Thursday, 30 April 2026

Thursday, 30 April 2026

The Speaker took the Chair at 2.01 p.m.

Start of Sitting Day

Karakia/Prayers

GREG O'CONNOR (Assistant Speaker) (14:01): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King and pray for guidance in our deliberations that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and the peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Business of the House

Business Statement

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Leader of the House) (14:02): Today, the House adjourns until Tuesday, 12 May. That week, Parliament will consider the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill. On Wednesday morning, there will be extended hours for Treaty settlement legislation, and in the afternoon, there will be a two-hour special debate on the Education and Workforce Committee’s inquiry into online harm. The hours of Wednesday will also be extended into Thursday morning for Government business.

Presentation

Petitions

SPEAKER (14:02): A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK (14:02): Petition of Postal Workers Union of Aotearoa requesting that the House urge the Government to ensure that mail that is clearly addressed to accessible business premises is delivered and not returned to sender.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

Papers

SPEAKER (14:02): I present the report of the Controller and Auditor-General entitled, The Auditor-General’s strategic intentions to 2031. That paper is published under the authority of the House.

Select Committee Reports

SPEAKER (14:03): Three select committee reports have been presented.

CLERK (14:03):

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the:

briefing on artificial intelligence

briefing on intellectual property and current copyright legislation

report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment (Duty to Provide Financial Services) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The briefings on artificial intelligence and intellectual property and current copyright legislation are set down for consideration.

Bills

Better Regional Boundaries Bill

Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill

Criminal Records (Clean Slate) (Additional Eligibility) Amendment Bill

Crimes (Virginity Testing Practices) Amendment Bill

Introduction

SPEAKER (14:03): The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of four bills.

CLERK (14:03):

Better Regional Boundaries Bill, introduction

Concealment of Location of Victim Remains Bill, introduction

Criminal Records (Clean Slate) (Additional Eligibility) Amendment Bill, introduction

Crimes (Virginity Testing Practices) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.

Oral Questions to Ministers

Foreign Affairs

Question No. 1

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour) (14:03) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What is the Government’s position on United States and Israeli strikes on Iran, and was that position determined by the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Prime Minister?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs) (14:04): As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I am ultimately responsible for determining New Zealand’s foreign policy, in close consultation with the Prime Minister and other Ministers and MPs. On 1 March 2026, I released, with the Prime Minister, a statement setting out the Government’s position, which stated, in part, “we acknowledge that the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security.” The following day, on 2 March, there was an internal discussion within the Government about whether New Zealand should explicitly express support for the US and Israeli actions, as some of our close partners had done. My view, at that time and in that context, was that we should not do so, and, therefore, the statement of 1 March remained the New Zealand Government’s position on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Vanushi Walters: Did the Prime Minister direct or request that New Zealand’s public position on the strikes be changed to one of explicit support?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Questions about the Prime Minister’s views are better addressed to the Prime Minister. My role is to articulate the Government’s position, and that is what I have done. New Zealand is not taking part in the conflict and does not intend to. New Zealand supports de-escalation, an end to this conflict, and the restoration of freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. On the other side of this House, though, we sometimes wonder who is the Opposition spokesperson of foreign affairs: Helen Clark or Phil Goff? Because in the podcasts and the speeches I’ve heard today, I’m beginning to wonder who’s running the show over there.

Vanushi Walters: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about whether the Prime Minister directed or requested, and I don’t believe that the Minister has answered that.

SPEAKER: I think he did when he made it clear who was responsible for articulating Government policy, which he said earlier was in discussion.

Vanushi Walters: Does the Minister believe that it would be imprudent for the Prime Minister to express explicit public support for military action that is causing, and will continue to cause, New Zealanders significant cost of living pressures?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Mr Speaker, could you ask her to repeat that question?

SPEAKER: Yes, I think the start of that question could be better worded. I don’t think you should start by asking if something is a particular type of behaviour. The Minister being questioned has no responsibility for anyone else’s behaviour.

Vanushi Walters: Does the Minister believe that it would be appropriate for the Prime Minister to express explicit public support for military action that is causing, and will continue to cause, New Zealanders significant cost of living pressures?

SPEAKER: Just thinking about it, you need to ask that question in a way that doesn’t indicate that something has happened when it clearly hasn’t.

Vanushi Walters: Was legal advice sought from officials on whether the strikes on Iran were lawful under the UN Charter before the Government settled on its public position?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Because the job I am entrusted with is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of New Zealand, not the professor of international law at Woketown University, we take judicious, prudent decisions based on the national interest rather than offering empty virtue signalling. At the same time, we have made it clear that all parties must adhere to their international legal obligations, including under international humanitarian law.

Vanushi Walters: Can the Minister confirm that legal advice was sought in relation to the action taken by the US and Israel?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The reality is that this is an international matter, and all sorts of advice is being sought and being worked out. A decision will be made in good time. I said back then that the international community will come to a decision when they have all the facts. If you’re going to have the rule of law, for the rule of law to actually happen, it has to, sooner or later, like on the streets of New Zealand, be enforced. That’s the difference.

Vanushi Walters: Did the Minister acknowledge to the Prime Minister that he had made a mistake in releasing email exchanges as reported by the media?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: We have a habit of when we make a mistake, we admit it. We don’t think that we’re perfect and that we’re the podium of truth, and, sometimes, in our best endeavours, we’ll make mistakes. In this case, I made an assumption, and I should have had it checked out, and that’s the reason why we’re updating our systems at the moment.

Teanau Tuiono: Was his office concerned about the Prime Minister being exposed to the position that the US-led strikes on Iran were illegal, and is it because the Government knows that the strikes on Iran were illegal and violated international law?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That question is totally illogical. It comes to a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever, and so I’m not wasting my time answering it.

Vanushi Walters: Does he stand by his office’s description of the Prime Minister’s position as being imprudent and counter to New Zealand’s national interest; if not, why not?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The reality was that I was offshore, late at night, and got an enquiry, and we just sent back, in an abbreviated text, how it would possibly look and part of our discussion, and then went straight back to the original decision we made. That’s how we landed on that. That’s all that means; it doesn’t mean anything other than that. I’m pleased that the enquiry did come to me despite the fact that it was the middle of the night and I was overseas.

Vanushi Walters: Who is the final decision-maker on New Zealand’s foreign policy: the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Prime Minister?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The Minister of Foreign Affairs is charged with that responsibility but in consultation with the Prime Minister, obviously; the ministerial contacts, as well; and other MPs, including sometimes crossing the House to make sure that there is a unified view in this country. I’ve done all of that, all at the same time.

Teanau Tuiono: Is it correct that the Prime Minister sought to change New Zealand’s position on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran to explicit support simply because he found Morning Report too challenging?

SPEAKER: No, well, that’s not something that the Minister of Foreign Affairs can reasonably comment on.

Vanushi Walters: If experience matters in foreign policy, as his office told media last night, does he have confidence that the Prime Minister has the experience necessary to lead New Zealand’s foreign policy during an unprecedented crisis?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: For the umpteenth time, and I’ll say it slowly, the person in charge of foreign policy is the Foreign Minister. That’s me, not the Prime Minister. Could the member get some updating—I know she had a lot of academic training but obviously no practical understanding of this game whatsoever.

SPEAKER: Question No. 2—Carl Bates. [Interruption] Just wait, Mr Bates. Thank you.

Finance

Question No. 2

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (14:11) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has she made?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance) (14:11): The Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee implements monetary policy in New Zealand by setting the official cash rate. It has up to seven members, some internal and some external to the bank. The committee and I recently agreed changes to the way it operates to provide greater transparency around individual committee members’ views. While the Reserve Bank is relatively transparent by international standards, we have agreed ways to strengthen this transparency, support accountability, and help build public understanding of the committee’s decision-making. These were announced this morning.

