crown on-sold it to selling it on again, within days—did you have a word with your officials who officiated that sale? That was clearly a really poor commercial decision that resulted in a reduction in public housing available in Wellington, and you just lost millions of dollars for the Crown—

Hon Chris Bishop: It’s the RFR, baby!

TAMATHA PAUL: Yeah, so—local Wellington questions, please, Minister.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (17:06): Yeah, let me deal with the four things that have been raised.

In relation to the social housing delivery in Auckland, the latest, as of March 2026, is: 211 homes delivered of the Budget 2024 social housing; 228 from the Budget 2025 social housing, which was specifically for Auckland. I’m told that, since November 2023, 2,600 net new social houses have been added in Auckland, and we are on track to meet the commitment for an additional increase of 3,000 by the end of November 2026. That’s the advice I’ve received.

In relation to Arlington, nothing has changed since I last talked to the member about this. We are working away on it. Just to remind the committee of the brief background here, this is a piece of land that Kāinga Ora has leased from the council, and the plan back in the day was to put 300 social homes or apartments on there at around $296 million, which is $1 million per apartment. That was expensive back then, but then the plan blew out to $420 million, so $1.3 million or $1.4 million per apartment. Even the last Government blanched at that extravagant price, and the project was paused and delayed. If the member has complaints about Arlington, she should direct them to the Hon Megan Woods, who was the relevant Minister at the time—and, indeed, the Cabinet, because it requires Cabinet sign-off. The land is being looked at by Kāinga Ora for future use. It is a challenging site, which is partly why it’s so expensive to build on, but they are looking at exactly what they can do there. I hope to have more to say in due course.

In relation to single-site supported housing both at Te Ō and other places, there are ongoing discussions on the future of Te Ō with Wellington City Mission and Kāinga Ora. I know the member is a supporter of Wellington City Mission, as am I. Both of them are pilots. I’m probably limited a bit in what I can say more than that. There are discussions under way around the future of that.

In relation to the Dixon Street Flats—well, I thought the member supported the Treaty settlement process! The Dixon Street Flats are an example of the right of first refusal (RFR) process which Kāinga Ora went to.

Tamatha Paul: It’s not the process; it’s the price.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, this is the RFR. Like, this is what happens. This is the way it works. Yes, the iwi have profited from that, but I thought the member was for rangatiratanga and economic development.

Hon Tama Potaka: That’s right, and mana motuhake.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: And mana motuhake, as my friend Tama Potaka says. It’s an interesting attitude from the member. The member asked, “Did the Minister sign off on it?” The answer is: no, I didn’t; it was an operational decision made by Kāinga Ora and the board. At the end of the day, the Dixon Street Flats weren’t occupied, by the way—so the member also implied that there’d been a deduction in—

Tamatha Paul: No, I know that bit.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, you know that. OK. Well, you implied that there’d been a reduction in social housing as result of it, but there hasn’t been, because they were unoccupied. Everyone was decanted—that awful word that’s used when it relates to people leaving housing; people were “decanted”, as if they were a glass of red wine, out of social housing. They were unoccupied, they were earthquake-prone, and a hazard, frankly.

They’re now being developed. I went and saw the site the other day, actually. It’s good new housing for Wellington. Ian Cassels was there, and he’s hoping to build, basically, single studio apartments primarily for younger people in Wellington, but anyone can live there. It will be good for that part of the city, as I’m sure the member will appreciate, and it removes a liability from Kāinga Ora’s balance sheet. In relation to what I had involvement with on that, “nothing” is the short answer. It was an issue for the Kāinga Ora board.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (17:10): It’s great to hear the Minister’s got his head around tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake, so I want to congratulate him on that. It’s good to hear.

This is more in the Māori housing space for Minister Potaka, I would say: on page 39 of the annual report, it records a $40 million baseline saving from new supply and capability of Māori housing. I ask the Minister: how can he claim to be improving outcomes for Māori when his Government’s first move was to rip funding out of the Māori housing supply and provider capability? This was one of the biggest complaints from Māori providers. It’s just a question that is constantly coming up from Māori providers, so I’m just asking the Minister where he is with regard to that.

Then, page 15 boasts that $426 million has been committed to Māori providers, for approximately 1,000 homes to be delivered by 2026-27. How many have been built so far, and is he on track to delivering another 1,000 homes by next year? Just a couple of specific questions for the Minister—I would presume Minister Potaka—to respond to. What is his current relationship with some of these Māori providers who I can see have been shut down? Yes, there is some involvement, but what is the current position? A couple of questions for the Minister there.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:12): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just in response to the various noble questions of the member opposite, the $40 million savings are related back to a savings effort in 2024, and many, many portfolios had to, essentially, offer savings up across nearly all the ministries, actually—nearly all the Crown agencies. That was addressed in a variety of select committee discussions with the member and other members in the Māori Affairs Committee. It was a saving that was made. Some pūtea, of course, across different years, has been saved and used to cost-proof transitional and other forms of housing which have a disproportionately high number of Māori whānau living in that type of housing.

As we might recall—the member opposite might recall this—the cost for transitional and other housing was not cost-proofed to account for inflation. As a result of some of the savings that were made across the Māori housing portfolio, these were reinvested back into areas of the housing spectrum that have disproportionately high whānau Māori living in them.

There have been a variety of announcements. In fact, I just went to Ohakune two days ago to open 10 houses in the Korokio development just off Shannon Street in Ohakune, up by the Powderkeg. Some of you might recall that place, and the Hot Lava. There have been around about 1,000 houses approved under the current Government to be delivered through Māori housing. Of that, about 300 have been carried through to code compliance certification (CCC).

In terms of the 1,000 that we inherited from the previous Government, about 800 have been built. There are still some to be built that were approved by the previous Government. These things don’t all happen in a day; they take a while to get consented, and sometimes additional finance to be found, but, essentially, 1,000 new homes under Māori housing under the previous Government, most of which have been built; 1,000 new homes which have been approved and contracted under the current Government or thereabouts; and around 200 to 300 of those have reached CCC. But for the most part, most of the projects are going in accordance to plan, apart from sometimes weather interventions.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (17:15): Thank you, Mr Chair. My questions might be better answered by the Associate Minister of Housing, as well.

One of the initiatives that I understand was funded through this Budget is the youth outreach service run by Māhera Maihi in Tāmaki. I just wanted to ask the Minister what he’s seen from that programme, whether he thinks it’s been successful, whether it’s something that they might be looking into rolling out across the country, and what he is hearing from youth transitional housing providers across the country in terms of their need and what they would like to see in upcoming Budgets. I’m interested to hear about that.

Māhera Maihi recently won New Zealander of the Year, so she’s being recognised for her awesome mahi. I hope that that’s something that Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development—well, mostly MHUD—would be keen to get behind supporting financially so that it might be expanded to other places.

Just on the appropriations for transitional housing places, those were increased by 300 in this Budget; however, the need at the time, I believe, was around 965 people waiting for transitional housing places. Is the Minister looking to expand on those numbers in the upcoming Budget to make sure that more places are available? When the Government announced those 300 additional places, what was the criteria they were using in allocating those? I understand there was a focus in Tāmaki. How did you come up with that allocation?

I’m especially interested, as someone based down here in Wellington who understands that rough sleeping has increased 24 percent. I just want to understand how you made that call, given homelessness and rough sleeping is increasing in lots of places across the country. I’m keen to understand the policy rationale behind that allocation. I’ll leave that one there, because those are the ones that are relevant to the Associate Minister.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:17): Can I just address, I think, a variety of questions that were baked into the member opposite’s kōrero. First of all, there are a lot of people doing it hard in housing, no doubt. That’s borne out by census statistics over many years, as well as data gathering that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and others have done, and observations that have been made by councils and housing providers and others.

The view that rough sleeping has increased is, I think, one that cannot be generalised across the country. I think in some places, actually, there have been some serious improvements, and in some places there have been some challenges. If you talk, for example, to Adrian Wilson, who is the manager at Auckland Council who has been responsible in this space for the last 10 years, he will attest that there were around 400 folks living rough in the central Auckland area 10 years ago. It came down to 200, and now it’s down to about 25 to 30. That’s borne out in the daily counts that his officials and others undertake.

Of course, I’ve been out on the street with Roimata and Ansh, who are the main people who walk the street on the wake-up call at 6 to 6.30 every single morning on weekdays, at least in Auckland City. They have said that the work we’ve done around Housing First, improving the outreach and the transitional funding support, has had a remarkable difference in the numbers of people living rough on the streets in Tamaki-makau-rau in the central business district area.

In terms of the allocation for the Housing First 300—and might I add that I think it’s today, actually, nearly 600 people have been through those 300 and additional existing places that existed in Housing First. Minister Bishop and I made that announcement in September, an extra 300 funded places of Housing First baseline into the future. As a result of that, not only did existing places that weren’t filled get filled as a result of the accountability measures that the agencies have undertaken with providers but we also started seeing a number of people coming off rough sleeping, off the street, and into those Housing First places. As I said, so far, circa 600 have come off that rough sleeping space.

In addition to that, around 200-plus have come off a very difficult place, rough sleeping, into transitional housing as a result of the Ministry of Social Development’s tactical plan to up the ante to tautoko those that are doing it rough on the street. The allocations: Tāmaki, 207; Hamilton, 31; Wellington, 35; and Christchurch, 26, were done on the basis of engagement with housing providers and others who operate in the Housing First space.

Of course, Christchurch filled very quickly, and I acknowledge the member opposite, Mr Webb’s, comments about concerns of rough sleeping in Christchurch; it filled up very quickly. Tāmaki, we’ve got 200-plus of the 207 places that are now leased and tenanted. Hamilton and Wellington have been a lot slower, which is a bit surprising considering there are a lot of people that we’ve been told are sleeping on the street, but the Housing First providers haven’t necessarily activated their leased places into tenanted and leased places. My expectation of those that have the Housing First contracts for those 35 places in Wellington and 31 in Hamilton is that we will accelerate that as soon as possible.

I acknowledge Māhera Maihi and her work at Mā Te Huruhuru. Mā Te Huruhuru received some funding out of the Outreach money—around $10 million that was provided in the current financial year. The call from many of those in the youth space is that there needs to be more funding. What I’d like to see is the housing providers working closely with Outreach and with other providers, like the Hamilton Christian Night Shelter, like Mā Te Huruhuru, to make sure the funds that are there already are used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (17:21): Just a quick question to the Associate Minister. We know that some of the fast-track projects are retirement villages, which have occupational rights agreements. There are 55,000 residents currently in retirement villages, so there’s going to be a burgeoning retirement village market for those occupational rights agreements. There will also be, under his proposals, as he said in the media, an incentive for operators to sell. There’ll be a requirement under his law to sell the agreements when the law comes into effect for new residents. That is going to leave existing residents currently worse off than they currently are. Currently, for existing residents, there is no mandated repayment time for their capital repayment. Under his law, it’s going to be 12 months, but these existing residents will now be last cab off the rank.

My questions are: how is that fair to existing residents when they’re going to be worse off? How can he say that this is retrospective and can’t be applied, when, actually, other parts of his legislation will be applied, such as repairs and maintenance? Finally, if a vast number of New Zealanders see three months as a fairer repayment time, which is in my member’s bill, would he consider reducing the repayment time, given that he seems to have arbitrarily chosen one year, which is what the operators want and which may not reflect what is fair to residents and also what most New Zealanders may want? Would he reconsider if there was evidence that most New Zealanders want that time frame to be shorter?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:23): Thank you for that question from the member opposite. The proposal around time frames for repayments have been set and proposed at 12 months for mandatory repayment. In fact, some retirement villages do repay earlier no matter what the status of the occupational rights agreement happens to be.

The second thing is that there is a needs-based assessment also. If people are in serious need of funding, often the retirement villages—and, actually, the agencies—intervene in that situation and provide some support, particularly where they might be moving to a more difficult part of their lives through aged care and hospitals. I don’t think all retirement villages are the same. As part of the proposal also we’ve suggested for carrying through to the appropriate drafting an interest repayment at six months, so if an occupational rights agreement is not sold, interest will be repayable to the owner of that occupational rights agreement.

In regards to the retrospective issues—whether or not we would apply the proposals to retrospectively go into contracts that are already existing—we are not for the mandatory repayments considering the massive material impacts that would have on liquidity and other dynamics that would accrue to the retirement village operators, and the flow-on consequences and effects that they may have, particularly with the provision of aged care and the nature of the thin margins, if margins at all, and small trusts. That would have a massive disincentive for people, particularly in small towns and rural and provincial areas throughout the country, actually deploying retirement villages and retirement villas into that space.

It is moving towards a bill to be introduced in due course. No doubt we will get select committee feedback and submissions, but, overall, we’re trying to strike the right balance between those who have occupational rights agreements and live in these villages. Some things are a little bit easier to apply retrospectively—let’s say, stopping weekly fees when people actually move out of the villas—but once you start saying there’s a retrospective arrangement for the mandatory repayments of the value of an occupational rights agreement, that has significant liquidity and other impacts, which I encourage the member to investigate and research.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (17:25): I have a question for the Minister of Housing. In the annual review report, there’s a lot about the Kāinga Ora reset programme. There’s a lot about financial sustainability, divestment, sales, etc., reduction in staff, redeployment of money: all of the different efforts that have been directed by the Minister in order for Kāinga Ora to save costs. I imagine that the cancellation or pausing of various Kāinga Ora projects before this annual review was also a reflection of looking for cost savings within Kāinga Ora. I want to ask the Minister: based on this kind of rationale, since this annual review, has the Minister or his officials or Cabinet considered any reviews of accommodation supplement amounts or the income-related rent subsidy rate as an attempt to save costs?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (17:26): In relation to Kāinga Ora, we are proud of the work that has happened there. There’s a variety of views across the House around that agency, but certainly the view of the Government was that it was underperforming and not delivering good value for money, and also not delivering for its tenants either, frankly. In fact, tenancy satisfaction is up since the changes, and build costs are coming down and savings have been made. The reality is that Kāinga Ora’s debt track is now $10 billion less than what it was three years ago. That’s $10 billion less that the taxpayer has to fund or borrow. That is, by any stretch, quite a significant achievement. I take my hat off to the chair and the former chief executive, who’s now left, and the team at Kāinga Ora.

I think it would be fair to say that one of the things we are doing some thinking about is how the new investment plan—in fact, we’ve published the first one—framework fits in with Kāinga Ora. The Crown has around 78,000 houses; roughly 192,000 people live in those houses. Big, aged stock—you know, very old, much of it. There’s now quite an emphasis going on with retrofitting and upgrading the existing stock, which, if you look at what the national infrastructure plan from the commission has said, is something that should be a real focus. We’re doing quite a lot of work around that, but the intention for new housing investment from the Crown is to get much more granular around where we build and what we build. I think we’re making progress on the where and the what. We’ve taken a real focus on housing need, and the officials have done quite a good granular analysis of looking at the precise regions where there is real need on the wait list, but also where rents are quite out of whack with the market. We’ve announced that. Take the East Coast, for example, as one of the priority areas. There’s not a lot of social housing there. Also, Northland—and I see the member for Northland in the Chamber—where there is real deprivation when it comes to social housing.

That obviously means there are limited sums of money. Not everyone can get new social housing, but we have tried to focus on building in the right places. In terms of the “what”, we are also trying to build the right typology. Fifty percent of people on the register need a one-bedroom unit or want a two-bedroom unit, but we haven’t, up until now, been building those. Of the Budget 2024 and Budget 2025 funding, from memory, I think it’s 88 percent of the homes being delivered that are one or two bedrooms, so that’s good.