Carl Bates: What changes have been agreed?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: One set of changes relates to the attribution of views to individual members. The committee records votes when it cannot reach a consensus but currently does not identify who voted which way. From now on, votes, if they are necessary, will be attributed to individual members of the monetary policy committee. The committee has also decided that, whether or not a vote is taken, any material differences of view or judgments will also be attributed to members in the committee’s record of meetings.

Carl Bates: What other changes are being made?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The committee’s charter has been amended to ease restrictions on members speaking publicly. In fact, committee members who wish to publicly communicate their individual views around the committee’s monetary policy strategy or economic outlook are now encouraged to do so. To help avoid groupthink and encourage healthy debate, the new charter makes it clear that part of the role of the governor, who chairs the committee, is to make sure there are robust and open discussions, and that members feel able to challenge each other’s views.

Carl Bates: What else is she considering around the monetary policy committee?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In February, I commissioned an independent review of the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The review will focus on decisions by the monetary policy committee and the analysis provided by the Reserve Bank to support those decisions. The purpose of the review is to identify any lessons New Zealand could learn to improve the monetary policy response to future economic shocks. It is important to learn from experience, and I will consider the findings of the review when it is completed later this year.

Energy

Question No. 3

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) (14:14) to the Minister for Energy: Has he sought advice on the alternatives to LNG identified by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and others; if not, why not?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy) (14:14): Yes, those alternatives were considered. The member can find advice on the alternatives on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s website.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Has he sought advice on alternative proposals after the bombing of Iran by the US and the current fuel crisis, such as those proposed by the Sustainable Energy Association, the Smart Energy Alliance, the Sustainable Business Council, the Green Building Council, Rewiring Aotearoa, Master Electricians, Consumer New Zealand, and the Bioenergy Association, to meet dry-year risk by rapidly rolling out rooftop solar, moving households off gas, and better managing our hydro lakes instead of committing to expensive LNG?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government, as part of the process, considered a range of options. The reality is that whilst solar plays an important role and an increasingly important role, it is particularly important to support inter-day peaks and, with battery, a potentially slightly longer period, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the dry-winter problem, which is what this Government is focused on solving. I would point to the member’s solution, being a lake in the middle of the mountains by 2037, not being fast enough.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister gave a reasonably long answer, but what the question was about was around timing of seeking advice and asking if the Minister had gone back after the original Cabinet paper and the bombing of Iran and the current fuel crisis we’re in and the spike in LNG prices and sought advice since then. I’d be interested to know in the current context—

SPEAKER: Yes, you might be. You’ve done your point of order. I think the problem is he didn’t give the answer that you would have liked, but he did start by saying the Government considered a range of advice and then went on to say what the Government had decided. I think that’s quite reasonable.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Has the Minister explicitly sought alternative proposals in the current context of the elevated LNG prices that we are seeing after the original Cabinet paper was published?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government is going through a procurement process, and, of course, as part of making a final decision, we will be taking into account the context in the Middle East, but we will not leave this country high and dry without a solution to the dry-winter challenge, which is what the last Government did, leading to all of the challenges we saw in winter 2024.

SPEAKER: Just wait while everyone settles down.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Why hasn’t he sought advice on a package from a long list of energy organisations that say it would deliver cheaper power bills and greater energy independence for Kiwis?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Well, the answer to that question is that as part of the Government’s policy work which was done last year, a range of options were considered, including looking at solar and the role of solar. Whilst this Government is very much a big supporter of solar and its role in our electricity market, that doesn’t solve the dry-year winter problem, which is what this Government has focused on. That’s what we’re focused on fixing.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: How can New Zealanders have faith that he has not already made up his mind, given he has not gone back and asked for further advice on alternatives that could actually lead to cheaper power prices for households and businesses?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: This Government is going through a procurement process. We will be taking into account the context of the recent crisis in the Middle East, but my message to this House and to those listening is that we will not leave this country high and dry and without a solution to the dry-year winter problem, which is the solution that is needed, and the solution we provide won’t require waiting till 2037, costing $16 billion.

Health

Question No. 4

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (14:19) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made regarding improved access to cancer infusion centres across New Zealand?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) (14:19): Earlier this month, our Government announced a nationwide expansion of community infusion services, ensuring thousands more New Zealanders can access lifesaving cancer treatment closer to home. This includes delivering 14 new infusion centres and expanding a further 14 sites across the country. Around 13,000 additional cancer infusions are expected in 2025‍-‍26—a 12 percent increase compared with prior volumes. This initiative will help meet this demand, ensuring more patients will be able to receive treatment each week closer to home.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Why is expanding infusion capacity important?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The Government’s $604 million investment into new medicines delivered 33 new cancer treatments, which is life-changing for thousands of New Zealanders. However, funding the medicines is just one part of the equation; we also need to ensure the health system has the capacity to deliver them. That’s why we’ve expanded infusion services. Once fully implemented, the expansion will deliver 218 more chair days of treatment space each week. This will allow hundreds more patients to be treated weekly across the country, with each chair typically used by three to five patients per day, ensuring patients can get access to treatments when they need them, without unnecessary delays, and closer to home.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: What benefits will patients see from receiving treatment closer to home?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Patients will be able to start treatment sooner and receive care in their own communities, reducing the need for long and often stressful travel. This means less time spent on the road, more time with family and support networks, which is particularly important for those undergoing cancer treatment. New centres have already been opened in the Bay of Islands, Buller, and Waitakere; services have been expanded in Whangārei, South Auckland, Taupō, Wairoa, Napier, Wanganui, Wellington, Christchurch, and Timaru. Further roll-out will also see new centres in Dargaville, Henderson, Greenlane, South Auckland, Te Kūiti, Hāwera, Waipukurau, Horowhenua, Golden Bay, Christchurch, and Rolleston; and expanded services in Kaitāia, North Shore, Taranaki, Kāpiti, and Ashburton. This investment is delivering for patients nationwide.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: What else is the Government doing to improve cancer outcomes?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The expansion of cancer treatment services is just one of several initiatives that we’ve taken to improve cancer outcomes for New Zealanders. Just this term alone, we have reinstated the faster cancer treatment health target; given a $604 million boost to Pharmac to improve access to lifesaving treatments, delivering 33 new cancer treatments; expanded breast screening to women aged 70 to 74; initiated work on New Zealand’s first cervical cancer elimination strategy; jointly invested into the SunSmart programme with the Cancer Society to strengthen national skin cancer prevention efforts, announced this morning; rolled out the FIT for Symptomatic pathway for those with bowel cancer symptoms; began progressively lowering the age of bowel screenings so that we can align with Australia; invested to expand stem cell transplant services; and also established a blood cancer oversight group. These are just some of the actions we have taken to improve cancer outcomes, and we acknowledge there is still much more work to be done.

Workplace Relations and Safety

Question No. 5

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (14:22) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Is she confident in her health and safety reforms, given official advice that these reforms will increase costs for ACC and small businesses?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) (14:22): Yes, I am confident that my health and safety reforms focus on practical, common-sense changes that set businesses up for success in keeping people safe. The advice I received from my officials is that my reforms shift the focus towards managing critical risks and support the continued reduction in the incidence of serious workplace injuries and fatalities, thereby reducing the costs of these incidents for ACC. My officials also advise that as a general rule, the scale of ACC costs is not an accurate indicator of whether or not the health and safety system is working well. My changes enable small businesses to concentrate on what causes the greatest harm rather than spending valuable time and effort trying to manage every single lower-level risk.

Teanau Tuiono: Are healthcare professionals and law experts correct when they describe her health and safety reforms as a regression in worker health protection and a step backwards?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I listened to small businesses and workers on my roadshows who told me that some health and safety professionals advised them to go to a lot of effort on ineffective paper-based compliance that does not reduce harm. This is one of the things that my reforms will get rid of, allowing everyone to focus on real actions to reduce harm.

Teanau Tuiono: Why is she removing the duty to manage work-related stress and other psychological harms from 97 percent of businesses when these are the second biggest cause of work-related harm and, according to WorkSafe, the cause of 40 work-related suicides a year?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I am not excluding psychosocial risk. If a psychosocial risk is likely to result in a death, notifiable injury, illness, or incident, then it must be managed as a critical risk. An example would be where stress could lead to serious accidents in the workplace. This puts the focus on the psychosocial risks that will do the most harm. Again, I would reiterate that these reforms are actually of benefit to people because it is focusing less on paper-based compliance and more on actual risk in the workplace.

Teanau Tuiono: Can she promise New Zealand businesses that their ACC levies will not rise to pay for the cost of removing their duty to manage musculoskeletal risks from 97 percent of businesses, when this is the biggest cost of work-related harm, and, according to ACC, half of the cost of work-related cover?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I’m not responsible for ACC itself, however the scale of ACC costs are not the sole indicator of whether or not the health and safety system is working well. What this bill does is it encourages people to focus on the risks that have the most serious consequences. ACC itself has been looking at its own performance to ensure that it improves rehabilitation and ACC have their own injury prevention campaigns to address the most frequent low-grade workplace injuries such as slips, trips, and falls. But it is also the case that the focus here of the bill is not on having a complete reduction of care for workers. I hear this constantly from the Opposition. It is clearly misleading. The focus is on having policies and plans in place to manage the risks that are likely to seriously harm people. While these changes shift the focus towards managing critical risks, I’m not expecting that businesses will suddenly lose sight of less critical risks.

Teanau Tuiono: Point of order. That was a very long answer, but the crux of my question was whether ACC levies will rise. We got a description of what the ACC system was—

SPEAKER: Yeah, I’m with you. I think it was a very, very long answer, and it didn’t quite go to the exact nature of the question: will ACC levies rise?

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I’m not responsible for ACC. However, what I said in my primary answer, I believe, is that my officials believed that there would be cost reductions.

Veterans

Question No. 6

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (14:27) to the Minister for Veterans: What is the Government doing to support and recognise veterans?

Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Veterans) (14:27): The Government is committed to ensuring veterans can access the support and care that they are entitled to and that their service is properly recognised. In response to the sustained impact of high fuel prices, we have increased by 50 percent the vehicle mileage reimbursement rates for eligible treatment-related travel. This is to ensure that cost is not a barrier to veterans attending essential health appointments. This targeted and temporary increase will remain in place while fuel prices stay elevated and is being kept under continual review with a clear threshold linked to petrol prices returning to more stable levels.

Ryan Hamilton: Why is supporting our veterans important?

Hon CHRIS PENK: Supporting veterans is a priority for the Government and reflects a moral obligation that we owe to those who have served our country, often at personal sacrifice. Veterans should never be discouraged from accessing the care and support that they need, particularly during periods of heightened costs and pressures beyond their control. While global events may influence fuel prices, the Government can and will make sensible decisions to ease pressure on those who have given service in defence of New Zealand, our people, and our way of life.

Ryan Hamilton: What feedback did he receive on the weekend regarding changes to the Anzac Day Act?

Hon CHRIS PENK: It was a privilege to attend various Anzac Day services across Auckland, and to see strong participation at both community and national commemorations was particularly encouraging when we saw the large number of young people. A number of veterans spoke to me throughout the day to express their appreciation for the recent changes passed by Parliament unanimously—thank you—in recognising the service of all of those who have served New Zealand. While the legislative changes may appear modest, the feedback was clear that for many ex-service personnel, particularly contemporary veterans, this recognition matters deeply. In the words of one gentleman at the Waimoku service that I attended in my own electorate, they no longer feel like second-class citizens on Anzac Day.

Ryan Hamilton: What other reflections does he have on Anzac Day?

Hon CHRIS PENK: It was also an honour to attend an Anzac eve service in Sydney, alongside Deputy Prime Minister and defence Minister Richard Marles. During my visit there, I was also able to visit Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel embedded with the Royal Australian Air Force as part of the exercise Trojan Compass. In the 111 years since our troops together landed at Gallipoli, the New Zealand - Australia relationship has gone from strength to strength, building on that Anzac spirit. Our forces are working hard towards becoming an increasingly integrated combat capable Anzac force, integrated by 2035.

Economic Growth

Question No. 7

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) (14:30) to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she stand by her statement, “Our Government is determined that New Zealanders who are seeking work can find it”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister for Economic Growth) (14:30): Yes, I stand by my full statement from November last year, which was, “Our Government is determined that New Zealanders who are seeking work can find it. That’s why we’re so focused on strengthening the foundations from which local businesses can grow and create new jobs. Since being elected we have worked hard to fix the damage done to our economy during a period of reckless government spending, sky-high inflation and rising interest rates.”

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that, when she slashed funding to the mayor’s task force for jobs and now there are almost 28,000 fewer 15- to 24-year-olds in work compared to two years ago?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because, as I said in my statement, since being elected we have worked hard to fix the damage done to our economy during a period of reckless Government spending, sky-high inflation, and rising interest rates, with inflation having come down significantly and interest rates having reduced as well.

SPEAKER: Yeah. I think the descriptors there are probably a bit too much. You can say a word like “excessive”, if that’s the view. But not quite the word that was used.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that, when there are 14,000 fewer women in work compared to two years ago, and the only thing her Government has done for working women is to cut their pay?

SPEAKER: No, no, sorry. That’s a supposition. If we’re going to be pedantic about answers, then we need to be about questions as well. Without penalty, try again.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that, when there are 14,600 fewer women in work compared to two years ago, and her Government has repealed pay equity legislation, which undid the work of 23 active claims?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Because we still have in place a very workable pay equity regime, which is fully funded.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that, when she has no plan for advanced manufacturing industry transformation in New Zealand and there are now 9,500 fewer manufacturing jobs compared to two years ago, before the full impact of rising fuel prices has even hit?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: The member once again mischaracterises my position. We do have a plan, and that plan is to ensure that manufacturers face better conditions in which to invest and grow jobs. That includes, for example, making sure the Resource Management Act ties them up in less red tape, making sure the Investment Boost policy supports them to make investments in growing their business, ensuring that employment laws do not tie them up in endless red tape, making sure that our energy system actually has firming generation available in a dry year. These are practical changes which support businesses to make the investment decisions that create jobs. The member may think that job creation comes from a glossy strategy printed by bureaucrats in an office in Wellington; here on this side of the House, with practical experience, we understand that what businesses need is the economic conditions to support job creation.

Hon Ginny Andersen: How can she claim that this Government is “determined that New Zealanders who are seeking work can find it.”, when, actually, the only thing she has grown is the number of people who can’t find work and the number of New Zealanders leaving our country for good?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In answer to the second part of the question: the number of people leaving New Zealand is actually lower now than it was under the period of the previous Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins.

Energy

Question No. 8

SCOTT WILLIS (Green) (14:34) to the Minister for Energy: Does he accept reports that rising electricity prices were the biggest driver of annual inflation, and what action is he taking, if any, to decrease energy hardship?