Where I’d like to take the system to is getting much more granular about the “who”, because I think we all know there are some people for whom I think reasonable people would say, “Social housing is for you.” You’ve got a disability, you might have mental health challenges, you might have a range of life circumstances that mean you deserve extra support and the Government should give you some extra support. The system is, at the moment, far too non-responsive to individual circumstances. Everyone gets a number, it’s largely based around affordability, not actually based on individual circumstances. Everyone gets a number from A20 through to B8—it’s the most dehumanising system on the planet.

That’s why you end up with situations like the poor guy in New Plymouth who was living in a motel with his kid and in a wheelchair, and all he needed was a social house. And he waited three years to get out of the motel into a social house while the social house was developed. And then ACC farted around for nine months trying to put a ramp on the house and he had to deal with the council for six months to get a resource consent for a ramp for a social house so he could get out of a motel. Like it’s just a microcosm of everything wrong with New Zealand when you’ve got a guy living in a motel for three years with his kid in a wheelchair and all he needs is a social house and he needs the system to not treat him as some problem to be left in a motel. He needs the system to be responsive to him to get him into a house and sort out his ramp so he can live with dignity. That’s what I get up in the morning to try and fix.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:31): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I found it extraordinary that Tama Potaka is trying to convince us that there’s only 24 homeless people in Auckland. Yet the front-line providers are telling him to his face that those numbers are inaccurate, that they are wrong, and then they’re going and telling us what they’ve said to the Minister, and he doesn’t care because that number suits his narrative. If they are indeed liaising with front-line providers, they would be up front with New Zealanders and say that there has been an unprecedented increase in rough sleeping.

They cannot have it both ways. They can’t, on one hand, say there’s only 24 people that are rough sleeping in Auckland, but also there are so many that we need to bring on the move-on orders—because it’s such an issue. My question is specifically in regards to the advice that the Ministers have received from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development on the move-on orders: was it supportive of that proposal? Did they support the inclusion of rough sleepers, and if not, why as Ministers have they not advocated for the focus of these move-on orders to be on antisocial behaviour like they have billed, instead of including those who have found themselves unable to get emergency housing and are sleeping rough?

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (17:33): I didn’t get a straight answer to my question: is the Government, is the Minister, or is his officials considering adjusting the amount of the Accommodation Supplement or the Income Related Rent Subsidy?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (17:33): Yes, Mr Chair, just further to Kieran McAnulty’s call with regards to what’s happening with rough sleepers. I want to ask Minister Potaka: what’s the response he’s had from iwi leaders? Because iwi leaders have been quite adamant in terms of what’s happening with our people being moved out on to the street. We’ve not only had community organisations, but we’ve had iwi leaders been quite adamant that the housing policies are not working for our people, who are being thrown out and being set up as—well just chucked out, basically. We don’t know where they are, but the iwi leaders along with so many community groups are saying that these people are being thrown out on the streets.

I also want to come to page 20. I’ll just the Minister Potaka; the ministry notes that there are now 36 registered Māori Community Housing Providers, up from 19 in 2021. That being the case, why is the Government cutting Māori housing baselines—on page 39—instead of backing those providers to scale up and actually get more whānau Māori into permanent homes? Just a further question for the Minister, Mr Chair.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (17:34): Just keen to get some more fulsome answers from Minister Potaka regarding a couple of things he said in the exchange that we had. First he said that there is a difference in applying the proposed laws regarding capital repayments versus repairs and maintenance, that it was significantly different. I’d like to understand, apart from the impact on operators, where that legal difference is and whether he got any advice on that.

Secondly, I asked him about what he thinks ordinary New Zealanders would think of the situation. Clearly he has been listening to the operators and the financial woes that they have been telling him they would endure as a result of his proposed 12 month mandated period. But he didn’t answer the question: what does he think ordinary New Zealanders think about this? And if there was an overwhelming number of ordinary New Zealanders who feel upset by the unfairness of this law, would he consider changing it?

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central) (17:35): I just wanted to ask for a third time and see if I get another non-answer: is the Minister, the Government, Cabinet, or his officials considering adjusting the Income Related Rent Subsidy amount or the Accommodation Supplement amount? And if he doesn’t answer again, that’s basically an answer for me. Thanks.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:36): Just a couple of quick answers, particularly to recalibrate some of the assumptions that others have made. I did not say anything connecting the R and M issue—repairs and maintenance—with capital repayments, and the member might want to check the record on what I did say.

In relation to ordinary New Zealanders, most ordinary New Zealanders believe in the sanctity of contract, particularly when it comes to material provisions.

In relation to the comments on homelessness, again to recalibrate, Mr McAnulty, actually if you go to speak with people like Kāhui Tū Kaha and Auckland Council, who walk the streets of Auckland Central like I did, and what I’ve been told Mr McAnulty fails to do when he goes to visit people, they will tell you that actually the homelessness number, people rough sleeping in central Auckland has come down considerably. And particularly as a direct result of the announcements and the mahi Minister Bishop, myself, and the agencies have undertaken in the last six months. I’d like to acknowledge the agencies while I’m standing.

In relation to the rough sleepers vis-à-vis iwi leaders, there are a range of iwi leaders. Most recently Sunday morning Tomairangi Mareikura and Helen Leahy—absolutely abusive of the support that this Government has given Ngāti Rangi to build houses. Ditto Tia Ashby and others at Te Kohekohe; ditto David Thomas and Ray Morrison; and ditto Willie Te Aho, famous Te Aitanga a Mahaki and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui leader who’s been absolutely brilliant in deploying cabins out at Te Araroa and Wharekahika as a result of the inclement weather.

Many, many iwi and Māori organisational leaders are absolutely celebratory of this Government’s commitment to support Māori housing, and actually, to continue to be agile in the face of rising costs and a range of other things that continue to confront the economy. And you can speak to the iwi leaders yourself if you need to, but I’m sure Mr McAnulty would need to be introduced to them by Willie Jackson.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (17:38): Two final questions to the Minister. Based on that exchange, is he saying that none of his proposed laws will apply to existing contracts? And secondly, does he believe that more people are concerned about what he calls sanctity of contract than they are about the fairness of the retirement village repayment laws?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:38): In relation to the second question, I actually attend retirement villages and other places of importance in this particular issue and many, many residents are absolutely certain that the sanctity of contracts should prevail and retrospectively applying a mandated repayment timetable in the nature that the member has suggested in her own proposals is completely inappropriate.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (17:39): I just wanted to address Tamatha Paul’s question. We are always interested in looking at funding settings in relation to social housing, as what I was trying to indicate to the member through my answers in relation to Kainga Ora and the wider housing picture through the investment plan is that over the last two or three years—two and a bit years since we came into Government—we have conducted quite a thorough scale review of almost every aspect of housing policy, particularly our funding settings.

In relation to the Accommodation Supplement, it is true to say that the most recent changes to the Accommodation Supplement are, from memory, in 2018, based on 2016 relative rents around the country. There’s four—it’s complicated, like everything is in housing—there’s four different areas and they haven’t been updated for a large number of years.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just before our next call, this part of the debate is scheduled to finish at 5.58 p.m.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:40): Thank you, sir. That was a fascinating response from Minister Potaka there. He didn’t address any of the questions, didn’t want to talk about move-on orders, didn’t want to talk about the advice that the ministry has given him, and I think we know why. Because the ministry has advised these Ministers that targeting rough sleeping by simply moving them on and potentially fining them does not have the support of the ministry. In fact, the only people it has the support of is Viv Beck and Sunny Kaushal. So I ask the Minister again: why have they included rough sleeping into a provision that has been billed as addressing antisocial behaviour, when his own ministry has advised against this?

Fascinating. So he’s quite happy to stand up and have a crack at me personally, but he’s not happy to answer a very simple question. I think I know why. If I was to look at the list of ministries and agencies that have opposed this, it actually tells the story. This Government is proposing move-on orders as a solution to antisocial behaviour but is deliberately including the provision of rough sleeping and the ability for those that are sleeping rough to be fined as a way of sweeping the issue under the carpet, so that they can make false claims, inaccurate claims, claims that front-line providers have told me and him are wrong that there are only 24 people sleeping rough in Auckland. I mean, who on this Earth is going to believe that? When you’ve got the Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Justice, Police, Treasury, the Police Association, the Criminal Bar Association, New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties—crucially—the Auckland City Mission, Wellington’s downtown community mission, Lifewise, Kick Back, Community Housing Aotearoa, all of whom are saying that homelessness has increased under this Government. Except the Minister. He just claims different.

The list actually goes on. Why have the housing Ministers stood by and allowed the provision of rough sleeping to be included in the move-on orders and why won’t they consider removing rough sleeping and focusing move-on orders solely on antisocial behaviour, like they’re telling New Zealanders they’re actually about?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:42): Let me recalibrate again some of the inaccuracies of the member’s statement that I said there were 25 people sleeping rough across Auckland—that’s not what I said. What I said is that it is reported by Auckland Council and backed up by Kāhui Tū Kaha—the largest transitional housing provider in Auckland—that there are around 20 to 25 regularly counted rough sleepers in central Auckland. Central Auckland is a subset of a broader Auckland area, and I’d encourage the member from Pahīatua to visit Auckland.

The second thing is that the move-on orders are not within the ambit and the policy directive of the housing portfolio—they’re actually with the justice portfolio. I recommend that the member ask the justice Minister when it’s that portfolio’s turn in this House to respond to these questions around the content of that proposed legislation. My expectation is that the Government agencies and others will continue to work closely with housing providers who are doing a sterling job at times around trying to help people in need and also collaborate with Kāinga Ora with its refocused attention on delivering to those in need to ensure that there’s appropriate housing supplied for those who need it in the right place with the right typology.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:43): It is indeed an issue for the Minister of Justice, but it is also entirely appropriate for us to ask you as Minister about advice that you’ve received. Now, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development provided advice to you on this, and they advised against it. So it is entirely appropriate for us to ask you why you have not opposed the provision of rough sleeping, as per the advice that you received from your own officials.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:44): The member knows that the discussions within Cabinet committees and within Cabinet are confidential.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:44): So there we have it. Essentially an admission that the inclusion of rough sleeping, against the advice of the Minister’s own officials, is purely a PR exercise to make it look like there are fewer rough sleepers than there actually are.

Now, let’s look at the facts: front-line providers across the board have indicated that homelessness has increased at unprecedented levels because of this Government’s policies. They have pointed to the Government changing the entry criteria to emergency housing that has led to this unprecedented rise in homelessness. So I have a very simple question for the Minister. We talked about the provision of social housing places in Budget 2024 and in Budget 2025. Now, they are nowhere near on track of getting delivered by the time line that they set themselves: 211 out of 1,500 so far. But we know about that investment and we know about the investment in Housing First. I’m keen to know the total figure of investment in new housing from this Government and how that compares to the $1 billion that this Government has saved from changing the entry criteria to emergency housing.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister of Housing) (17:45): The member’s comparing two different things for starters. One, emergency housing continues to be available for those who need it. From memory, we’re down to 471—

Hon Tama Potaka: 460.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —460, Mr Potaka says. When we came in it was around 3,000. Those people have been moved out of those motels not because the entry criteria has changed for that, but because the priority one process started, which said, “If you have been in an emergency housing motel for 12 weeks or longer with children, that is a disaster, so you go to the top of the social housing waitlist.” We’ve moved over 2,100 families with kids out of—

Hon Tama Potaka: 2,300.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —2,300, Mr Potaka says—2,300 families out of motels and into social houses. So that’s why the numbers have gone down. Now, that has created savings. Technically, they flow through the annual adjustments by the Ministry of Social Development—the forecasts. It’s technical Treasury accounting stuff.

We have invested in additional social housing, as the member knows. In Budget 2024, we scrapped the First Home Grant scheme and put the money into 1,500 new places. In Budget 2025, we invested in an additional 550 places on top of that. I’ve publicly said before I’m keen to try and get a smooth social housing pipeline into the future, because one of the things the sector says to me is the constant—and this is true under the last Government and this Government. Well, we’ve tried to get that pipeline going already, but certainly big dollops of money that just get chucked into the system every two or three years are not helpful. What’s required is constant, ongoing funding so that people can plan ahead for the future.

The member says we’re miles behind on the delivery. I mean, that’s not true. The Budget 2024 money started on 1 July 2025, so we’re 10 months into that period. And then the Budget 2025 money started relatively quickly and some of those places have been coming available. As I’ve said to the member before, it takes time to build houses. You can’t just turn them on, turn them off overnight. It does take—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: You turned them off pretty overnight, all right.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, one of the problems that Kāinga Ora is facing when it comes to the delivery of social housing is consenting delays. Again, get this—what a microcosm of everything wrong with this country. Kāinga Ora is trying to build simple, low-cost—I’d prefer it to be even lower cost—affordable houses for people around the country. And do you know what they spend their life doing? Arguing with councils about whether or not having the concrete the same colour as the grass is acceptable. I kid you not. They spend their life arguing whether or not the pipe colour on the external wall facing the street should be allowed. They spend their life arguing about whether or not there is enough signage on the property for people to know that it is a housing development owned by Kāinga Ora. These are real-life examples, and I’ve got screeds of them, of Kāinga Ora arguing with councils about the most petty, minor matters.

Of course, always what happens is inevitably, at the end of the 20-day period, some council boffin goes back and says, “Oh, we’re a bit unhappy about this; we don’t like that; and could you just do another consultant report on that; and we’re just doing a request for information on that; and, oh, it turns out we’ve got to restart the clock.” So days, hours, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of time and money are being spent by Kāinga Ora, dealing with councils, when all they’re trying to do is build social housing. It just drives you demented, to be honest—it drives you absolutely demented. And they tell me—and I’ve had advice on this from Kāinga Ora—that one of the reasons why they’re struggling in a few regions to deliver on their build targets that we set for them is council consenting problems. What a classic microcosm of everything wrong with this country. So that’s another reason to fix the Resource Management Act.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (17:50): The Minister has made a claim, yet again, that those in need can access emergency housing. Everybody knows that’s not true. In fact, Jill Hawkey from the Christchurch Methodist Mission specifically said that Chris Bishop’s claim that those in need can access emergency housing “simply isn’t true.” Now, if I was saying something that isn’t accurate and I got called out by a key stakeholder, like Jill Hawkey, that, well, basically I’m not telling the truth, I’d stop. But they’re just carrying it on with this myth. Every front-line provider that I have spoken to—and unlike Minister Potaka, I don’t dismiss this feedback; I take it as fact, because why would they lie?—has told me that the changes to entry in emergency housing have been the largest driver of the numbers going down because they simply cannot get in.

As a result of that, according to the Minister of Finance’s own statement, this Government has saved a billion dollars, yet, if you look at the investment that it has made in new housing places—$140 million in Budget 2024; significantly less than Budget 2025—that doesn’t compare. The Government’s record on housing in this respect is quite clear cut: they are saving money by keeping people on the street, and they are putting a fraction into new houses—211 this Government have funded that have led to a new house from the 2024 allocation, and 228 from the 2025 allocation. Even the 300 Housing First places that were announced six months ago haven’t been fully allocated. The funding record of this Government in terms of housing is shocking, and yet the Ministers are refusing to acknowledge that their own department is advising against the move-on orders because they simply are moving the issue from one area to the next.

We’ve had confirmation from the Ministers as to how many houses actually have been built under this Government—211 from the funding in Budget 2024; 228 from the funding in Budget 2025. How many of the Housing First places that were announced six months ago have been filled, and how many of the subsequent 300 have been filled?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (17:52): Yeah, as we’re coming to a close, I just want to chuck a couple more questions to Minister Potaka. Given the real shortage in terms of Māori home ownership at the moment, looking on page 31, Māori home ownership is still lagging very much behind the general population. Where in the report is there a single policy that points to an uplift in terms of Māori home ownership? I want to ask the Minister: is there any strategy in terms of Māori home ownership at the moment? I also want to repeat my earlier question. On page 20, the ministry notes there are now 36 registered Māori community housing providers from 19 and 21. Why is his Government cutting Māori housing baselines, instead of backing those providers to scale up and actually get more Māori whānau into permanent homes?

Page 130 shows Māori households reporting damp and mould at far higher rates than the general population, yet, on pages 27 and 28, his priority is weakening renter protections and reviewing property managers. Isn’t that proof that the Government is, again, as we’ve been saying all along, more interested in pleasing landlords than in fixing the basic conditions that Māori and the general population are forced to live in?

On pages 22 and 23, the report—and I’d like the Minister’s response on this—highlights kaupapa Māori responses, like He Ara Hiki Mauri, but the baseline savings table on page 39 claws back funding from the homelessness action plan. Why is he cutting the very supports Māori claimants to Wai 2750 say are urgently needed?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing) (17:54): Again, may I repeat that in some places, some people report rough sleeping to have increased, but some of those reports were based on the number of phone calls that were made to council about people on the street, not the actual tier 1, credible data that we’d all like to see and rely on in order to make informed policy choices. We are not into herding and mobbing whānau into hotels—never have been, never will be—particularly in places like Hamilton West, where we had inherited 756 kids in hotels when I first came into this House. Now, there are about 50. I call that success and progress. Other people call that shadiness and hiding the bad news. I don’t. I’d rather see those kids in homes and in houses, warm, safe, and dry with their whānau. We’ve seen over 3,000 kids, primarily as a result of the support that we’ve given through priority one and a range of other initiatives, come out of emergency housing and contracted emergency housing.

In relation to the Housing First 300 places—as I’ve mentioned before, and I’ll say it again for the second time today—after that announcement was made, we saw a whole raft of accountability from existing providers who had not filled the funded places that they had. We also saw a range of initiatives done by Housing First providers throughout the country to ensure that those additional 300 places were filled with people that are in a very dire and difficult situation and are rough sleeping. We have seen around 600—I think it was 592 not two days ago—people come out of rough sleeping and go into the Housing First 300 places, and an additional around 110 places that were already existing before we made that announcement. Again, I call that success and progress. That is hard and fast data supplied by our agencies.

Most of the Auckland places—210 now at least—are tenanted, and about half the places in Wellington and half the places in Hamilton and all 26 places in Christchurch that were allocated in the Housing First 300 have been filled. They’ve been filled for several months. Just on Christchurch, yes, Jill Hawkey and Annette Sutherland and others do have some strong views, but they’re also very supportive of the initiatives that we have undertaken around Housing First, around the additional outreach monies and transitional moneys, and a range of initiatives to support, through the Community Housing Funding Agency—James Palmer and others up at Community Finance through the bank guarantee kaupapa that we had through the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Housing to actually reduce the cost of community housing provision overtime, because, ultimately, that’s one of the biggest challenges to not only building houses but also renting and owning houses.

Going on to Mr Jackson’s observations and questions, yes, we would like to see more home ownership. We think a property-owning democracy is the way New Zealand should be. We absolutely agree to that. That’s why you’ve seen the sterling and absolutely inspirational work of Minister Bishop around land rezoning and land consenting—on the fast-track announcements, just note the Ashbourne matter that was announced today, the 19^th fast track, down in the mighty Waikato, home of the famous Chiefs rugby team.—and a whole range of affordable rental initiatives that might not necessarily address the home ownership issue, but, actually, the affordable rentals are now adopted from the Māori housing kaupapa and are included in the flexi fund which Minister Bishop announced last year.

The flexi fund, again, is another pathway that gives more flexibility for housing providers to build homes for those on the income-related rent subsidy, for affordable rentals, or for other types of housing. We do think that the Māori housing provision in many, many ways has been credible and reliable. What they’ve done at Ngāti Whakaue up by the airport is absolutely fantastic—David Thomas and Ray Morrison. We think that some providers also need to work a bit more efficiently and a bit more effectively to deploy those houses and to get them moving. I’m sure that our friends over in the Green Party will know that Hūhana Lyndon is involved in Te Pouahi. They’ve got some work to do. They’ve got to get on with it and deliver the houses that they’ve been contracted to deliver over.

Overall, yes, we think that there is progress. There is more to do, but making sure we’ve got the right zoning and consenting in place, the right materials being made available with Minister Penk in his work in building and construction, granny flats and papa kāinga announcements, and other things that have been done are all to make housing more accessible, and more affordable. We’re all for that. Kia ora.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members, the time with the Minister of Housing has ended. The Minister of Health will be available at 7.30. The House will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Health

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the committee is resumed on the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. The Minister of Health is now available, isn’t he—oh yes, good—for one hour to respond to members’ questions.

SAM UFFINDELL (Chairperson of the Health Committee) (19:30): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to talk to the annual review of Health New Zealand, which leads the day-to-day running of publicly funded health services across New Zealand. It is our largest Crown entity, with over 100,000 employees, and I want to thank all of them involved—and they’ll be working right now to keep New Zealanders safe. So thank you very much from half of everyone in this House.

Health New Zealand achieved a better-than-budgeted financial performance in the 2024-25 year, which followed a challenging previous year. The organisation has taken steps to strengthen cost controls. It’s faced increasing demand for many of its services and continues to work hard to meet the performance targets set. It’s made progress, as well, in implementing the recommendations of the Deloitte review into its financial performance. It’s culminated in a single integrated financial system for Health New Zealand. We heard that it is working towards a devolved regional structure, because the organisation was too big for centralised decision making to be efficient and had to move away from the centre, including four regions with regional heads for Health New Zealand.

We have had workforce growth over the previous two years. Vacancy and turnover rates have fallen to the lowest point since the organisation’s establishment. We have a significant increase in Māori doctors, as well, and I want to note that the 6.3 percent growth in the workforce reported by Health New Zealand was reflected at the local level.

The elective surgery wait-lists, we were told by Health New Zealand, were at an all-time high and they have come down significantly. The Government’s decision around the Elective Boost initiative had provided funding for a number of additional elective surgeries and, ultimately, achieved 16,000 of these.

There are a number of other things that have been done, including a 10-year health infrastructure plan and the New Zealand Health Plan to ensure a fairer system to improve healthcare outcomes for all New Zealanders. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:32): Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start by acknowledging the Health Committee and its members for their work on the annual review. I want to begin by saying that the health system is making progress over a number of key metrics and to thank the doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, allied health professionals, support staff, and everyone else working across our health system who has contributed to the results and the outcomes that are putting patients at the heart of our healthcare system, ensuring New Zealanders can access timely, quality healthcare when they need it.

We know that the system has not been delivering as it should. Wait times have been too long; wait-lists have grown too large, and that is the challenge that we are tackling. That is why this Government has a clear focus with our five health targets: shorter wait times for elective surgery, shorter wait times for first specialist appointments, shorter stays in emergency departments, faster cancer treatment, and improving immunisation rates for our children. We are measuring performance and driving results. Ultimately, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. That’s why we’ve reinstated the health targets and we’re focusing the system on delivery.

At the same time, we’re investing record investments into our health system, with $16.68 billion additional over three Budgets, which is focusing on making sure that we have the resources in the right places, the increased workforce to deliver for patients. We know that there is still significant work required to continue to put patients at the heart of our system to reduce those wait-lists and those wait times; we’re focused on doing that. I thank Health New Zealand and all of the healthcare professionals working diligently and hard on our front line. We thank them for the work that they’re doing, continuing this momentum in our health system.

HŪHANA LYNDON (Green) (19:34): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair, and tēnā koe e te Minita. I’d like to acknowledge the hui that we just attended for Blood Cancer New Zealand and the opportunity that it was to hear the voice of patients and those in care right now, as well as our advocates within the sector.

My questions are in relation to health equity and Te Tiriti compliance, knowing that we are undergoing significant change in our system and the sector but we have Wai 2575 recommendations from the Waitangi Tribunal that had guided the previous establishment of our health system. So I’m wanting to understand how you believe, as the Minister of Health, you are tracking and giving effect to the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal for Wai 2575.

Further to that, while acknowledging you have the targets, I’m asking the Minister: specifically, what initiatives can you share with us that have that specific focus on reducing the disparities and, in fact, the life expectancy gap between Māori and non-Māori as it still exists and it is still felt across te iwi Māori, and wanting to understand what is the funding allocated and what are the initiatives that the Minister is funding to close those gaps?

In addition to that, wanting to also thank the chairperson of the Health Committee for sharing the stats in terms of increase in our workforce. That’s a beautiful thing, but when thinking about Māori mental health and addiction services, what specific measures are we seeing in terms of the dedicated funding for Māori mental health and addiction services, and then the workforce spend, as well, in terms of workforce capability?

Iwi Māori Partnership Boards, Minister: where are we at on that? How are they tracking? What is their voice, and how does their voice get heard? Beyond the Māori health advisory committee, how do we utilise these entities that were set up specifically to provide iwi Māori voice into the system and the outcomes that we are seeing for their influence in terms of strategic commissioning?

Then, in closing, Minister, a pātai further around cancer treatments, and recognising the hui that we attended for blood cancer. Tomorrow, I will attend the international Indigenous Cancer Conference in Tāmaki-makau-rau. Where are we tracking in terms of funding allocation for research and development that looks specifically at the impact of funding services and gaps for Māori cancer treatment? Kia ora.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:37): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the member for her question in relation to—

Shanan Halbert: A rare misstep.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Sorry?

Shanan Halbert: Rare misstep.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: What was that about? I just stood up.

Shanan Halbert: Waiting for your answers.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Oh, thank you—thank you, appreciate that. I thank the member for—

Hon Willie Jackson: It’s all right. We’ll look after you—we’ll look after you.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Not sure if he’s commenting on my height, but I was just stepping up. I’m not sure if that’s what he was referring to, but—

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Don’t be so sensitive.

Shanan Halbert: Fake it until you make it, mate.

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, thank you. I thank the member for her questions, and I thank—[Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): OK, OK, that’s enough.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: —I thank the Opposition members for their interjections. The member raised a number of important questions in relation to health outcomes for Māori, and the Government has been very clear in our approach that we expect our health system to treat New Zealanders based on their need, not based on their ethnicity. We have been very clear that we do not agree with having a co-governed health system, which was what the previous Government was delivering and which we have reversed. We are focused on making sure we improve health outcomes for all New Zealanders, including Māori, and that is what our health system is doing. That’s why we’ve reintroduced the health targets, which is making a significant difference for the results for New Zealanders, including Māori.

One of the initiatives we have been investing in significantly is in relation to immunisation for our children and immunisation for our tamariki. Whilst the member might ask the question, she fails to recognise that the previous Government, which she supported and which spent all of its time focusing on restructuring the health system— she’s failing to recognise the abysmal results, which ended up with only 64.7 percent of Māori children being fully immunised at two years of age when we came into Government—64.7 percent of Māori children were fully immunised at the age of two years. Whilst that member and the previous Government, which she supported, might have been focused on restructuring the system, the results went backwards.

We have now seen a significant increase in immunisation rates for Māori children. The latest advice that I have received is that it is now up to 71.5 percent—

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Still not good enough.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: —of children. As the member for Banks Peninsula says, that is still not good enough. We have much work to do, and my expectations of Health New Zealand are very clear that that must be their focus: to improve outcomes for all New Zealanders, including Māori.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (19:40): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just while we’re on the subject of percentages and stats, I would like to pick up on the discussion, and I thank Hūhana Lyndon for the question. The question that is probably the biggest thing that the Minister can’t seem to be able to capture is that immunisation is really important, but just as important is the fact that this Government and this Minister continue to allow a persistent six-year life expectancy gap between Māori and non-Māori. That is a statistical fact that the Minister should be able to respond to and show what is happening. Immunisation is really important, but so is the life expectancy gap, and we need to think beyond just one thing.

To the Minister of Health—and I know that there are some other buddy Ministers in the background—there are a couple of things that I’d actually like to raise in regard to statistics. Māori miss their first specialist appointments at 15.2 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for non-Māori. We need to understand those statistics—they’re facts, and they’re in your own report.

We’ve also got here that ambulatory sensitive hospitalisation (ASH) rates for tamariki Māori aged zero to four are at 8,510 per 100,000, versus 5,400 for non-Māori. I’d also like to extend on the fact of stats, since that is what the Minister is priding himself on. We’ve also got the data showing massive regional variations, from Lakes at 95 percent, to Taranaki at just 47.9 percent. These are Māori populations in concentrated areas with the worst performance, and what targeted actions is the Minister taking for all these collections of data?

Here’s another piece of data that I’d like you to think about. Hazardous drinking effects: 29.6 percent of Māori adults compared to 17.9 percent of non-Māori. These are stats, which are just as important as immunisation, that we are not hearing about from this Government. These stats are affecting everyday lives. Here’s another one: Māori women’s cervical screening rates sit at 67.8 percent, compared to 81.8 percent for non-Māori.

These are stats and this Government is failing Māori, and you’re talking about it being needs-based—we get needs-based. Well, guess what? Equity has Māori at that needs base, which leads me to this question: if kaupapa Māori models were consistently delivering results—and let’s move away from the rage-baiting discussion of co-governance. If kaupapa Māori models were actually delivering results, why has the Government not mandated more investment towards taking these approaches to address this pile of poor statistics that this Government has allowed to heighten? It actually has not got better. It’s now got worse than it was before, and so what I’d like to hear from this Minister is how you are going to invest in addressing the disparity of the growing inequities, as statistically shown in your own report, and, more significantly, how can you show us, as a nation, that you are going to close that gap of the six-year life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori? Why should my mokopuna who is born at the same time—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can I just ask the member to come back to the 2024-25 appropriations.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Sorry, but it is actually all important, because while we have heard the immunisation rates, one plus one plus one plus one equals the whole suite of solutions that we need to do to address the health inequities that are growing in this country. It is responsible for this Minister in this period to show the data and show how the Government is investing in addressing those growing inequities.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour) (19:44): Just further to the previous speakers, I think that those are appropriate questions, and if the Minister of Health stopped talking rubbish about co-governance and actually came back to the kaupapa—

Hon David Seymour: The Minister said no such things.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, you should know, Mr Seymour, that it was the National Government who put it in and you went along with it, but never mind.

I want to come back to what—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Back to the appropriations.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Sorry about that, Madam Chair. I want to just come to the question about life expectancy. On 12 March 2025, the Minister told the House that outcomes for all New Zealanders means that Māori and non-Māori have the same life expectancy. One year on, in his own annual report, he still has Māori life expectancy stuck at 76.8 years. It’s unchanged and the gap is still sitting at almost six years. We’re hearing the Minister talk about all the changes, but there have been no changes whatsoever, which reiterates what the previous speaker Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has said.

I want to ask the Minister this, because there are a number of questions that Māori are asking. Twelve or 15 iwi Māori partnership boards met every requirement to contribute to Health New Zealand’s commissioning. The target was hit, and so what’s the Minister’s evidence base for stripping them of that role under the amendment bill and demoting them to community engagement?

Also, I would like to ask the Minister this. The Hauora Māori Advisory Committee gets exactly one mention—one mention—in this 294-page report. How many times did it meet last year, what advice did the Minister take from it, and, in enhancing its advisory role in the bill, is it anything more than just a rebrand?

Now, I also just wanted to follow up again on the Treaty area: does he agree with the Ministry of Health Te Tiriti o Waitangi framework, and, if so, has he done anything in the last 12 months to ensure that health legislation meets that Treaty framework? Does the Minister have any commitment whatsoever, or is he just going to keep talking to us about co-governance?