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy) (14:34): Yes, the Government acknowledges the impact of high electricity prices, and that is why ensuring that New Zealand has affordable and reliable energy is a top priority. According to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment statistics for the year to December 2025, the lines charge component of household electricity prices increased by 14 percent, while the energy and other component increased by 9 percent. The lines charge component increase was largely driven by an increase in interest rates since 2019. The energy and other component increase was largely driven by higher wholesale electricity prices, reflecting sharply declining gas supply and the costs of new generation. Our Government is focused on ensuring all households and businesses have access to affordable and reliable electricity, and we’re taking a number of actions to ensure this. We’ve reversed the previous Government’s ban on oil and gas exploration, which was the single biggest reason that wholesale prices skyrocketed in the first place. We have a renewables boom under way, and we have fast track helping to support that. We are focused on delivering secure energy for when we’re faced with a dry year, and—good news—from tomorrow, the winter energy payment will kick in to support hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders with the cost of heating their homes through the colder months. To any recipient who is getting a main benefit, pension, jobseeker support, or student hardship, people do not need to apply for the winter energy payment.

Scott Willis: Is he comfortable that the number of households that cannot afford to pay to keep their home adequately warm has increased by 80,000 people in two years under this Government, and, if not, what is he doing about it for this winter, beyond winter energy payments?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The answer to the first part of that member’s question is that we are concerned about the price of electricity in New Zealand and, as I said in my primary answer, a significant driver of that—particularly for lines charges—was inflation post-2019. In terms of wholesale electricity prices, it was the previous Government’s decision to ban oil and gas exploration, which had a chilling impact and put up wholesale prices. We are focused on fixing this. We’ve reversed the previous Government’s ban on oil and gas exploration, we have a renewables boom under way in this country, and, of course, we’re seeing a significant reduction in wholesale electricity prices, which will put downward pressure on power bills.

Scott Willis: Is he aware that 200,000 households were not able to keep their homes adequately warm in 2025, and, if so, what concrete actions has he taken that will reduce power bills this winter?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The decision this Government has made to provide certainty to the electricity sector, whether that is the decision to reverse the previous Government’s ban on oil and gas exploration, having a strategic coal stockpile at Huntly, removing the previous Government’s target of 100 percent renewable by 2030, or getting rid of Lake Onslow—which is having a chilling impact on development—has seen the megawatt wholesale price for electricity reduce under this Government, with the forward price reducing. We are seeing good signs in the energy market, and that will have a positive impact for consumers.

Scott Willis: How is cutting $178 million from programmes providing funding for hot-water heating, low-cost energy efficiency measures, and community-focused outreach programmes to target hard-to-reach households affecting whānau in energy hardship?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The best thing the Government can do is to make sure we lower power prices, and that is making sure we have affordable, reliable energy in New Zealand. That means having a market with lower wholesale market prices, and that is what this Government has done. With all of the decisions we’ve made, we’re seeing that forward price reduce because we’re providing certainty to the market. We’re seeing a renewables boom, thanks in part to fast track. These are good things that are under way, and I invite the member to support it.

Scott Willis: How does the Minister justify his lack of action on energy hardship when this Government is seeing wages and incomes increasing at an average rate of 2 percent while energy bills are increasing by 12 percent?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Under the previous Government—which that party supported—we had inflation hit 7.3 percent. That was the result of the previous Government’s policies. Our interest rates went up, and that ultimately had a detrimental impact on New Zealanders. We’re now seeing inflation down to 3.1 percent, and we’ve seen interest rates reduce so that someone with an average mortgage of $500,000 is $10,000 a year better off. That is a huge difference for consumers, and it makes a big difference for people paying their power bills.

Scott Willis: Is he aware—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Only one person talking while the question is asked.

Scott Willis: Is he aware that front-line staff and volunteers are routinely supporting individuals who are in significant mental distress exacerbated by energy hardship; and, if so, how can he justify cutting funding to these community energy providers?

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As I said, the best thing we can do as a Government is to make sure we have a competitive market that reduces wholesale electricity prices, which benefits both households and businesses in New Zealand. That is what this Government has done, and I would have thought that that member would have supported fast track, which is seeing significant—I think the biggest wind farm in New Zealand’s history has been consented in the South Island. I would have thought that member would have supported initiatives which see greater generation, more development, more renewable energy, but no, he voted no to that. He’s voting no—

SPEAKER: That’s enough. That’s it.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: —to the very solutions that solve the problem he’s making.

SPEAKER: Yeah, good. Question No. 9—the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, and no one else.

Climate Change

Question No. 9

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour) (14:41) to the Minister of Climate Change: Does he agree with reports that the Government is working as fast as it can on the climate challenge?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Climate Change) (14:41): Yes, I do. We’re moving very fast. We’ve fast-tracked 3 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity; we’re co-investing to double the electric vehicle (EV) charging network; we’re investing $400 million in agricultural emissions reduction technology; and, for the first time, we are delivering a national adaptation framework, including New Zealand’s first national flood map.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut incentives to import electric vehicles?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, on this side of the House, we are focused on putting in place the settings which enable New Zealanders to be able to uptake those vehicles—and, surprisingly, they are. We’re focusing policy around ensuring we’ve got charging infrastructure in place. We’re focusing policy to make sure we’ve got affordable, abundant energy—because guess what? We’re not into subsidising coal-powered Teslas. We’re into ensuring we have plenty of renewable energy to fund those electric vehicles, and that’s what we’re doing on the side of the House. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just before I call the member, just a reminder to people around the House that interjection is rare and reasonable, and most Ministers don’t need the chorus of support that appears to be coming from his colleagues.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut funding of $6 billion for the national resilience plan? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Yeah, just—stop. We’ll hear your question again in silence.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut funding of $6 billion for the national resilience plan?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, on this side of the House, we are very proud of the work that we’re doing, as I answered in my primary answer around the introduction of a national adaptation framework and, importantly, New Zealand’s first national flood map. This is tangible delivery and action to help New Zealanders who are dealing with the impacts of climate change, and that is one simple example that is action over and above words—and that is pretty much all we heard from the last Government.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut support for nationwide public transport?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Well, on this side of the House, surprisingly, we don’t believe that the only way in which we can help New Zealanders is by writing blank cheques and spraying money everywhere and, hopefully, it hits a target. On this side of the House, we apply a little bit of substance, which is called fiscal discipline, and we target our interventions, such as the EV charging network, to enable people to not have range anxiety when they use EV vehicles.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the $6 billion was never forward-funded, how could it be cut?

SPEAKER: Can you—[Interruption] sorry, just a minute—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the $6 billion was never forward-funded, how could it be cut?

SPEAKER: Just a minute. Questions are asked in silence, and some of the Minister’s colleagues might like to observe that. Minister, could you please ask the question again so we can all hear it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the $6 billion was never forward-funded, how could it possibly be cut?

Hon SIMON WATTS: I think what the member is reinforcing is that smoke and mirrors is not a legitimate policy platform. I can’t speak for the prior Government, but on this side of the House, we make sure that we do tangible delivery backed up with fiscal discipline. That’s what we’re doing across climate change, energy, and a full range of portfolios that this Government is delivering.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut New Zealand’s methane targets, knowing this would cost households an extra $270 a year?

SPEAKER: No, no. Hang on. Reword it. You can’t put a circumstance into the question that may or may not be what the Minister knew or didn’t know.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Was he working as fast as he could on the climate challenge when his Government cut New Zealand’s methane targets, when his own Cabinet paper advised that this would increase costs for New Zealand households?