Also, what progress has he made on the five priority areas for the health system in the Government Policy Statement on Health 2024-2027 regarding equitable access to health services for Māori? Can I add that this is such a hugely important area for Māori, and this is a Government that has been failing Māori from the time that it has come in.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:47): Look, I thank the member Willie Jackson for the comments, and I would just like to make it very clear that this Government is focused on improving health outcomes for all New Zealanders, including Māori. If you look at the annual report, there are a number of metrics and other statistics that show that there have been improvements continuously under this Government. There is significant work to be done, but, as I said earlier, the last Government removed the health targets and removed the focus on outcomes. It focused its efforts on restructuring the health system during the middle of a pandemic, rather than actually focusing on the issues and questions that those members are asking today.

When you look at some of the key stats, Māori life expectancy has increased to 75.8 years, reducing the gap with non-Māori from seven years to six years. While this signals progress, there is more work to do. We acknowledge that there is significantly more work to do. If we look at the number of Māori doctors, it has gone from 3.9 percent in 2020, to 5.2 percent. It is another increase in the number of Māori doctors working in our health system, here in New Zealand.

If we look at the amount of money going into funding going to Māori health providers, it has increased from 3 percent in 2020, to 4.2 percent in the last financial year. We’re continuing to invest in Māori health providers who provide care on the front line, but, ultimately, everything we do has to be measured by the outcomes that it meets and the targets that we are seeking to achieve so that the money is actually delivering better outcomes for all New Zealanders, including Māori.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (19:49): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to address the parts of the annual review that covered performance. I’d like the Minister of Health to account for the milestones that were met in the year under review, and then the milestones that are on track to be met in the current financial year.

I’ll note that the Standing Orders allow for the discussion of current operations, where relevant, to the year under review. Which targets have the milestone for the year under review been met and which have or will be met in the current financial year?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:50): The target results for the last financial year have been published, and the target results for this financial year are yet to be published, because the year has not yet been completed.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (19:50): I wonder if the Minister of Health would like to explain to the committee how many of the milestones were met in the year under review. The Minister could do what he just did—which is avoid my question and not speak to whether the target was met in the year under review—and, if he does so, I would, then, have a follow-up question for him, which would be: how does he expect to hold the health system to account for meeting the target if he will not be met to account in this House for meeting the target? Minister, how many of the targets were met in the year under review?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:51): It might be very good for the member there to want to get up and try and get a social media video, but we are publishing the targets every quarter, and annually, so that it is available for the public to be able to read, to scrutinise—

Hon James Meager: Read a newspaper.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: —we’ve been publishing them in the newspapers; we’ve been putting the information out there so that—

Carl Bates: Sharing them on social media.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Sharing them on social media. We have been providing that information out publicly for people to be able to see.

In the financial year that has been referenced, we made significant progress against the health targets—particularly on electives, first specialist appointments, immunisations, shorter stays in emergency departments, and improvements in cancer treatment as well. In cancer treatment, the investment we made into Pharmac, with 33 new cancer medicines, is life changing for cancer patients up and down this country. I want to acknowledge Dr Shane Reti here in the Chamber today for his work on that. We have made a significant difference for cancer patients up and down the country.

We are making progress against the targets. The elective wait-list, the first specialist appointment target—and whilst I acknowledge the wait-lists are still too long, there is more work to do; we are focusing the system on delivering that. Initiatives such as Elective Boost, where we actually partner with our private surgical hospitals to get things done, get people seen, get treatments done faster—this makes a real difference in people’s lives. We are making progress.

Hon David Seymour: Madam Chair?

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Madam Chair, I do want to continue this line of questioning, if I may, and I do have plenty of time available.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I started to call the Hon David Seymour.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Health) (19:53): I have a very small, short contribution. I just wanted to acknowledge, in the short time I have, the tremendous work that the staff at both Pharmac and Medsafe have done during this financial year. They have been—

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: I can’t believe he won’t even speak about the targets, and his mates are bailing him out. This is your big piece and he’s not speaking to the targets.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Look, I apologise to people who are watching at home. There’s a bit of a meltdown occurring on the Labour benches.

I actually just wanted to praise those people, the chair; I wanted to praise the chief executive newly recruited at Pharmac; and also Chris James at Medsafe for the superb work they’ve done. People that work with these organisations will say that the culture has completely changed; they’re dealing with a different organisation. I think that is a tribute to the work that those people have done. Medsafe halved the time to get a consent so Kiwis can get medicines faster. Sometimes, we forget to thank the officials and public servants that deliver these things, but since we’re talking about this financial period and all the things that they’ve done for patients, getting medicines faster, more funded—we just heard from the Minister of Health how many new medicines have become available—I thought it was well and truly worth acknowledging their contribution for the record.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (19:54): Fortunately, I took notes of the Minister of Health’s dodging of my last question. He made a quip about social media, and I understand he’s jealous of my follower numbers! He named the targets. He said they were published. He did not answer whether or not they were met. He talked about other programmes that the Government has under way.

Of course, the shame is, the embarrassment for the Government is that after making such a fuss that this was going to be their transformative action in the health system, we all know those milestones were not met in the year under review.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: We didn’t expect them to be.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: We also know—milestones, Dr Weenink—that since the year under review—I’ll explain for the good doctor over there: each year, the milestone increases because the idea that this Government promoted is that they would continue to make improvement, and so the milestones are set higher for this year. I can tell the committee that, currently, only one milestone has been achieved, and that is the cancer treatment times milestone. For that performance indicator, that was the target that was set 1.1 percent higher than the baseline when the Government came into office.

My question is, Minister: for the other four, what responsibility do you take for some of them, for the performance getting worse against some of these targets since you came to office? I’m thinking specifically of the first specialist appointments target. This is your flagship initiative, Minister; this is your promise to the New Zealand public: that health services would improve. Where your performance has deteriorated, why has that occurred?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (19:56): It’s ironic that the member is asking questions about health targets—the very health targets that her Government chose to remove, and which left many thousands and thousands of people sitting on wait-lists which simply ballooned under her watch. The number of people waiting for elective treatment increased by 92 percent under her watch. The number of people waiting over four months for elective treatment increased by 2,500 percent under her watch. The number of people waiting for a first specialist assessment increased by 83 percent under her watch. The number of people waiting over four months for a first specialist assessment increased by 6,400 percent under her watch. That is the record of failure which the Labour Party has to live up to every single day because they were focused on restructuring the health system, rather than on delivering for the very patients the health system is meant to be there to deliver.

We have seen significant improvements against our targets. Improved immunisation rates—77.1 percent of children aged two years of age were immunised when Labour left office in 2023; that has increased to 82.9 percent against the most recent quarterly update.

Shorter stays in emergency departments: 89 percent of patients, when National left office in 2017, were being seen within six hours in an emergency department; that dropped to 67.5 percent under the previous Government, and has increased back up to 74.2 percent under this Government, according to the most recent quarterly result.

Shorter wait times for elective treatment and specialist appointments—I acknowledge those wait-lists are too long. There are too many people waiting to be seen.

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Minister, your performance is getting worse. It’s worse under you. It’s worse under your Government.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I would point out that the number of people waiting less than four months was 62.1 percent for an elective treatment when she left office; it’s now back up to 64.5 percent. That is an increase. Is that good enough? No, there’s more work to do—there is significantly more work to do. I acknowledge it and we’re working on it each and every day to reduce those wait times for patients so that they can be seen.

We’re dealing with the wait-list ballooning which ballooned under her watch, where she’s now here complaining about it. The irony of it: the wait-list which she is now complaining about, she let balloon under her watch, and she is now complaining about the very people trying to fix the mess left behind under the previous Government.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (19:59): Well, it’s good to hear the Minister of Health’s response on—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: —thank you, Madam Chair—this issue, because it’s quite apparent we’ve touched a nerve. They don’t like being told when they don’t measure up. They don’t like being told that first specialist appointments are worse under their Government than under the last Government. They don’t like it when they’re held to account—because I talk to a lot of people in the health system, and they don’t like it. They don’t like the bullying tone that this Government has about the targets, because here it is—here it is. It’s a small-minded leadership culture that exists in our health system, where the people at the top can bully others and make them accountable for their performance, but when they don’t measure up, there’s no come-back for them. I think that was a very revealing conversation, Minister, and I thank you for that exchange.

I do want to ask you another question, though, Minister. All of these targets reflect outputs; they don’t reflect outcomes. Outputs—things that occur in the health system, procedures done, time to treatment initiation and so on: they are outputs, they’re not outcomes. I wonder, would the Minister consider commenting on the value of measuring genuine health outcomes? In the period where the Minister has made such an investment in cancer care, why isn’t cancer survival being measured, just time to treatment? I understand that’s an important part of a cancer patient’s journey, but why not measure whether you live or die? Isn’t that the more important thing?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:01): I find it quite ironic that that member would say that these targets don’t measure the right thing, because, ultimately, when I meet patients who talk to me about getting a cataract operation done, that is life-changing for them and the opportunities that they have. When I meet a patient who’s just had their hip or knee replaced, that has been life-changing for them. Their ability to spend time with their grandchildren, their ability to get out and about, their ability not to live in pain—that is an outcome that matters to patients.

Her question tries to diminish the outcomes that are being measured by these targets for patients, and I am going to stand here every single day on behalf of the patients of New Zealand who need to be seen faster and need to see the treatments that they need delivered sooner. On her side of the House, they are going to simply say that those are not outcomes. That’s what she said: those are not outcomes. I encourage her to go to everybody who is waiting for a hip operation and say, “Your hip operation isn’t an outcome”. Well, for that person, that is life-changing, and we are going to continue to fight for the patients of New Zealand so they can be seen sooner, they can be seen faster, and we can get more treatments done.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori) (20:02): One of the things I’d like to share is that I happen to have, probably, the second-largest electorate that I’m fortunate to be an MP for. That’s from Tokoroa all the way down to Porirua. Our team often have—in fact, the highest queries they get are health. The constituents have concerns ranging from rural areas that they live in to urban areas including Ngāmotu, Wanganui, Palmerston North, and Porirua. There’s a common theme, Minister, that I would like to tease out from you. I understand we’re going to sit here and watch who did right and who did wrong, but the reality is there’s a whole bunch of our communities that are experiencing real pain at the moment.

One of the things that we’re seeing is that you’ve had targets, and some of the targets are, perhaps, really ambitious—for example, in elective treatment and performance, and the target, I understand, is 95 percent. It’s dropped from 60 percent down to 59 percent. That’s probably small in your mind, but what it translates to on the ground is that there are a whole lot of people that are not being seen. They are not on lists. We’ve also got a real decline, in the year on show, in elective treatment access for those who are able to get it and, also, those who are on lists of not being referred, which happen to be Māori. One of the things I’d like to understand from the Minister is: what is your plan to address some of these targets? I know you’re debating between the left and the right on whether there should be targets or not. You have stated there are targets. What is the substantive measure that we can say tonight to our communities that is on the cards be done?

Another thing that I’d like to also understand is, there was $105 million surplus in the Māori health funding, and I don’t know if this indicates where that funding is intended to go. I would like to tease out from the Minister: is that $105 million that’s unspent in Māori health funding being reallocated to deal with some of the issues that those in the communities are confronting now? And, I guess, the other part of that is: is the Minister ensuring that the kaupapa Māori providers, who have experienced huge reductions in funding, delayed contracts, and service constraints, and they are the connector between those communities and those constituents who are complaining—what does he see as being the bridge between that reduced funding, a surplus of $105 million, and how that happens to come to fruition, to action, for those communities that are affected?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:05): Thank you, Madam Chair. I acknowledge the member’s questions. The latest data in regards to the health targets shows that there has been an improvement since health targets were reintroduced for shorter wait times for elective treatments, and so it is progress in the right direction and, ultimately, there is significantly more work to be done.

In relation to funding to Maōri health providers as a percentage of Vote Health, I’m advised that between 2020/21 and 2024/25, that increased from 3 percent of the total funding to 4.2 percent. In numerical terms, that is an increase from $588 million to $1.293 billion over that time—an increase of $508 million or an 87 percent increase in total. That is a significant increase in funding to Māori health providers and we thank them for the work that they do.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:07): Thank you. Minister, there were considerable changes in staffing at Health New Zealand during the year under review. I wonder if the Minister can account for the decrease in nurses employed by Health New Zealand on a per capita basis during the period under review.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:07): As the member knows, there’s been an increase in nursing staff at Health New Zealand since we came to Government. I think there are around 2,000 additional nurses working at Health New Zealand today than when we came into Government. We continue to invest in our nursing workforce, and we value the work they do.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:08): One of the great things about being a New Zealander, as every New Zealander understands, is per capita, because, you know, we’re always thinking about our medal tallies at the Olympics on a per capita basis. So could the Minister please account for the reduction in nurses per capita employed in the public health system in New Zealand, please?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:08): I’ve answered the question. We’ve continued to increase investment in our nursing workforce, and we will continue to do so.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:08): What hope can the Minister offer to graduate nurses, who are bearing the brunt of the restrictive hiring policies at Health New Zealand when it comes to nursing jobs? This has been an ongoing issue from the year under review until today, with multiple rounds of graduate nurses having reduced levels of recruitment and many leaving for Australia in pursuit of employment opportunities that really should be offered in this country.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:09): I’m advised that Health New Zealand is targeting to employ 80 percent of graduate nurses from last year’s mid-year graduation and end-of-year graduation. I’m advised over 1,400 of those graduate nurses have already been employed in Health New Zealand. They’re continuing to recruit to that target, and we are continuing to focus on building our nursing workforce here in New Zealand. Government is also investing in nursing in primary care, with targeted funding towards GP clinics in aged care facilities with support for them to employ graduate nurses. That’s a key part of our plan to grow the nursing workforce, not just in our hospitals but also in our primary and community care settings, which play such an important role in our healthcare system up and down New Zealand. I want to thank all of those nurses who have started their work in primary care and in our hospitals for the work that they do.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:10): In the year under review, Health New Zealand spent $432 million on outsourced personnel, the vast majority of it on clinical personnel. Can the Minister explain what initiatives are being taken to make sure that regular employment in the health system is preferred in order to make sure that our health workers can have longevity of tenure and that we also stop paying a premium for locums?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:10): Well, investing in strengthening our workforce is a priority under this Government. There are hundreds more doctors working in Health New Zealand today than when we came into Government. Making sure that we are strengthening that workforce, particularly in smaller and regional hospitals, is a priority for this Government. I would agree that—and I’ve made my expectations clear—Health New Zealand does need to be focused on the permanent employment of doctors. At the same time, where there are vacancies, locums do play an important role to ensure that those services continue to be provided in those communities, and that balance must always continue to be struck so that patients get the care that they need.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:11): I have a question for the Associate Minister, Minister Costello, who I can see is in the House. It’s regarding the Dementia Mate Wareware Action Plan 2026. I know that the Minister was there for the refreshed plan, and I’m wondering—having looked through the titles from September 2025 through to March 2026, there doesn’t appear to be any Cabinet papers to endorse that. I’m asking the Minister if there is a Cabinet-backed response to the refreshed plan, or did she just turn up to cut the ribbon?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health) (20:12): Yes, I would highlight to the member that to make progress in health decisions and work doesn’t always require Cabinet papers. A measure of success isn’t the number of Cabinet papers that is delivered. We continue to work in this space. Health New Zealand has acknowledged the action plan, and the recommendations are being worked through. As the member will be aware, there is currently a trial programme that is still in progress. The trial is still continuing. Those outcomes will be assessed and measured, and there is a larger programme of work around the aged care, which actually carries the bulk of the population of those living with dementia, and so those outcomes I will look forward to bringing to the House once Cabinet decisions are made.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:13): Thanks for those responses, Minister. What specifically has changed, then, since she cut the ribbon at the action plan, and what specific plans are in place, particularly for young-onset dementia, given that that cohort faces a particular set of challenges which are quite different from the older set, including respite support and employment support for their families?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health) (20:13): As I’ve stated, there is a trial programme that is in place. The member has submitted a range of written questions, which have been responded to. The action plan has been acknowledged. It is part of the programme of work for Health New Zealand, and we will continue to address those issues. In terms of the areas of those with younger-onset dementia, that doesn’t sit specifically under my delegation, so, therefore, I would be unable to respond to those questions. To suggest that we attended to cut the ribbon—as the member will be aware, I gave a detailed speech around the commitments this Government has to responding to this important issue, and it will continue to be a programme of work.