Hon SIMON WATTS: I make no apology for this Government backing New Zealand farmers, who are some of the most carbon-efficient farmers on the planet, full stop. This Government is working with farmers, not against them, in order to get certainty and clarity around emissions reduction policy. That is what we’ve delivered, and that is where we’re at.

Hon Chris Bishop: Can the Minister confirm that in contradistinction to what’s previously been alleged, public transport funding has actually increased substantially in the 2024-27 National Land Transport Fund period?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Yes, I can, and as someone who sees a lot of public transport in the city of Auckland, it is much appreciated by citizens of Auckland, in particular, because of the benefits that provides, particularly with the high fuel prices.

Biosecurity

Question No. 10

SIMON COURT (ACT) (14:47) to the Minister for Biosecurity: What is the Government doing to protect New Zealand’s primary sector from biosecurity threats?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD (Minister for Biosecurity) (14:47): Our strong biosecurity system continues to underpin the wonderful success of our farmers and growers. This month, we are conducting a major foot-and-mouth disease preparedness exercise in Taranaki: operation “Farm Gate”. Now, obviously, I probably need to get suggestions from Minister Penk on better names, but we’ll get there! Operation Farm Gate is a live readiness trial to test our ability to respond rapidly if foot-and-mouth disease were ever to arrive on our shores. This follows the operational agreement I signed last year with key players in the livestock industry, an agreement that ensures industry and Government are aligned and ready to act together. New Zealand has never had a case of foot-and-mouth disease, but if we did, it would cost this country around $15 billion in lost exports—

Hon Willie Jackson: We’ve got it in the House.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: —which is important to this side of the House, which it doesn’t seem to be to the other side—and in destroyed herds and flocks. Putting the work in upfront is well and truly worth it.

Simon Court: Why does biosecurity preparedness matter?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: The best way to protect ourselves from biosecurity threats is to keep them out in the first place. That’s why we have the toughest biosecurity border protection in the world. But risk can never be zero. Our ability to respond quickly and in a coordinated way with industry vastly improves the chance of eradicating biosecurity threats and limiting their impact. For example, well-established readiness and response plans have helped us to eradicate four separate incursions of fruit fly during this term of Government. That’s why I’m focused on expanding the development of operational agreements to cover more sectors and more biosecurity threats.

Simon Court: What other biosecurity threats have been successfully eradicated?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: A year ago, we successfully eradicated a strain of high pathogen avian influenza from a farm in Otago, thereby protecting our poultry farmers across New Zealand. This was possible because of the hard work and expertise of Biosecurity New Zealand staff, rapid action on behalf of the farmer, and the huge amount of work that has gone into preparing for the arrival of a different strain of avian flu that has led to millions of bird deaths overseas. We continue to prioritise being ready for any new avian flu incursion by working closely with the sector on biosecurity plans and further building response capability.

Simon Court: How is the yellow-legged hornets response progressing, Minister?

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: I’m pleased to report, with fingers crossed, wood touched—and hopefully Mr Murphy isn’t watching Parliament TV—that it is looking promising. The Government has been determined in its intention to eradicate yellow-legged hornets and supported it with an investment of $12 million. The response team has now captured and identified over 4,500 exotic hornets, but none has been found since 2 April, and no nests have been found since late March. I’m encouraged that we have stopped finding hornets before we would expect them to go into hibernation or the emerging of queens. Our work with the horticulture and bee-keepers’ sector is paying off, but it doesn’t stop. We are still doing targeted searches, trapping, bait stations, and laying Vespex poison. It all continues to happen. I would like to thank Auckland residents for their vigilance in supporting this response.

Small Business and Manufacturing

Question No. 11

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (14:51) to the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing: What recent announcements has the Government made about supporting New Zealand manufacturers?

Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing) (14:51): Earlier this week, the Hon Todd McClay—or as the Prime Minister calls him “Trade McClay”—announced the signing of the Indian free-trade agreement (FTA). This is a game-changer for New Zealand and it’s a game-changer for manufacturers. It opens up one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, giving Kiwi exporters access to 1.4 billion customers and creating real opportunities for New Zealand - made, value-added goods. Manufacturing is an industry made up of 23,000 businesses that employ about 250,000 Kiwis. It contributes roughly 8 percent of GDP and accounts for around 60 percent of our exports. Put simply, the FTA is great news for everyone.

SPEAKER: Good. So are succinct answers.

Dr Hamish Campbell: Why is the New Zealand - India free-trade agreement a game-changer for New Zealand manufacturers?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: This agreement opens up one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets to New Zealand exporters. For a trading nation like ours, agreements like this are how we back our manufacturers and ensure our New Zealand brand can win in global markets. With tariffs eliminated or reduced on 95 percent of New Zealand’s exports, and duty-free access on almost 57 percent of New Zealand exports from day one, more of our value-added goods can reach Indian customers. This gives unprecedented access to India for Kiwi goods.

Dr Hamish Campbell: What are some examples of the benefits of this deal in practice?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: Thank you, Dr Campbell. In 2025, New Zealand businesses exported over $80 million worth of iron and steel into India, where tariffs are currently as high as 22 percent. Under this agreement, these tariffs will be phased out over the next 10 years. Other industrial products that we sell into India currently face tariffs of up to 35 percent. These will also be significantly reduced, with tariffs eliminated on most goods either immediately or over a period of up to 10 years. This deal is great news for manufacturers—and when manufacturers do well, New Zealand does well.

Dr Hamish Campbell: What will this agreement mean for New Zealand manufacturers who are looking to boost exports and attract new investment?

Hon CAMERON BREWER: This agreement is good news for manufacturers who want to grow exports and attract new capital. The agreement strengthens two-way investment and commercial partnerships, so New Zealand firms can team up with Indian businesses, scale faster, and get closer to customers in a market of 1.4 billion people. Put simply, this is a pro-growth agreement that helps our manufacturers win new orders, and backs them to invest. That means more high-skilled jobs, more innovation on the factory floor, and more New Zealand - made products on the shelves in India.

Tourism and Hospitality

Question No. 12

GLEN BENNETT (Labour) (14:54) to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: Does she accept Tourism New Zealand’s warning that funding pressures on regional tourism organisations could have a serious impact on domestic tourism?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Tourism and Hospitality) (14:55): Local government and their regional tourism organisations (RTOs) play a leading role in domestic destination marketing and promoting tourism. I have heard concerns from RTOs about sustainable funding. That’s why I released the Tourism Growth Roadmap, and that’s also why our Government has invested significantly into the regions, including $13 million into Regional Tourism Boost campaigns to attract more visitors, encourage regional dispersal, and drive economic growth. Growing tourism is a crucial part of our plan to fix the basics and build the future. Our investments will mean more visitors exploring more regions, which is great news for small businesses, jobs, and local economies.

Glen Bennett: What advice has she received on the impact on regional jobs and businesses if regional tourism organisations are forced to scale back their work?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: As I said in the primary, I’ve heard from regional tourism organisations that they are concerned about sustainable funding. I know that councils, like other organisations across New Zealand, have to make tough decisions to ensure that they remain affordable and ensure, in the case of local councils, that their rates are affordable. I would also add that there are a number of regional tourism organisations that are not funded by rates, so it is important that we don’t just lump all regional tourism organisations together.

Glen Bennett: When Tourism New Zealand says 60 percent of New Zealand’s $44 billion tourism sector is domestic, does she accept that the weakening of regional tourism organisations puts billions in regional tourism revenue at risk?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: That member is asserting that regional tourism organisations won’t be as effective as they are today, and I dispute that. I think they do an incredible job of growing domestic tourism. Just as we need to grow domestic tourism, our focus is also on international tourism, which is about growing our exports.

Glen Bennett: What does she see as the impact on regional visitor numbers and incomes if regional tourism organisations are underfunded?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, I dispute that they are underfunded. As I said, those that are council funded or partly council funded will be in a process with their councils at the moment. I think it’s really important that they recognise that regional tourism organisations play an important role in place-making and ensuring that local visitors have a great experience. But councils need to make decisions in terms of balancing their books and delivering value for money for their ratepayers.

Debates

Views of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the United States’ strikes on Iran

Urgent Debate Declined

SPEAKER (14:57): I’ve received a letter from Vanushi Walters seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the views of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the United States’ strikes on Iran. I didn’t announce this earlier, as has been my habit, simply because I wanted to hear the outcome of question No. 1.

The purpose of an urgent debate is to scrutinise the statements and actions of the Government. It’s not unusual for Ministers’ officials to offer advice to the Prime Minister’s officials; or for the Prime Minister to seek the views of their Ministers; or to express their view to Ministers. There will be occasions on which documents released under the Official Information Act provide insights into how those statements or actions were determined. It may lead to an urgent debate, but this is not one of those occasions.

I’m not convinced that the matter warrants setting aside the business of the House today. The application is declined.

Bills

Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (14:58): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Just before I call the member—members who are leaving the House should do so quietly and without disrupting the proceedings of the House.

First Reading

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (14:59): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 31 August 2026.

It’s estimated that crime results in billions of dollars in losses every year and causes untold harm to countless hard-working New Zealanders and businesses. It is not uncommon to read media stories of retirees deprived of their savings or businesses destroyed by the actions of fraudsters. The scale and complexity of fraud is increasing. It challenges the ability of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the fraudsters who commit this crime. It is critical that our laws adapt to this change in context, including advances in technology and how fraud is committed.

This Government is committed to fixing the basics in law and order. Doing so requires penalties to reflect the seriousness of the crimes committed and ensuring offenders are held accountable for the harm they cause to their victims. It also means ensuring law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to hold criminals to account and to prevent more New Zealanders from becoming victims of fraud and corruption.

The Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill aims to do just that. The bill amends the Serious Fraud Office Act 1990, which established the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), and gives it the modern powers it needs to investigate serious and complex fraud and corruption. The SFO Act has not been substantively updated since it passed 36 years ago. Since then, the technological environment has changed; evidence of fraud is increasingly digital, meaning investigations involve information stored on devices and in the cloud.

Criminal justice legislation has also moved on, with modern approaches to law enforcement agencies, undertaking searches, and how the courts consider evidence. The SFO Act has simply not kept up. Outdated parts of the Act are directly affecting the ability of the SFO to fulfil its functions: to address fraud and corruption in New Zealand.

The bill is targeted to act quickly and address the issues that are creating the biggest challenges for the SFO. These are to do with search warrant powers and the legal test for evidence admissibility in the Act. The bill updates three key elements of the search warrant framework. First, the bill ensures the SFO can obtain the types of evidence it needs in an investigation. When the SFO Act was passed in 1990, evidence of fraud was almost exclusively paper based. Searches tended to be for documents, papers, and ledgers stored in filing cabinets in offices. However, evidence of fraud today is increasingly digital—on computers and smartphones, in accounting software, and stored in the cloud. The current settings mean the SFO faces unhelpful barriers to obtaining important digital evidence from devices and the cloud. The bill addresses this.

Second, the bill makes the search warrant application process more efficient. Under the existing process, a warrant application can only be made in writing and to a judge. This takes time and means the SFO cannot always act quickly enough to preserve evidence that might be at risk of being destroyed or tampered with before a search is executed. The bill enables the SFO to act quickly and efficiently, to do its searches by empowering oral warrant applications, and allowing these to be made to an issuing officer, such as a community magistrate or other judicial officer who has been authorised by the Attorney-General.

Third, the bill ensures the SFO can manage a physical warrant scene, like a residence or office. Right now, it can be difficult for the SFO to manage its warrant scenes and access important things like electricity or internet on site. This risks the integrity of the evidence and can endanger investigators. These changes make it clear that investigators can give reasonable directions to exclude people from a warrant site and to access electricity or an internet connection if needed in the search.

The bill also makes it clear that police can use all their usual powers under the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 when assisting the SFO to execute a warrant. This ensures police have all the tools they need to help the SFO do its searches safely and effectively. The changes to the warrant settings bring SFO search powers to the same level as similar enforcement agencies, like the Financial Markets Authority. We’ve modelled the changes on the comparable provisions in the Search and Surveillance Act, which is where those other enforcement agencies’ powers sit.

The bill also updates the evidence test used in the SFO Act. The courts use the test to determine whether certain evidence can be used in a case. The test is used when a law enforcement agency may not have followed all the rules when gathering the evidence. The existing test in the Act reflects the approach taken in 1990. The law has since moved on. The bill changes the legal test to reflect the more recent and widely applied test from the Evidence Act 2006. We’re confident that the approach in the Evidence Act provides a more balanced legal test. It allows the court to consider a range of important factors when considering if evidence should be admissible. Those factors include whether urgency or safety was a factor in obtaining the evidence and the seriousness of the offending. Changing the test in this way brings the SFO into line with the standard approach and ensures its Act is consistent with other criminal justice legislation.

This bill gives the SFO the powers it needs to investigate and prosecute serious fraud and corruption in the digital age. They are powers held and used regularly by other enforcement agencies. Central to this is ensuring law enforcement agencies, such as the SFO, have the tools they need to hold fraudsters to account for their crimes and the harm they cause to their victims. I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (15:06): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We are going to support that this bill go to select committee for examination. We agree that the Serious Fraud Office does a very important job, and we are heartened that the Government wants to make sure that, essentially, white-collar criminals—fraudsters, people engaging in corruption—are subject to the full force of the law, because it’s an important part of our law enforcement framework.

We have some concerns. Every time a court criticises the conduct of a law enforcement agency, the response of the Government is to broaden the powers of that agency. We’re seeing that in respect of the Policing Amendment Bill and the illegal taking of photographs. Now what we are seeing here is that the Court of Appeal on R v Pikia found that the Serious Fraud Office was exercising powers that it simply didn’t have in demanding the delivery of devices by various notices under the Act.

It’s worth observing that it’s a somewhat unusual situation where you have almost every enforcement agency having powers of search and surveillance under the Search and Surveillance Act. The very purpose of that Act when it was passed was to bring together search and surveillance powers from all kinds of enforcement agencies—whether it be Agriculture or Fisheries or Police or Customs—to make sure they had one consistent set of principles. Now, we’ve got this outlier organisation, the Serious Fraud Office, which has retained quite extensive but differently framed powers. We agree that it’s appropriate to look at this to make sure they do have the powers which are appropriate so that they can do their job. Clearly, as the Minister noted, the ability to search electronic devices and to demand the production of documents that are stored electronically is part of that.

I was also interested to hear the Minister talk about the test for wrongfully obtained evidence. In fact, New Zealand is an outlier, because in most jurisdictions, if evidence is obtained illegally, it can’t be used in a proceeding. In the United States, this is called the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine, where you can’t go and illegally enter a property, find a document or a bloodied weapon, knowing that you’re not allowed to be there, and then turn up to court and present it as evidence. New Zealand takes not a slightly different—a radically different—approach. It basically says, in the Search and Surveillance Act, “Well, how good is the evidence? How serious is the crime? What were the circumstances when you chose not to follow the law and illegally seized that evidence?”, and balances that up and says, “Well, that’s a pretty serious thing. All you did was enter an open back door without an invitation, and, therefore, we think you should allow it in.”