Ingrid Leary: Madam Chair, I have some questions for the mental health Minister—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can I just remind members that the reason I have to give you the call is that Hansard is recording. They can’t assume who’s standing up. I have to give the call. Also, the cameras are remotely activated. They are not on campus, and so by giving the call, the cameras then know where to go. That’s why I have to be so pedantic.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:14): Thank you for the guidance, Madam Chair, and apologies for my enthusiasm. My questions are to the Minister for Mental Health. Just regarding recent data published by the mental health commission, can he please explain why people are waiting longer for addiction services than for mental health services?

Hon Matt Doocey: Well, the first thing—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The Hon Matt Doocey—following on from the little speech I just gave.

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health) (20:15): Thank you very much. Look, the first thing I’d say is that for the first time in this country, we’ve now got the ability to actually track access waiting times. The principle is, you would have heard the health Minister say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. That’s why we set up New Zealand’s first mental health and addiction targets—one week for access for primary mental health and addiction support; three weeks for specialist mental health and addiction support. Whether it be mental health or addiction, it shows that, actually, access rates are increasing, which actually shows waiting times are going down. I think that is a good position to be in as a country.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:16): I note that the Minister put mental health and addiction together. It would be good to get an answer specifically on addiction services, which the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission has specifically said involve longer waiting times than mental health services. I’d also like to understand why referrals that have been declined have increased. We’ve been tracking this for a while, and the mental health commission has noted it, as well. Is this a way of making the numbers look better? There is evidence that referrals have been decreased, actually not only in mental health but also in the X-ray services in the lower South Island, where apparently the X-rays are being triaged by somebody from Health New Zealand. Radiologists are now only able to get those triaged X-rays. We’re seeing this across the health system. The specific question to the mental health Minister is: is he concerned about the fact that the declines of those referrals have increased, and on what basis can he justify that increase?

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health) (20:17): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Look, the first thing I want to make very clear for those listening tonight is that if you do attend a mental health service in New Zealand, you won’t be X-rayed. I just want to make that very clear. I’m not sure what that questioner was asking, but I just want to make it very clear that my expectation is you won’t be X-rayed if you go to a mental health service.

The second thing I would raise on the question around declined referrals is that for the one-week primary mental health and addiction target, there is no need for a referral to those services. They are open-access services, and, in fact, you don’t actually need to be referred by your GP. You can actually go to the GP practice where those services are delivered and engage that service directly for free, as well. The final point I’d make around declined referrals is that I just want to assure the House that, actually, when someone is declined because the referral is not appropriate—meaning that is not the best service for them—then those people are found the more appropriate service. It’s not that people are left without a service available to them.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (20:18): Thank you. Just a follow-up question: so which services are those declined referrals referred to, and what evidence does he have to show that that’s being tracked and that they are receiving services? I’d be really interested to know.

The second question is regarding 19- to 24-year-olds. The mental health commission points out that access for mental health services continues to decrease in that cohort. Is he concerned?

Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health) (20:19): Yeah, I think that’s a fair point, and I am concerned when you look at the data the member is referring to in the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission report. For adults, it showed, in the last 12 months compared to the previous 12 months, that an extra 35,000 adults were seen. That is largely attributed to the significant increase in front-line workforce. The front-line mental health and addiction workforce has grown by 11 percent, and child and adolescent mental health and addiction services have grown by 19 percent. We have seen an increase in the number of infants and children accessing services, but for the age group 18 to 25, we haven’t found the equivalent pick-up. That’s not do with capacity. There is capacity there. I would point that member to the recent publishing from the Ministry of Youth Development, asking specific questions for young people as to why they did not engage in support when it was there. Some of the feedback has actually been that they have found those services too medicalised—services that they, quite frankly, have not seen themselves in. It does require us to look at youth-specific services that young people feel are more representative of them and are more reflective of them, to break down the barriers so that they will engage.

I will just point out the recent Youth Mental Health Summit in Parliament, hosted by Youthline, who are proactively working on ensuring what the next generation of youth mental health services will look like.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:21): Thank you, Madam Chair. The Auditor-General advised that maintenance spending on Health New Zealand’s asset base should sit at $280 million to $360 million a year. In the year under review, the actual maintenance spending was $140 million, and that went down, not up, from the previous year. Can the Minister of Health commit to increasing—to a forward plan on the maintenance spending for New Zealand hospitals?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:21): As the member will appreciate, Health New Zealand has a significant asset base which is ageing and which does require a significant investment not only in maintenance and renewals, which is a priority, but also in the rehabilitation of facilities and also new facilities. I understand there’s around $7.5 billion in the capital pipeline at the moment at Health New Zealand, which is significant, which was increased by around $1 billion at last year’s Budget, with a real focus not only on new facilities but also on making sure that we’re remediating existing facilities, plus also providing the growth and expansion that’s required in our hospitals. This is a key priority for us as a Government, and we know how important it is and it certainly has been something which I, as Minister, have spent a significant amount of my time focused on to make sure that New Zealanders have access to the health services that they need.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:22): To be specific, Minister, can you commit to meeting the Auditor-General’s estimate of the amount needed to be spent on maintenance for New Zealand’s public hospitals?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:23): We are focusing on increasing investment into health infrastructure under this Government. In terms of the capital plan that Health New Zealand produces each year, they will be working through that for the coming financial year, to look at what the priorities are between making sure we’re investing in renewals, maintenance, and also getting the investment in making sure some of those facilities which are at end of life are being replaced—that also goes across clinical equipment, as well.

One of the areas that we’ve had to put significant investment in, in the last financial year, has been around clinical equipment, such as CT scanners, MRI scanners, which have been left to run down under the previous Government, were often breaking. We’re now replacing, I think, around a third of the CT and MRI scanners across the country over a two- to three-year period, which, of course, makes a significant difference for our healthcare professionals, as well. They need modern and efficient equipment that play such an important role so that patients can be seen quickly and get the treatments that they need, the diagnosis that they need, and all those other services that they need in a timely manner as well.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:24): Minister, the Health Infrastructure Plan does not publish the number of beds that the projects listed in the plan will include, and requests for those have been withheld on the basis that they are commercial and budget sensitive. Can the Minister explain how good a capital plan for hospitals without bed numbers are?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:24): What we’re focused on is on making sure we have a long-term plan. There is a significant amount of work that’s needed in terms of clinical engagement around the detail of those plans—models of care, as the member will know—to get the specific details right. But, at the end of the day, we’re actually also focused on getting things done.

I would note that the previous Government, I think, spent its entire six years—its entire six years—talking about a hospital in Dunedin; an entire six years talking about it. We actually signed a contract for construction in the middle of last year, and construction is under way. Actually building a hospital is critically important. The last Government simply talked about it. I would say that actually building a hospital, getting it done, getting it delivered is far more important than what the previous Government were experts at: simply talking.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:25): I thank that member for introducing my next question, which is: is it correct that, in the year under review, the National Party and the Government did absolutely nothing to advance Dunedin Hospital—which, at the time of the election, had an out-patients building which was near completing construction, and the foundations done for the in-patient building; and, if I recall correctly, during the year under review, the Government did nothing but threaten to move the hospital, say that the project should be wholly reconsidered and put back in the old hospital, and then they finally came to their senses, returned back to the plan that the Labour Government had, employed the very same project manager to run the project but at twice the cost?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:26): The last Government’s record in Dunedin Hospital is not something that they should be proud of—it is not something that they should be proud of. They spent an entire six years—an entire six years—debating, discussing, talking.

Glen Bennett: Business plan.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I’m sorry, but a hospital bed doesn’t go in a plan; you’ve actually got to get a construction contract signed. One of the things that I’ve done as Minister of Health, in the last 12 months, is get a construction contract signed. Construction is now under way, and the good Dunedin Hospital is now getting built.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour) (20:27): I’m thrilled to know that this Minister of Health is running political lines, which the people of Dunedin know with their own eyes because they’ve been watching that hospital being built, that that is utterly false.

While we’re speaking on the matter of the Minister’s statement tonight, I am heartened by the absolute lack of clarity, content, and actual answers. This Minister manages to speak in total sound bites, and never once manages to deviate from talking points that he’s picked up from the National Party research unit, probably polled on in focus groups by David Farrar. The really good thing is that he’s been using them for 18 months, or whenever they stabbed Dr Reti in the back, and they’re making absolutely no difference to what New Zealanders think the credibility of the National Party is on health.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Come back to the year under review.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: My suggestion for this debate is that the Minister could either choose to engage on the actual issues, he could answer questions, but if he can’t, maybe he should get some new talking points, maybe his political party’s donors could actually pay for them to be worked up properly, because they are not resonating with the New Zealand public. They know the truth. They know the truth about nurses not being able to get jobs here. They know that you stuffed around on the Dunedin Hospital for 18 months, and nothing happened. They know that the quality of the health services that they are receiving have not improved whatsoever.

Minister, you might feel clever for not answering questions, as you’ve managed to do for an entire hour tonight, but the fact is that they don’t win you any votes, do they? That’s probably a good thing for the National Party to think about today.

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (20:29): That is from a former Minister of Health who absolutely failed our health system, left more and more thousands and thousands more patients waiting on wait-lists, and now she’s here complaining about the very people trying to clean up her mess. She was more focused on restructuring a health system during a pandemic, rather than actually getting patients seen, and getting patients off the waiting lists. That’s what this Government is doing. That’s what we’re achieving, and I’m the first to acknowledge there’s more work to do, but we are getting it done. I would just say, one of the additional talking points I might add to my repertoire is the good people of Dunedin are seeing the Dunedin Hospital getting built, and that’s good. We’re delivering; they’re talking, and they failed New Zealanders on health for their six long years.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, our time with the Minister of Health has ended. The Minister of Education is now available for one hour to respond to members’ questions.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Education

KATIE NIMON (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee) (20:30): It’s a pleasure to stand up on behalf of the Education and Workforce Committee. I always need to acknowledge the constructive and hard-working Education and Workforce Committee, and I also want to acknowledge my deputy chair who was chairing at the time of these annual reviews last year as I was away with my newborn son.

So, look, just to introduce what it is that we discussed, to introduce the debate, we discussed the newly arranged Charter School Agency and the establishment of that, the way it was performing in its role. We talked through the Education Review Office, as we always do. We heard from them their performance, their reviews, and the national-level reports and publications that they take and have in the financial year 2024-2025.

We then focused—and as you would expect, most of our time is spent on the Ministry of Education itself. We talked about the ministry’s performance, of course. We talked about achievement and curriculum reform. We talked about student achievement, attendance, participation, and school readiness, which is always something that comes up for the Education and Workforce Committee; equally, about learning support—learning support was a focus for our committee and has been for the term—and navigating and evaluating the role of a system steward, which was something relatively new at the time. As well as that, of course, the school property network and the maintenance of that, which has been a key theme. We talked to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the way that has been, through the 2024-25 period. Verifying international qualifications was a key theme. Then, moving on to the Tertiary Education Commission and the performance and outlook of the commission, both in vocational and for the university institutions. Then, beyond that, we had some proforma reviews with Network for Learning, Education Payroll, the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology. So it was robust scrutiny. I look forward to the debate, and that is my introduction.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:33): Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I just start by thanking the Education and Workforce Committee for all the work they do and for the two chairs that they’ve had over that time. We are undertaking a significant reform of the education system after decades of decline—and that is what we are responding to: decades of decline and a briefing to the incoming Minister that said that we are not providing excellent or equitable outcomes in one of the first sentences in that report. That’s why we’re undertaking the significant reform programme to reverse those decades of decline and make sure that we are actually providing equitable and excellent outcomes for students, and so that parents can feel confident when they send their children to school, no matter where they go to school and which classroom, across any part of the country, that they are receiving a world-leading education.

Our education reforms are based on our six priority areas that have not changed in two years: curriculum, assessment, teacher practice or pedagogy, learning support, developing the workforce of the future, and data. And there was, sort of—another one slipped in there, which we weren’t expecting, which is school property, which we’ve been undertaking a lot of work on.

The thing that I am really proud of, though, most recently, was our Budget 2025, which was the largest injection into learning support in a generation: three-quarters of a billion dollars to make sure that all students are supported no matter what their need. The package was split into three: universal supports, targeted and tailored, and those of the highest need and the supports that they need. I guess, I’m briefly just going to talk to some of the highlights of that package. Firstly, that every single school in year 0 to year 8 will have access to a learning support coordinator, and we are rolling those out. In fact, 474 individual learning support coordinators started this year, which is exciting.

Another thing I’m very proud of is the historic overhaul of the ORS scheme—or the Ongoing Resource Scheme—to make sure that we are moving to a demand-driven model, something that I remember the previous Secretary for Education saying to me: “Minister, you’ll struggle to get that one over the line.” But we have, and we have seen an uptick in the number of children accessing ORS, which I’m extraordinarily proud of.

Also another highlight is the Early Intervention Service expanding from early childhood education (ECE) right through to the end of year 1, to support successful transition from ECE into schools so that you don’t have to start the process all over again of applying for support. That is a significant investment of $266 million into the Early Intervention Service, with hundreds of thousands of hours of teacher aid support going into that. In fact, across all categories, there will be an additional 2 million teacher aide hours into the system every single year from 2028. In 2025-26, 896 and then almost 1.6 million and then 2 million. So, it was a huge budget. It was a significant moment and one I’m extraordinarily proud of in one of our six key priority areas.

I also want to take just the last part of this contribution to sincerely thank all of the teachers, school leaders, principals, and support staff across the country who are implementing these reforms on the ground. We are already starting to see the early signs of success, be that in the phonics check or some of the maths data coming through. It is a significant reform. Essentially, what we’ve done—the reforms really started at the beginning of last year. We’ve had, essentially, five terms now of reform. We’re already starting to see some really encouraging results. But it is a massive shift and we owe a huge debt of gratitude for those principals and teachers on the ground who are changing their teaching practice, who are already seeing results on the ground. In the Education Review Office report—that well over 80 percent of teachers in English and maths have already changed their teacher practice and were seeing improvements in their classrooms is extraordinarily satisfying. I wanted to, once again, just say thank you to all of them for all of their hard work in implementing this reform programme.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (20:37): I want to start with a series of questions for the Minister around Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The first question is: did Māori cede sovereignty? Is the Minister going to respond to the question? If not, I can keep going.

Hon James Meager: What annual review was that in?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: This is the Treaty section, which is something that happened during this particular annual review year. All right, if the Minister is refusing to respond to a simple question—I’m asking the Minister: did Māori cede sovereignty? Is the Minister going to respond? If not, I will continue on. If the Minister does not believe that Māori ceded sovereignty, why does the new history curriculum consider Te Tiriti o Waitangi and whether Māori ceded sovereignty debatable or contestable? Would the Minister respond to that question? It is history curriculum. In your introductory remarks—by both the Minister and also by the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee—it talks about curriculum being a focus of the annual review that we conducted. Will the Minister respond to the question on the history curriculum?