That’s actually conceptually a very challenging thing to do. Steven Joyce would be proud of a search being a little bit illegal. But we are going to have a look at that at select committee, at least in respect of Serious Fraud Office searches. I do have concerns that any situation where enforcement officers know that if they act illegally, the consequences will not be significant—they’ll probably still be allowed to use that evidence—raises real problems about the incentives that that sets.

But as we said, we think this is a bill that deserves scrutiny. We do want to make sure that it isn’t just giving them more powers because they haven’t got enough money. That’s a genuine question for the Serious Fraud Office, which is a tiny institution, given the magnitude of its task.

With that, we look forward to a thorough examination of this bill before committee.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (15:11): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to also support this bill through its first reading. For you, Mr Speaker, you’re going to be hearing a reasonably similar speech to the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb.

In terms of the context, the bill itself, in terms of the expanded scope of the Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO’s) search abilities, and particularly the ability to enable the SFO to obtain necessary digital evidence and apply the more modern evidence test in terms of evidence admissibility, is an important aspect, as we heard from the Minister, in being able to keep up with other areas and other agencies.

I do think that the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, has raised a couple of issues that are quite important. The first one is that we do see this sort of continuous catch-up game in terms of something that was ruled in court and then the Government catching up in terms of the admissibility of evidence or the expanded scope required to ensure that something like that doesn’t happen again. I think, as part of the select committee process, we’ll be really interested to know whether the Minister of Justice is doing any proactive work to anticipate something that happens rather than continuously being reactive and rather than taking a proactive approach.

But just on the case I was referring to here, I think it is important to raise that part of this bill did come about in the 2024 Court of Appeal case with Crown and Pikia, and particularly around the way that the evidence was being collected. I think it is important to mention that case in conjunction with a number of other cases, because while we see certain agencies—like the Police, which has far greater resources—as part of the review process or Estimates hearings, we do constantly hear from SFO, and we as a select committee question SFO, in terms of the ability for them to undertake the job that they’re doing with the limited resources that they have.

What we also saw previously when we had the justice cluster, for example, where SFO was able to work more collaboratively with other agencies in terms of a more coordinated approach—we do see that justice cluster has also wrapped up. Now we don’t know what the next necessary step is for SFO, the Minister of Justice, Police, Corrections, etc., to actually all come together to address some of these issues as well.

With that, I think what is important to note, and something to tease out as part of the select committee stage, is this idea of evidence admissibility. I want to raise the particular example I think the previous speakers mentioned in terms of the fruit of the poisoned tree. Particularly, we saw that in the case of Hamed and Ors and Crown in the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, where evidence was collected incorrectly under the then Search and Surveillance Act, which then was amended in 2012. That admissibility is going to be a key factor if you have an agency who has limited resources to be able to undertake some of that. So it is whether, then, as part of this bill, although there is the expanded scope, the SFO is able to ensure that we don’t see that evidence inadmissibility as we go through the court system. Because, again, the cases the SFO deals with, on average, are those kinds of white-collar crimes and are the kind of things that are incredibly complex and, also, incredibly costly to go through. It’s one of the reasons why this country, Aotearoa New Zealand, doesn’t see many successful convictions when it comes to white-collar crimes; because it’s incredibly costly for the Crown to actually undertake some of those trials and some of those court processes.

Finally, part of that is how is this potentially—you know, seeing the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) report. It has passed the Attorney-General’s BORA report, but there’s always this idea that—you know, we’re now looking at this expanded scope of search and the collection of evidence around privilege against self-incrimination, so I think that’s also an important factor to consider as we’re going through the select committee process.

The Green Party does support this bill at present, and we look forward to additional contributions from officials, Ministers, and the submitters on this bill during the select committee.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (15:16): Thank you, Mr Speaker, I rise take a short call on behalf of ACT on the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill. This is a bill to modernise some aspects of the Serious Fraud Office Act 1990. The Minister has well traversed the details and, since I’m on the Justice Committee, I will get to well traverse those details in a lot of detail when it comes before the committee. It sounds like parties across Parliament are actually going to support it to the select committee, which is great, because that will allow us to do that work.

Obviously, financial crimes are serious. We want to make sure we give the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) the tools to tackle those crimes, and it is really making sure that the legislation keeps up with modern technologies and things that they need to be doing to collect evidence and surveillance, etc. From ACT’s perspective, this is going to be potentially fixing what matters: a loophole in the current powers of the SFO. Financial or white-collar crime isn’t victimless. It does undermine trust. It does actually drive up costs, and we want to make sure our hard-working New Zealanders aren’t hit in the pocket.

I look forward to discussing this further at the select committee, but I commend this bill to the House.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) (15:17): Thank you, Mr Speaker, I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill. This bill helps fulfil our coalition agreement commitments to restore law and order. It gives the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) the necessary tools to address financial crime—and that’s what we are talking about within this bill, financial crime. It gives search powers into a modern world, and this world is changing quickly, especially in this space, around the digital nature. So giving the required search powers that are required to the Serious Fraud Office is very important.

What I did want to discuss a little bit was that just prior to Christmas, the Serious Fraud Office came and spoke to the Justice Committee. it was their Long-term Insights Briefing. They did talk a lot about the explosion—what they really said, the explosion—of fraud around the world. But we can stand—I can stand—here in this House, and New Zealand is classed across the world as having very low levels of corruption and fraud, and all of us in this House want to keep that this way. So giving the Serious Fraud Office this ability in today’s world is only sensible.

We realise, also, that often the Serious Fraud Office deal with very serious and complex fraud, bribery, and corruption. It’s not just in the public sector it works in but it also works across the private sector, as well. One thing, also, is the role of the Serious Fraud Office is about preventing fraud and corruption, and giving it the right tools will detract these people from actually even thinking about entering into these types of crimes.

The bill deals with two pressing issues around the search warrants and evidence admissibility. As previous speakers have said, the select committee process—and I’m a member of the Justice Committee—will be the right place to examine those issues. I commend this bill to the House.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui) (15:20): Thanks, Mr Speaker. Restoring law and order in New Zealand is more than just removing gang patches, which we’ve done, and sorting out antisocial road-users, which is in progress. It’s also about supporting those constituents who come into our offices and tell us about the stories of how they have been scammed online and the difficulties that have occurred in trying to catch the criminals that have scammed them and taken away their money and their mana. This bill is going to support actually finding those people, capturing them, and making sure they are held accountable for their actions. I therefore commend it to the House.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) (15:21): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s very good to follow the call of Carl Bates, the member for Whanganui, because the tone of Mr Bates’ contribution says something about this Government’s approach to the politics of law and order, which I want to say something about.

As my colleagues have said, the Labour Party is supporting this bill to select committee for further examination. You can read that as a kind of qualified, time-bound support to send this bill off so we can look under the hood and give critical scrutiny to the provisions of this bill. On the surface of it, at face value, and from what we’ve heard from the Minister and Government members today, it would seem to be simply a modernisation of the legal framework that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) operates under, particularly in relation to powers of search and surveillance and, secondly, the admissibility of evidence—but is it?

We’ve heard from a number of colleagues, and we’ve heard the story of the Court of Appeal’s findings in relation to the case of Roger Pikia, which was really the thing that instigated the policy process that led to this bill coming to the House today. The Court of Appeal was scathing, I think it’s fair to say, about the Serious Fraud Office acting beyond its powers. The court said that the SFO “gathered more than a million documents relating to Mr Pikia’s dealings over a seven-year period, few of which were relevant to the organisation … The indiscriminate use of warrants was the antithesis of the correct approach, which requires the provision of as much specificity as is reasonably possible in the circumstances and targeting only information relevant to the frauds under investigation”. It was a fishing trip of industrial scale.