No? I’m going to keep going. So, in that case, when we are looking at the changes and the removal of Te Tiriti of Waitangi from section 127 of the Education and Training Act, what consultation then did the Minister actually conduct with the NZ School Boards Association as a part of that removal? [Waits for Minister to respond] Wow, OK.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Get them all out, Lawrence. Get them all out.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Well, the idea is to have a bit of a back and forth with the Minister. If the Minister wants to respond to some of that—or then I can keep going. I can ask one final question and the Minister can choose to respond.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): It’s not unusual for a Minister to receive a bulk of questions and then come back with responses. I’m not saying that’s what the Minister is going to do, but—

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: In that case, final question—thank you, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Keep asking the same question and you’ll get the same response.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Final question is: what does the Minister think is the Crown’s relationship with Ngā Kura ā Iwi o Aotearoa?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:39): Just around the history curriculum, at the moment it’s out for consultation. It’s not finalised, it’s not been gazetted, it’s out for consultation. I would—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Why is it even in there?

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I say to the member, if there are issues that you would like to raise, you and anyone else is able to put your thoughts down in the consultation process. It’s been open for six months and it’s open for a few more days yet. And you’re welcome to throw any thoughts through to my office and I will pass it on to the team. I’m not the person, obviously, holding the pen on the history curriculum, but if you would like to make some comments around that in that process, you’re absolutely welcome to, like anyone is. We’re undertaking that consultation period at the moment and will listen to lots of different views. There have been quite a lot of people who’ve had their say, and we will go through that.

Around section 127—and it’s been well traversed—it was a decision that we made. If you watched the proceedings of the Waitangi Tribunal, we’ve been open and honest about the fact that, nope, we didn’t consult. It was a decision that we took, and it’s now already been passed. So we’ve been open and honest about the fact that we didn’t undertake any consultation, but it is a decision that we made.

But I would like to point out that—and things I’ve always said is that—the key responsibility for the Treaty of Waitangi sits with the Crown. It is not to be delegated out to a school board. We hold very closely that obligation. I have spent a huge amount of my time making sure that we are equitably resourcing a bilingual education system, be that through curriculum reform, through professional learning and development, be that through resourcing our schools. Every single thing that we have done has been equally and equitably done in both systems. Whether it’s in the New Zealand Curriculum or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, we’ve been equally resourcing those as best we can at the same time. As far as I can see, no previous Government has ever done that to the level that we are. That is because I take my duty very, very seriously. I expect that schools will continue to report—or they have to legally report—on outcomes for Māori students. But the responsibility for those outcomes lies with me.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (20:42): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Every parent wants the same thing for their children: an education system where their child is supported and given the tools to build a future in the world they’re going to live. New Zealand schools were building towards that. What they needed was steady investment, not an overhaul driven by ideology. This Government chose disruption over progress. They promised to fix education, but instead they’ve made it worse—a curriculum built on memorising facts and being tested on them is not modern learning. Young people need to analyse, problem solve, and think for themselves. Independent thinking has never mattered more, and precisely what rote learning fails to teach.

I have a number of questions about the curriculum in particular. I would like to understand from the Minister: is she confident in her previous assertions that the curriculum was, in fact, written by Kiwis, for Kiwis? I would like to know if she would categorically state that not one line of the curriculum was written by anyone based outside of New Zealand.

I would also like to know—maybe the members opposite would like to know—whether any of the curriculum was generated by AI, as some content appears to have been done so when looking at that. In addition to wanting to know those specific elements around New Zealand content and the Treaty in the curriculum, would she be able to clarify whether vocational pathways will be ready in time in that curriculum?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:44): I want to respond to the member’s claims about facts. I hear this a lot from people in her party and from her persuasion that kids don’t need to know facts; that, in fact, you can just use the internet, use AI, use Google, and they’re all at the touch of a finger. I would suggest that that member go and read some of the research that’s been undertaken by people like Dan Willingham, Nathaniel Swain, and Natalie Wexler, who talk in depth about the importance of knowledge. Because the fact of the matter is, without knowledge, it is very difficult to think critically. You can’t think critically or problem solve about stuff you don’t know about. Knowledge sticks to knowledge. You have to have a schema in your brain to pull facts into and to have them on hand to be able to think critically.

All of the latest research and evidence in cognitive science and cognitive research points to the fact that prior knowledge is extraordinarily important for those higher-level skills. We all want critical thinking and problem solving and collaborative learning, but you can’t think critically about a historical event you don’t know the facts about. Unless we teach our children those facts, then they will not be able to think critically. That is what that member absolutely fails to understand. It makes me wake up in a cold sweat, quite frankly, thinking about her potentially being the Minister of Education, stripping our curriculum once again of facts, because they are so important.

Now, I think the other thing that the member wanted to know about was the vocational subjects or the industry-led subjects. We’ve said many times that we want them to be seen on an equal footing with the ministry-led subjects. Our intention is that they will be ready at the same time as the ministry-led subjects when they come to implementation in 2028-2029. That work is under way now.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (20:46): Thank you, Madam Chair. I also note that I asked five questions of the Minister and she answered two. In the standard assessment, that would be considered not achieved. Continuing on with the curriculum and NCEA, I want to check with the Minister: how many people were consulted on the scrapping of NCEA?

OK. I will continue. How many people and who were consulted on the curriculum changes? Those are my two first questions. I’m going to be tracking how many questions I’m asking the Minister.

Was the scrapping of NCEA ever explicitly consulted on? I.e., the data that is being drawn consulted on NCEA level 1, not NCEA levels 2 and 3. Were NCEA levels 2 and 3 ever explicitly consulted on?

What happens to phase 1 and 4 when it comes to curriculum development and how come phase 5 is currently going ahead?

Why has the Minister backtracked on what she said in Hansard—which is on Hansard in 2024—criticising the previous Government of a cart before the horse approach with qualification changes before curriculum, yet we’re seeing the same thing happening currently?

Also, final question for the Minister. Currently—I guess this is question number six—what is the difference between a curriculum and a syllabus?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:48): Around the question about NCEA and the curriculum, as I think that member knows, or should know, the NCEA reforms have gone out for full public consultation. We put some ideas out for consultation. They went out and we have had full feedback on that. We’ve had over 10,000 pieces of feedback come in. The ministry has gone through all of that. So full public consultation, and there were some things raised, for example, that we hadn’t considered, which were making science compulsory at year 11, for example. So full consultation. The same with the curriculum. It is out for full public consultation for a period of six months for phase 1 to 4. We did that also with English and maths before it was gazetted. The phase 5 subjects will also go out for full consultation.

What we did also in addition to that was, after consultation and on implementation with English and maths, we went back and said to the sector, “What do you think? You’ve had a year of teaching this, are there any tweaks you’d like to make?” We took that on board and we made some further changes. So full consultation, implementation, and then continually making tweaks where we need to on advice from the sector.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (20:50): Thank you, Madam Chair. The Minister of Education, in her answers earlier, said that she wanted to be really open and honest around Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the section 127 changes. We know that there was no consultation with Māori and that she went against the advice of her own ministry. In talking about how she has been open and honest about all of this, why was she not open and honest with our select committee and the public that the Minister was also undertaking proposed changes—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I think that the way the member is approaching that question is a bit borderline. We won’t question honesty. Repeat the question—

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: No, she said the words herself: “honest” and “open”.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): So you’re questioning—

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I’m quoting her back, yes.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, that’s a quote, but don’t question someone’s honesty—OK?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Sure. Why did the Minister not tell the Education and Workforce Committee and not tell the public that she is proposing to make further changes to the Treaty provisions within the Education and Training Act?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (20:51): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate the answers that the Minister of Education has already been forthcoming with, but two, though, I still haven’t received, and I’m happy to follow up with written questions.

I would like to know whether she can categorically state that not one line of the curriculum was written by anyone based outside of New Zealand. I think that parents watching this at home would like to know if AI was used to generate any of the curriculum.

I also would like to know a couple of things about NCEA, as we’ve gone on to that topic. We would like to know, in proportion and in general, how many were for it and how many were against it. I’m sure that she could indicate that from having received those submissions. I’d also be interested to know whether she was advised at any point that the changes that she wanted to make to NCEA could be achieved within NCEA. That would be really good to note. The last question I have in relation to NCEA is: what has the total cost been to date of the NCEA change process?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:52): Just in answer to those ones, I can tell the member Ginny Andersen that the Ministry of Education officials wrote the curriculum. No AI was used in the writing of the curriculum.

Now, in terms of her question around NCEA and whether or not the outcomes could be gained by tweaking or making changes to NCEA, I didn’t become a Minister thinking that we would need to change NCEA hugely, until we started to see reports and we started to see what the previous Government had tried to do, but it hadn’t worked. In fact, one of the biggest challenges facing me when I came in to become the Minister was having a sector say to me that the NCEA changes that had been implemented by the previous Government were not manageable, that they hadn’t had what they needed and that they hadn’t had the resourcing or the exemplars, and that they were not ready. In fact, I remember seeing the percentage of teachers and principals who said that they were ready, and it was pretty woeful. They also said to me, “Minister, it’s too late to stop. We have to go ahead. What can you do?”, and so we put a whole lot of things in place as quickly as we could to try and smooth it through as quickly as we could.

I think the thing that we learnt was that multiple Governments had tried to make changes, but nothing had ever changed. We still had hundreds of thousands of students who weren’t sitting exams. We still had complete inconsistency around the country. Students were sitting different standards in English, for example, than in other schools, under the guise of tailoring to individual needs, but what we saw was complete inconsistency and a cherry-picking of standards to get kids across the line, and I think it was very telling—and I know that this is why the previous Government implemented the literacy and numeracy corequisite—that they even had to do that, because students were getting NCEA who were not literate and numerate.

That tells you everything that you need to know about a national qualification system that was producing children who were not literate and numerate. In fact, when that Government introduced the literacy and numeracy corequisite, children were failing at massive levels—and it’s a huge credit to the sector for increasing those numbers—but what they failed to do was implement a reform at primary and intermediate to get kids up to where they needed to be, which is what we have spent time and huge cost doing. Now, the next step is to create a qualifications system that is consistent across the country and that is led by a curriculum, and not by standards that can be plucked and chosen randomly.

What we want to see is not compatible with the current NCEA. If you wanted to have consistency of curriculum, then a standards-based assessment is completely incompatible with that. We are writing, and—in answer to a previous member’s question about putting the cart before the horse—we’re doing both at the same time because we have to. We have to because that’s the situation we were left in, otherwise it would take us far longer to get there. We’d have this weird situation of having new level 1 and old level 2, which we know isn’t working, and so we’re working as quickly as we can to do everything at the same time. But what we are producing is a world-leading qualifications system that is based on a world-leading curriculum where it doesn’t matter where you go to school, you have access to the same high-quality curriculum, learning skills and knowledge to set you up for success.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (20:55): Thank you, Madam Chair. I haven’t had an answer to my earlier question, and I look forward to the Minister of Education answering that. I also wanted to ask about why the consultation time for Te Marautanga is half that of the curriculum’s time.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (20:56): It is the case that Te Marautanga hasn’t had the same time frame for consultation. Now, the reason for that is that we believe in having a properly resourced and funded bilingual education system, and it’s really important to us to make sure that Te Marautanga and the New Zealand Curriculum are being developed at the same time.

When I came to become the Minister and looked at what had been done, a lot of work had been done by the previous Government on the New Zealand Curriculum, but no work had been done on Te Marautanga o Aotearoa—nothing at all. Not a single word of the new curriculum in Te Marautanga—the update refresh—had been done. Not a single word, not one word—zero. We were starting from—

Hon Member: That is not true.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: Oh, there was lots of virtue signalling, but not a single word was written. Lots of work had been done had been done on English and maths and on other learning areas, but nothing in Te Marautanga. Your Government had completely left it.

We have had to accelerate that work. We have accelerated it so that it’s being done at the same time, and that has meant that there isn’t as much consultation period available, but what we have done to counter that is to make sure that we have contacted those Māori-medium schools and kura kaupapa and said that we will provide them in-person, or via webinars, the ability to feed back so that we are getting really good, rich feedback. That was really important to us, or otherwise Te Marautanga was going to be on a much longer track. We didn’t want that, because it’s not fair to Māori.

Everything we are doing in the mainstream, we’re also doing for Māori-medium education as well, whether that’s professional learning and development, resourcing, or writing the curriculum. I’m extraordinarily proud of that, and the previous Government didn’t do it.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (20:58): Thank you. Madam Chair, I want to check, just following up from the previous question. When it comes to the consultation time for Te Marautanga, I also note to the Minister that some of the other questions I have regarding the Crown’s relationship and obligation and agreement with Ngā Kura-ā-Iwi o Aotearoa, and some of the other changes—my question is: does the Minister think that the Crown has upheld their obligation under section 6 and section 9 of the Education and Training Act? Because that was one of the reasons why the Minister said that section 127—Te Tiriti was removed from that.

My second question is around the Minister’s response around NCEA consultation. I’m not asking in terms of the consultation that’s happening right now in terms of the new qualification. I’m asking: before the decision was made on scrapping NCEA to something different, whose report and how many people were consulted when that initial consideration was made? So if the Minister wouldn’t mind responding to those questions for the time being.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (20:59): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just have a couple of questions and around some of the contracts that have been entered into with the Minister of Education in the past year. In terms of the benchmarking of the curriculum, I’m interested to know why that wasn’t put out for tender and why it was an Australian outfit—I think Learning First—that was involved in that work.

My next question is in relation to the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART), and I wanted to know if she was aware of any ministry staff or contractors involved in the SMART project who also worked or advised Janison Solutions during that tender process.

My third question in relation to that is really in and around: did she discuss the Teachers’ Institute programme, or its new provider the Tertiary Education Commission, funding application for the 2025 year with anyone at the Ministry of Education prior to the funding being approved, and, if so, what was discussed?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:00): In answer to Lawrence Xu-Nan’s questions around who we consulted with prior to putting these proposals forward, I got together a group, a professional advisory group of principals from around New Zealand representing a range of different schools—area schools, rural schools, kura kaupapa, different deciles or equity indexes; a range of different people—chaired by Patrick Gale. They helped in framing some of that.

We also had advice from the Education Review Office, we had advice from NZQA as well, and that’s what we went out to full consultation with, and we are still making decisions on some of the very highly technical parts of it; as you know, some of the big, foundational parts we’ve set have gone through Cabinet, but there are some more technical decisions to be made, and we are using the professional advisory group and a technical advisory group to run through all of those second-level decisions.

In relation to the next set of questions—very operational, and I can’t answer them. Around the Student Monitoring, Assessment, and Reporting Tool and Janison, all I can say is that I would expect that the Ministry of Education run a proper request for proposal process for such a major piece of infrastructure. I’m sure that they have, and I’ve got no knowledge of any of the things that the member speaks of.

In relation to the Teachers’ Institute, I don’t discuss any particular organisation when it comes to funding with my ministerial officials.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (21:02): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to move into the tertiary education component of the debate tonight, and I know that this Minister is very willing to answer questions and in that manner I will be posing a number of questions and no doubt will to and fro over a few of them.

Grant McCallum: About NorthTec? Great result to NorthTec.

SHANAN HALBERT: NorthTec—I can talk about NorthTec if you want. The first question is: what actions were taken by the Minister to remove references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in legislation pertaining to tertiary education? No answer?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I think probably you will ask a series of questions and then you can expect—

SHANAN HALBERT: Oh, I thought it was a to and fro like last time.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well it appears not right now, so you keep asking your questions.

SHANAN HALBERT: No worries. I’ve got more where those came from. How do apprentice enrolments in this period compare to the previous year? Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) numbers peaked at 90,000, the size of a city like Tauranga. What action did she take over this period, and why did this number increase over that period?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Tertiary Education) (21:03): Thank you, Madam Chair. The member is quite right that Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) numbers have increased over this time. Obviously, when unemployment goes up, NEET numbers go up and it’s an area that I am very concerned about, as are a number of my colleagues. Minister Stanford, Minister Upston, and myself meet regularly and talk about this regularly. So the increase to the Youth Guarantee places was a direct result of our concerns around the NEETs. As the member Shanan Halbert—who’s very familiar with the sector—knows, Youth Guarantee is a scheme that enables those who have not achieved or have not been successful in their compulsory schooling and who are not employed, to get additional assistance. It’s funded at a higher rate and so the NEETs that partake in the Youth Guarantee programmes don’t have to pay fees and don’t have to pay for their equipment or the things that they might need for it. They get additional support from their provider. So it’s a very important part of taking our young people who have not achieved in their education to date and giving them a second chance.

In terms of apprentice numbers: yes, apprentice numbers during the period of work—I’ll broaden it out to work-based learning because some are apprentices and some are trainees. So work-based learning went back by 11 percent, I think it is, which again is completely expected—when unemployment occurs, it rises. Then the numbers being taken into apprenticeships go down as well. So 11 percent, I believe it was, over that period.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (21:06): Thank you, Madam Chair. Moving on to universities, the report highlights that 443,000-odd Tertiary Education Commission - funded learners are enrolled in tertiary education, including universities. However, universities have recently revealed that they haven’t received enough funding to cover all of their students over this period. A series of questions here, the first one being: has she seen any advice that highlights that rising unemployment will lead to rising domestic enrolments at our universities? No answer to that question. How many universities—

Carl Bates: You know how this works—ask all the questions in one go.

SHANAN HALBERT: Sorry, are you the Chair?

Carl Bates: No, I’m just helping you out. Clearly you need it.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I think, when we’re on time-limited debates, the Government backbenchers should perhaps not use up so much of their time and cut Ministers short, but I’d also advise Mr Halbert that the Minister will get up and answer the questions, but it may not be specifically one on one.

SHANAN HALBERT: Thank you. It is also helpful, Madam Chair, when we’re going down a line of questioning, that we get an answer from the Minister so that then we can get—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I understand that, but the Minister is very good at very good at answering the questions and she will—she will.

SHANAN HALBERT: Thank you. Second question, then, is: how many universities have had to carry unfunded domestic students as a result of her Government’s choices?

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Tertiary Education) (21:07): Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the member is quite right that there have been unfunded places in the universities and also in a number of private training establishments (PTEs) and polytechnics as well. It’s not an uncommon thing to have unfunded places. I think it’s also really important to look at the number of bodies and the equivalent full-time students (EFTS) because what has been occurring in the university sector over time is a greater proportion of EFT per student, so more than one full EFT per student attached. So yes, you can get unfunded EFTS showing up, but it may not be as many unfunded people. But I’ll get those figures specifically for the member because I think—I’m looking, but I think we’re up to about 1.3 funded EFT per student, and I’m hopefully getting that right now.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m going to have to just ask someone—the whips, maybe—to deliver from the officials.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: To pop that along, OK.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Thank you.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: But look, I’ll get that detail for the member because that does make a difference. But you’re quite right, there are unfunded places and there will be unfunded places again this year. It’s not an uncommon thing for the universities, polytechnics, and PTEs to run unfunded places.

Some unfunded places are easier to cope with than others. If you’ve got 350 students in a lecture theatre for Marketing 101, another five additional bodies in there without being funded is not going to place particular stress on an institution. Where it becomes problematic is where there are constraints around how many can be in a lab or something like that. So it’s not uncommon to carry unfunded places—yes, they are; so are PTEs and so are polytechnics.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (21:10): Thank you. These are my final few questions. As I understand it, it is uncommon that the Government does not fund the additional places through overs and unders, if I am correct, Minister Simmonds, at universities, as has been done in previous years. What universities have told her they’ll have to make up the shortfall in other areas by cutting courses, if any? Will the Government act to ensure that universities don’t have to carry unfunded students in the future? I would like to understand what action the Minister has taken to address that in this 2024-2025 period and into the future.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for Tertiary Education) (21:10): No, the member Shanan Halbert isn’t quite right on that. It is common to carry unfunded places at different times. Most institutions do that, particularly if they are looking for growth. So I would disagree with the member when he says it is uncommon.

In terms of the Budget last year, we did have additional funding. Now, I know the member—and I’ll just try and get the figures for the member—sometimes gets confused with the full amount of additional funding and the fact that Fees Free transferred from the Tertiary Education Commission to IRD. That reduced some of the budget, but there was an additional $111.4 million put into a fund forecast volume in those levels three to 10 for that Budget.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (21:12): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions for the Minister on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) as well. The first question is: why did the Minister go against Treasury’s advice in the supplementary Budget bid for $79 million when the Treasury’s advice was to not go ahead with the SMART tool?

My second question is: what viability test has been done on the SMART tool before the request for proposal went out?

And my third question for the Minister is: when the SMART tool was implemented and was rolled out to schools, why has the security certification and accreditation report, which is fundamental to Government procurement, not yet been completed?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (21:12): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’ve got a few questions around the Teaching Council. I’m interested to know—my first question is: what rationale is there behind the Minister of Education giving herself the power to appoint two-thirds of the Teaching Council?

My next question is in relation to the letter she wrote to the Teaching Council in which she’s asked them to bring in a King’s Counsel to look at the Fisher case—whether that is actually happening or not; an update on that.

And my third question is in and around the chair of the Teaching Council. We’ve traversed it well, we know, around the text messages and the funding, but my question is that when the application for the $750,000 for the Teachers’ Institute was initially declined by the panel but then subsequently was overruled by the deputy chief executive of education, the grounds for that panel decision being overruled in order to provide funding was for two things: that it needed approval from NZQA—the New Zealand Qualifications Authority—and it also needed approval from the Teaching Council. Now, David Ferguson was subsequently appointed to both of those bodies, I understand. What I would like to know is: was his appointment active at the time when those two bodies then clearly approved his $750,000 worth of funding, and is she concerned with the multiple layers of conflicts of interests that clearly exist here?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:14): I’m going to go backwards from the last part. That is completely operational; I can’t answer any of her questions. If she had questions about that, she should’ve put them—and maybe she did—to my officials, because they are entirely operational.

Around the letter I wrote to the Teaching Council, it wasn’t specifically about the Fisher case; it was in relation to the report that Debbie Francis had undertaken and the serious claims that were raised in that report around the fact that the Teaching Council were not acting in a way that was properly protecting children. It was a pretty difficult report to read and, I think, made many people, including Debbie Francis, question whether or not the Teaching Council have been undertaking their duties of child protection in the right way. It is my view that an independent person needs to take a look back at some of the decisions that have been made so that the public and the sector can have confidence, or to see if any changes need to be made in the operations of the Teaching Council. From my understanding, the latest I’ve heard from the Teaching Council is that they are undertaking that work and that they are appointing a King’s Counsel.

In relation to—and this goes on to the first question that the member raised around the changing of the appointments to be mostly ministerial, like they were prior to the changes that the previous Labour Government made. I think it’s pretty clear, when you read that report, that the Teaching Council were in a very difficult state. There were a number of things that they weren’t doing properly. There were a number of concerns that were raised, and the board had been overseeing this for many years, and I did not have confidence that process could carry on. I think it is important to make sure that the skills and experience needed to run a regulatory body that is ensuring the protection of our children and properly regulating the workforce—to have a board that can properly make sure that that is put in place. So, yes, it is really important to me to make sure that there is good governance, good risk management, someone in there that knows about regulatory systems, someone there that knows about disciplinary systems.

It is also really important to have people who are teachers as well, and I think the members will know that the people that I have so far appointed to the board have predominantly been principals and teachers. In fact, I think most of them are principals, and very well-regarded principals, in fact, who are doing an extraordinarily good job at fixing the Teaching Council. As I say, that was a pretty poor situation, if you read that report.

As I’ve already said, after all of this, I have taken, and I’m going to be continuing to take, further advice on further steps we may need to take, because this is extraordinarily important to make sure that the right people are governing the Teaching Council to ensure the protection of children.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (21:17): Thank you very much. I appreciate the Minister of Education’s answers. To a degree, yes, there are operational elements, but as the Minister, does she believe that a conflict of interest exists, or even a perception, from the general public, of a conflict of interest if someone received funding for the Teachers’ Institute that was contingent on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Teachers Council approval, and that person, under her ministerial watch, is then subsequently appointed to both of those bodies that then approved the funding? Does she believe there is a perception of a conflict of interest around the current chair of the Teaching Council?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (21:18): Thank you, Madam Chair. On the Teaching Council, I also have a few questions. On the Debbie Francis report, I hear what the Minister of Education is saying. Can I check with the Minister: what is the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act? Does the Minister understand the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act? First question.

My follow-up question is: has the Minister received any advice from the Teaching Council on the clean slate Act regarding, particularly, the case that has been highlighted in the media around Fisher? Has the Minister received any advice from the Teaching Council on the clean slate Act and its implications to the appointment of teachers?

Finally, I want to check with the Minister on early childhood education (ECE). In terms of early childhood education, can I check with the Minister: when it comes to for-profit ECE centres and community and not-for-profit ECE centres, is the Minister tracking the quality of education that’s being provided by varying groups within the ECE sphere?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:19): Right, there’s a number of questions there. Around early childhood education, I’m expecting Minister Seymour any moment now, so you can direct your questions to him—for the most part, that’s his responsibility.

In terms of the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act, the Ministry of Education has had advice—we’ve had advice; I’ve had advice—on the clean slate Act, and I’ve asked the Ministry of Education to look into it.

In relation to the Teaching Council, the first thing was that the chair, Mr David Ferguson, was appointed to the Teaching Council mid-2025, by which time the Teachers’ Institute was already delivering on-site teacher training. I understand that a full conflict of interest process was undertaken in line with the Public Service Commission guidance.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (21:20): Kia orana. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister of Education questions around school rural buses, because this is a big and important issue. The pause to the roll-out of the review, which the Minister herself has agreed with, is good for communities, like the East Coast, where the pause has, effectively, been put in place, but for schools in in my area of Palmerston North, Manawatū, Horowhenua, and beyond, there is no pause, so it’s actually devastating for those households. They are literally paying the price as their bus route changes are still going ahead.

My question to the Minister is: why is she prepared to penalise Palmerston North schools and families in my community by refusing to pause the rural bus changes that are currently making life harder for so many people who already have challenges in the current environment?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:21): It is the case that we have paused the bus route reviews in order to undertake a proper review of the entire school transport system. There always has to be a point at which you pause. I recognise that that’s difficult, but if we had made it earlier, term 4 would have then had the same argument, and if we’d made it term 4, then term 3 last year would have, as well.

It is interesting to note, when I look back at the history of all of this, while I understand that the member is aggrieved, that from the period of 2021-2023, the previous Government also considered a full review of school transport—in fact, getting right to the point of a drafted committee paper for social outcomes, but, unfortunately, that paper was never taken because it was viewed as not a priority by the previous Government; so, unfortunately, we are where we are.

This Government is undertaking a full review of the school transport system. In the meantime, we have committed to putting on hold any future changes because it is fair that while we’re undertaking a review, we shouldn’t be making changes that may eventually have to be undone.

While I understand the member’s point, I think the thing to note is that there will always be a point in time where we have to make the pause. We can’t undo years’ and years’ worth of school transport reviews.

What I would also say is that many of the reviews that have been undertaken in the last couple of years have actually been driven by the fact that many councils have put on school bus routes, and that would lead to a double up in services, so we are responding to that.

I’d also like to say, though, that, in the last two years, those school bus route reviews have ensured that every child that is eligible for school transport—be that a bus or a conveyancing allowance—is receiving it. And those—

Tangi Utikere: Very selective. You can do something about this.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: If you want to listen to the answer, I suggest you do, rather than yelling out at me.

Tangi Utikere: Well, actually, you’re not giving an answer that the community actually want.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: If you’d like to get up and ask me questions, you’re more than welcome to do so, but I’m answering your question, and I suggest you listen. The policy has not changed—

Tangi Utikere: You need to listen to the community.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I’m still going.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I suggest, Mr Utikere, you might want to listen and don’t keep referring to the Chair. Thank you.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: School transport policy has not changed in 100 years. We have been implementing it. We haven’t made any changes to it, as the previous Government didn’t in their six years either, but we are changing that: we are undertaking a full review.

It’s also important to note that I know that that member was teaching, I think, at a local school in his electorate, and that he is now advocating that children bypass to another school.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) (21:24): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wonder if the Minister of Education will answer my question from half an hour ago.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Specifically?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: The Treaty question that I asked at the beginning of the debate. If you could, please, talk about all the other clauses you are intending to change, and why you didn’t tell us about that.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:24): The simple answer is that at the time I made the changes to section 127, a separate process was being undertaken by Minister Paul Goldsmith. At that particular time, the Treaty Reference Advisers Group had provided a report that recommended changing Treaty standards to be consistent, but what they didn’t say was what they would be changing to and that there would be full consultation, and the like. At that point, it was very, very high level. When I made those decisions last year, Cabinet had not made any call—in fact, those calls were only made recently—about changes.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: You knew they were going to be made.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: The member can cast aspersions, but the fact is, at the time, all that had been talked about was the fact that they needed to be consistent. I still, as I said earlier, take those obligations extraordinarily seriously, as is evident in all the work that I’ve done, which I can honestly say is far more work than the previous Government undertook.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (21:25): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few quick questions for the Minister of Education. Number one, I’m still waiting on a response from the Minister regarding my questions on Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tools (SMART).

Hon Erica Stanford: Can you repeat?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh, the SMART tools.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The SMART tools.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: The SMART tools: I asked about viability, and before going for request for proposal, I asked about the Treasury advice and I also asked about the security certification and accreditation report.

When it comes to the Teaching Council under the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act, I want to check with the Minister: has the Minister considered the possibility that the Teaching Council’s hands were tied with the clean slate Act and there’s nothing they could have done? Would that have been a possibility?

On the school transport, I want to check with the Minister: has there been a reduction in demand for SESTA—for specialised school transport assistance? Not reduction in funding; reduction in demand.

My final question—because the Minister made a little faux pas on referring to a member who is not currently in the Chamber, but I do need to ask early childhood education (ECE) questions. My question is that on average, for-profit ECE centres spend 62 percent of their cost on teachers, whereas community and kindergartens spend 91 percent on their teachers; would there be any difference in the quality of education that teachers are able to provide in those ECE centres? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Now, I’m not sure how many of the questions—the Minister was taking some advice. We’ll just answer the ones that you’ve actually got and then we’ll see where we get to.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:27): In relation to the Treasury advice, my officials have advised me that the Treasury concerns were allayed throughout the process and it was really important for us to have a tool available because we know that e-asTTle isn’t in a state that it’s going to last much longer than this year. It is very, very old technology. Yes, Treasury—as they often do—raised concerns; we allayed any fears that they had, and here we are with a successful roll-out.

Around the security questions, those are very operational. I don’t have answers to those questions. It’s not something that’s been raised with me. If you want to put them in writing, please do, and I’ll make sure that we answer them.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (21:28): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m pleased the Minister of Education mentioned e-asTTle. I’ve just got a question on that. Can she confirm that she received advice that e-asTTle, in fact, could have done most of the things that our Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) proposes to do, with some small investment in the upgrades over a couple of years? Also, could she confirm that that could have been done from far less than the approximately—I think it’s about $120 million now for SMART tool that has been invested by taxpayers. Could she also confirm what the total spend to date is on rolling out the SMART tool?

I also have just two more questions. Did the successful contractor for delivering the SMART tool, Janison Solutions, deliver all of the must have functions that were outlined in the request for proposal (RFP)? So it’s pretty clear in that RFP that was put out for tender what the requirements that Janison—that whoever was successful, could do it. I want to know: did Janison Solutions deliver all of the must have functions that were specified in that RFP?

I’m also interested to know and what her figures are for school uptake for SMART tool, and in terms of what is the pick-up rate from schools. Reports have it as low as 50 percent, and some of the percentages that have been bandied around don’t seem right. One last question: what happens if a school chooses not to implement the SMART tool?

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education) (21:30): I’ll do my best; there were lots of questions there. We’ve always said right from the start that schools should have choice, and, in fact, this year they have the choice of three tools: asTTle, which is still going for this year, the new freely available SMART tool, and also the progressive achievement tests (PATs). We have had 1,190 schools go in and put their students into the new SMART tool. They’ve uploaded data for 250,000 students, out of a total, I think, of about 350,000 students available. There is a huge amount of students enrolled. In fact, we never really set a target, because there are three different tools that could be used, but this is far more than we ever thought would be enrolled.

It takes some effort for a principal or a teacher to take the data out of a roll and pop it into SMART and load all the students in and say which level they are at and which assessments they are going to undertake. It takes quite a bit of time, and I just don’t accept some of the things that have been said in the media: that there are some principals who are just doing this—not using the tool—just to spite the Government, or something weird. I hold teachers and principals in much higher regard than that they would do such a thing. The fact is that this is an extraordinarily useful tool that provides really rich data for teachers, and next steps in learning, and also provides parents with the progression information about where their children are at.

In relation to asTTle, asTTle is extraordinarily old technology and, as the member may know, the previous Government didn’t really invest in asTTle at all As such it has really been left to pasture. To bring the technology up to standard, it was a huge, huge cost. It was almost not possible to do all of the things that the new SMART tool does, especially around the student-adaptive processing, which means that if a student is undertaking an assessment, it’s not a set test; it changes as to the ability of the student, to properly measure their progress through time. The asTTle assessment tool was just not going to be able to do the things we needed it to do, because it was so old.

Not only that, but the questions in the question bank were extraordinarily old. In fact we weren’t able to use that many of them in the new SMART tool. We did try and pull as many across as we could, but they haven’t been updated for a very long time. There hasn’t been investment. The technology is literally about to fall over, and that would be huge investment into very old technology, which I can imagine the member would accept is probably a very bad idea, which is why we have now invested in a platform that is state-of-the-art technology, which does all of the things we want it to do. It provides teachers with extraordinarily rich data about the individual students in their classroom, the schools really rich data about their school and cohorts across their school, and, as I said earlier, parents the knowledge about how their children are progressing. What we kept hearing was that parents had felt for too long that they found out too late that their children were falling behind, or had fallen behind without knowing that was the case, and we’re trying to correct that.

We’ve also been looking at all of the information provided by the Education Review Office and, more recently, by the Auditor-General, who have strongly recommended that there is a consistent nationwide assessment of our children all the way through, rather than a myriad different tools or teacher judgments that are used across the system—that we have one set of tools that we use to properly measure assessment across the country, which allows us to then go in and put resource where it’s required, catch children before they fall, and let parents know where their children are at.

We did consider what we could do to asTTle. Prior to being the Minister, without any of the available information to me, I thought that we would be able to use asTTle and PAT, but when I was provided with advice, it was that asTTle was not in a state that we could bring it up to the standard that we needed.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, our time with the Minister of Education has ended. I do acknowledge, Dr Xu-Nan, that you did have an early childhood education question outstanding, so I suggest maybe you try another avenue for that one.

Committee of the whole House—Annual Review Debate

Workplace Relations and Safety

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is now available for 30 minutes, which may not conclude tonight, to respond to members’ questions. The first call is to Katie Nimon, chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee.

KATIE NIMON (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee) (21:35): Madam Chair, thank you very much again. It’s great to stand up in this particular select committee, acknowledging again my deputy chairperson, Carl Bates, who was the chair while I was on maternity leave during this time.

Of course, during this particular section of our annual review, we discussed ACC and WorkSafe. It is worth acknowledging that those sit under two separate Ministers. Through our time with ACC, we discussed improving ACC’s performance. We talked about the turnaround plan they had published and about reducing the number of long-term claims. We also discussed the changes to funding for injury prevention, and additionally to that, ACC’s investments.

When it comes to WorkSafe, we discussed, of course, WorkSafe’s performance in the 2024-25 period, and the strategic shift from enforcement to proactive guidance, which has been a key theme for our select committee. We talked about changes to guidance and the monitoring of, and impact of, the changes that the agency has seen—and then, of course, targets, as with ACC, for reducing injuries.

All of this was discussed across the annual review week, and there are always a range of issues that are very interesting to the select committee. I appreciate the chance to have a debate with the Minister.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (21:36): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s been a really torrid time for people in the employment industries in this country, because there has been change that’s been hit at them and thrown at them time and time again. As we’ve just heard from the chair of our select committee, this part of the review looks at WorkSafe and the areas that impact on safety at work.

We’ve currently got legislation that’s before the select committee which shows that people are still not happy with the approaches that are being taken by this Government, and that they feel, in many cases, we will see that things are actually worse, or are going to be worse, in the workplace safety area. I would like to start by asking the Minister what she thinks has happened in the past year to address rising workplace injury and fatality rates, because we have one of the worst records in the OECD, and compared to countries like us, like Australia and the UK, we are far worse in those areas. What has she done to address that, and can she point to any measurable improvements in outcomes?

Following on from that—slightly different, but just giving time for the Minister to take in that first question—how does the Minister respond to widespread concerns from tripartite industry groups, business, and unions that WorkSafe is being asked to do more and is under resourced and unable to effectively carry out its enforcement role. Those are my first two questions.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (21:39): Thank you very much. Look, I think the very first statements here really show the difference between members on the Government side and members on the Opposition side, because what we heard from the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Katie Nimon, was, I think, quite a thoughtful contribution talking about what the committee has actually looked at—if we’re actually sticking to facts about what it is the committee has done. In contrast, we see the difference with the Labour Party, who have catastrophised, who have used words like “hitting” and “throwing”—very aggressive language that you can only assume comes from that side of the House—as opposed to actually dealing with fact, reason, and logic.

The member has asked about the health and safety reforms that the committee will be looking through over this term and in particular through this year, and asked what has actually changed. I hate to admit it, but the member should be aware that the law hasn’t yet come into effect. It’s still a bill, so it’s not possible to say what the effect of that bill will be, when it hasn’t actually become a law yet.

However, what we have done in the meantime is actually refocus WorkSafe to be far more stronger on proactive guidance. I would challenge the member again, as I did in the select committee a few months back, where the member even agreed with me that during her term under Labour, that Government hadn’t done enough to progress health and safety reform. This is a Government of action. We are actually doing something, and that means focusing on critical risks. You—sorry, not you, Madam Chair. Labour even acknowledges that there are far too many people dying at work. This Government agrees. That’s why we are acting on it. That’s why we are doing more proactive guidance. That’s why we are focusing the system on critical risks—to focus people away from unnecessary paperwork, unnecessary compliance, but focusing strictly on what the actions are that can lead to death and serious injury and illness at work so that we can stop people dying at work, we can stop those serious injuries.

What have we done? I’ve signed off on a forestry approved code of practice (ACOP). I’ve also signed off on a ports ACOP. I have asked WorkSafe to fast track two ACOPs, one in construction and one also in the area of agriculture—areas where we know far too many people die. That is where our Government is taking action, which is what the previous Government should have done.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green) (21:42): Thank you, Madam Chair. I hope you’ll indulge that I’ll be reading questions, as this is not my portfolio. My colleague Teanau Tuiono has been stuck because of the adverse weather events, unfortunately.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That’s fair enough.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: My first question to the Minister is on the road cone tip line: how many road cones were removed from the roads as a result of that, and what was the total spend on that unit?

My second set of questions revolve around a follow-up to a parliamentary written question that my colleague wrote, written question No. 55296 (2025). In that, the Minister was asked about the breakdown of WorkSafe New Zealand inspectorate staff enrolled as at 1 January 2024 and 1 January 2025. What is the breakdown of WorkSafe New Zealand inspectorate staff enrolled as at 30 January 2025 and as at 1 January 2026—so 30 June 2025 and 1 January 2026 around that WorkSafe inspectorate breakdown?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (21:43): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I hope to be able to get to road cones in a second, but I’m also aware that Jan Tinetti also had a specific concern that she wanted us to address, which was to do with the resourcing within WorkSafe itself, so I’ll firstly come to this one.

There was a concern that WorkSafe was being asked to do more and is under-resourced and unable to carry out its role. I disagree with that sort of thought and provocation, because the funding for WorkSafe has broadly stayed stagnant between $130 million and $140 million. In the year 2024 to 2025, it was $138 million. But the really important point, which I think we need to stress, is that while the funding has stayed the same, there has been a difference in back-office staff versus front-line inspectors. That is, once again, an action that this Government has overseen—that we have more WorkSafe inspectors on the ground out there to be helpful in the community and ensure that we can provide upfront guidance. There are more people coming through training even today. But we have reduced the ratios for front-line to back-office staff.

We now have 203 inspectors, with a target of 240 by June this year, which will be the highest number of front-line inspectors ever, I understand, in WorkSafe’s history, whereas the previous Government oversaw quite a large bloat in the back office. We also saw that under Labour’s watch, WorkSafe itself was getting into a pretty difficult financial situation. We have turned around that ship. We have actually seen better financial prudence, but we have seen more investment in those front-line resources helping businesses and workers directly on the ground. WorkSafe is not being asked to do more; it’s being asked to do better with the resources that it has.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (21:45): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just following on from the question that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has just addressed then, can the Minister then explain why many in the sector feel that work safety is being deprioritised in favour of reducing compliance costs for businesses? The Minister talked about the businesses and the compliance costs going down, and that’s part of the rationale behind the reforms that are going through. Many in the sector have told us at select committee that they feel that this has been at the risk of worker safety being deprioritised. I would really like to know why the Minister thinks that that is a feeling that’s within the sector.

I’m just wondering if you want me to carry on. I’ve noticed with other—no. All good. Thank you.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (21:46): Yes, I’ll respond to the question from Jan Tinetti. Look, I think there’s a big, serious difference between the way that this Government sees the world and Labour sees the world, and that is: spending more money doesn’t necessarily mean you get better outcomes. That is clear when it comes to health and safety, where we have people spending up large to make sure that they’re getting health and safety consultants, they’re getting really expensive files, they’re putting them on their bookcases, so that they can say, “I have complied with the law.” That is not actually necessarily keeping people safer on the ground at work.

Now, the reforms make it really clear that one of the ideas that we’re going behind here is that you can actually have cost-effective health and safety. Prioritising care for people coming home at the end of every day is what everybody wants to see happen, but it doesn’t have to come with very expensive health and safety consultant manuals. That’s a difference I think that we are seeing.

Now, I would argue that that side of the House has been catastrophising and, in some ways, been a bit misleading about what it is that these reforms are actually supposed to do. I’m not surprised there are many members of our community out there a little bit worried about what has happened, because of course I’d be worried too if I believed what I’ve been hearing.

Everybody wants workers to go home safe at the end of every day. I want that. That is why I and this Government are actually taking health and safety seriously, something that the previous Government didn’t take seriously, because we are actually prioritising approved codes of practice, we’re prioritising upfront guidance so WorkSafe is helpful and not a hindrance. We are making sure that any company or worker up and down this country will actually be able to have more upfront guidance so they will know what they need to do and prioritise to keep themselves, their colleagues, and their business and workers safe. I don’t believe you need to have very expensive files sitting on a bookcase in order to do that. It requires all of us to ensure that we have a law that is simple and clear and can be followed by anybody.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (21:49): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I’d really like to know the evidence that you’ve got that shows that these reforms are going to make a difference. We’ve asked that question before, and I haven’t been able to get an answer, so I’d like to know the evidence that sits behind that.

Then I want to go on to asking about—and I know you’re not the ACC Minister, but there’s a huge tie-up here, and we’ve been hearing a lot about the ongoing concerns that the focus on critical risks takes away from the focus on psychological harm and workplace stress. We’ve heard that, taking away from that, there are concerns that the ACC bill is going to increase quite dramatically, so I would like to know what conversations you’ve had with the Minister for ACC about that and if there’s any changes that you feel need to be made in that critical risk area to ensure that mental health is considered a huge part of the critical risk area, and addressing those concerns about ACC.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (21:50): Thank you. In response to the question that came earlier from Francisco Hernandez, I believe on behalf of his colleague—I’m very sorry to hear that he was stuck by the weather events; unfortunately, many of our community have been stuck by them, and my thoughts go to everybody who are in these challenging weather event times. In terms of the questions regarding the road cones and how many were removed and at what cost, I’m afraid to say I don’t actually have the figures in front of me, at hand, about the number of road cones that were removed, but in the first week of the hotline being made available, there were 375 valid notifications made to that website. My officials advised that, in one specific example, over 30 road cones were removed from one site. I don’t have the total cost to hand, but I’m very happy to respond in writing to that member’s colleagues, if you wish to follow up on that.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour) (21:51): I just want to go back to that question that I asked about the evidence. I just thought about something else, and tying in with that, I’d like to know what the evidence is in this particular area that the Minister’s got, but also how that relates to countries, similar or not similar, like the UK and Australia, who have way better statistics than we do. I’m sort of trying to get an understanding of the alignment between what we’re doing here in this country or the changes and those countries that have already had success and how we may differ, or if we may be, as I’ve just said before, similar. I’d like to sort of have an understanding of that.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (21:52): To the question of what evidence do we as the Government have that there is a need for change, that became really, really clear to me when I went out on the ground to hear from workers and businesses directly. I know this might be different to some of the ways that Governments have done evidence in the past, but I like to actually get out across New Zealand and hear from people. We had over 1,000 people show up and give us their stories about health and safety and how they interact with the current law and what they were hoping to see from change, in my 2024 roadshow. That did include members of unions who did show up to voice their perspectives as well.

I thank everybody who came out to actually take the time—and in many cases, the first time ever to meet a Minister or someone in Government and actually feel like they were being listened to out in the community. There was overwhelming support for the need for change, and that’s because I heard, quite consistently, that people did not feel supported. They didn’t know what it was that they were supposed to do to comply with the law because it was too confusing. It was too conflicting. I am of the belief that you shouldn’t need to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollar to be able to know what you need to do to comply with law.

Our economy runs off the back of people getting up every day and providing jobs for each other. A lot of those people are small-business owners who are quite often doing payroll; they are also the human resources function and they are doing health and safety. There are a lot of really stressed New Zealanders who get up every day to provide jobs for each other and they want to provide safe work environments for their staff, but they are confused. I don’t believe that our laws should be confusing. That’s why we’ve asked WorkSafe to pivot, to provide far more in-writing guidance—upfront, inspector guidance—on the ground, for people who don’t have all of that money sloshing around because they are stressed and they’re trying to get by every week and provide incomes for their employees. That’s really important for me.

What I heard on the ground was that people were too confused with the current law and they wanted it to be simplified. I did not hear that people wanted people to be less safe. That is not what we are aiming to do, even though that might be what you hear from the Labour Party. We are focused on making sure our law is easy to be complied with, to the smallest, small business in this country, to those Kiwis who I thank who get up every day to provide jobs for other people. Our laws should be there to help them do the right thing by their employees, not confuse them.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2024/25 Confirmation and Validation) Bill and reports progress. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.