My colleague Duncan Webb talked about the habit that the current Government has whenever a court criticises a law enforcement agency for the way they do their work and with regard to their powers under the law. The response of this Government is simply to retrospectively make all that legal by expanding the powers. I’ll be interested to hear how the Justice Committee get on with teasing out whether this is, in fact, a justified codification and setting out of the specific powers that the Serious Fraud Office needs, in the digital age, to do their job properly. A cursory reading of the new search provisions, which allow digital items to be the subject of a warrant, and so on, makes sense, but I’ll be very interested to hear the select committees report back to the House on whether or not it is simply that, or is it just an expansion and a loosening of the controls?

When you read the provisions in this bill, it would be an understatement to say they’re comprehensive. These provisions would allow the Serious Fraud Office to go to the doctor, and woe betide anyone who finds themselves on the receiving end of an SFO search warrant, because if they use all of their powers, there won’t be much left of the place or the person that’s being searched.

Finally, I want to just make this point: the Serious Fraud Office is a tiny organisation. The question that I have for Government members is, yep, you want to expand the powers available to the Serious Fraud Office, but do you think the office is adequately funded to do its work? Or is this bill just another example of performative politics by the Government in relation to law and order—of being seen to be on the job by changing the law and expanding powers but not actually—

Rima Nakhle: Mr Speaker—Mr Speaker.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: —but not actually resourcing the agency to do its job properly.

Rima Nakhle: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, no. Hang on a minute. I decide when he’s finished—no one else.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (15:26): Sorry—thank you, Mr Speaker. Fraud is the fastest-growing crime in New Zealand, amounting to almost 30 percent of all crime committed. Although we’ve been in Government for less than three years, we recognised very quickly that something needed to be done to give the Serious Fraud Office the authority to tackle this fastest-growing crime. It’s incumbent on us, and I commend this bill to the House.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (15:26): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party to speak on the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill at its first reading. As mentioned by my colleagues, Labour will be supporting this bill to the select committee. Being new to the Justice Committee, I’m looking forward to fleshing out this bill and learning about its implications.

When I was doing study for this bill, I came across this graph. It shows that, in 2003, the Serious Fraud Office reported expected serious fraud levels at $200 million. By 2023, this figure had risen to $5 billion. This 25-fold increase over two decades illustrates the consequences of the Serious Fraud Office and other Government agencies failing to adopt technology-driven fraud prevention strategies and maintain continuous vigilance amongst emerging threats. It’s very, very important that we address this, and we do so because serious fraud is not a victimless crime. It is not some fringe offence that only happens on spreadsheets or in boardrooms. It hurts real people, it can wipe out savings, destroy trust and undermine confidence in our institutions, and leave ordinary New Zealanders paying the price.

When a worker loses retirement savings through an investment scheme, that matters. When a small business is undercut by dishonest competitors, that matters. When the public loses confidence that the rules apply equally to everyone, that also matters as well. Labour supports strong enforcement against serious crime, we support agencies having fit-for-purpose tools, and we support modern laws that keep pace with technology. We also want to ensure that those who think they can cheat the system are held to account just as much as any other crime we see in our communities. That’s why we’re supporting this bill.

The Serious Fraud Office Act dates back to 1990. Back then, the world looked very different. Records were on paper, filing cabinets filled offices across New Zealand, and letters were posted. Computers did exist, but nothing like the digital world we live in now. Today, evidence sits in cloud storage; it may be in encrypted accounts, and it may be spread across multiple devices—across multiple jurisdictions, actually—and across multiple platforms. Fraudsters can move money with a few clicks and hide communications behind multiple layers of technology. So it makes sense that the law should catch up with that.

This bill modernises search warrant provisions so they better reflect the way information is now stored and accessed. It recognises that evidence may longer be sitting in a desk drawer or in a hard drive physically located in one office. It may be remote, it may be digital, it could be intangible, and it’s also fast moving. So addressing this is a sensible objective.

This bill also seeks to align the admissibility of evidence provisions in the Serious Fraud Office Act with the broader and more modern framework under the Evidence Act 2006. Again, on the face of it, this is a sensible direction. Consistency across the legal system matters, clarity matters, and modern evidential standards matter. So there are many useful and practical elements within this legislation.

But supporting the bill to select committee is not the same as writing a blank cheque, and this is where Labour’s role is important, because while the goal of tackling serious fraud is right, the powers given to the State must always be balanced with safeguards, accountability, and respect for civil liberties. That balance matters in everyday democracy, as we all know, and whenever Parliament gives search powers, surveillance powers, or remote access powers, or, for that matter, expanded evidential pathways, we should do that very carefully. We should ask the hard questions and test whether the drafting is proportionate in a way that the public will expect. So, for that reason, we commend the bill to the House.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (15:31): Excellent. It is my privilege to rise and speak in favour of the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill in this first reading, and it’s great to see support across the House for this bill. As already has been mentioned, fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes here in New Zealand, and we are definitely doing something about it. It’s estimated to cost billions of dollars. Of course, our Serious Fraud Office Act is over 36 years old; it’s time for it to be modified. Things have changed. The way crimes are happening is changing. This bill does that. Therefore, I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

SPEAKER (15:32): The question is, That the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Select Committee

Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Police) (15:33): on behalf of the Minister of Justice: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 31 August 2026.

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill.

Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill

Committee of the whole House

Clauses 1 and 2

Debate resumed from 28 April.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is in committee for further consideration of the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. When we were last considering this bill, we had voted on Part 7 and the Schedules. We come now to the debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”. The question is that clause 1 stand part.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (15:34): So, just clause 1?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We are debating clauses 1 and 2.

TANGI UTIKERE: Yes, OK, thank you, Madam Chair—thought I’d just check on that. Well, it wasn’t my intention to actually take a call yesterday when we were progressing this piece of legislation. I think the Associate Minister of Transport sought to have the vote put, but, unfortunately, we were out of time. But the night has given me a second wind and an opportunity to reflect on what the Minister had said. Basically, what was interesting was clause 2, because what we didn’t get a chance to debate, although the Minister did touch on this, was Amendment Paper 574, which seeks to change the date of commencement. I guess it makes some sense, because when we look at what’s currently in the bill, it sought to have the bill coming into play on 1 April 2026. As we know, tomorrow is 1 May 2026, so it means that the bill’s date in terms of when it comes into force will have pre-dated perhaps when it was actually given wet ink on the paper.

So it makes sense that the amendment is there, but my question to the Minister is: why has he decided that the commencement date should be the day after Royal assent rather than a specified calendar date? I’m not going to suggest for the Minister why that might be, because I know, often, I run into the trap of answering my own questions, so I won’t do that today. But what was interesting is that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee did not seek an extension in terms of dealing with this bill. It was reported back, as I understand it, on time and within the time frame that the House had directed a report back to take place. So there were no issues around that.

It may have been perhaps that, you know, the inability of the Government to progress its legislative agenda has meant that we’ve passed that particular date. If the Government saw this as a priority, it could’ve scheduled this a little bit earlier. That’s a matter for the Leader of the House, of course—well, of course, there is a new Leader of the House, so perhaps that won’t be an issue any more.

But the question really is: why is it the day after Royal assent as opposed to a calendar date? Is he comfortable that despite the fact that this will be more than a month after the date that’s contained in the bill as it currently stands in clause 2, that is still sufficient to allow the multitude of agencies for which this bill will make a difference—not just maritime aspects of aviation, because of the Schedules that have been agreed to in terms of the airport companies and how they’re able to function and operate; the rail networks, because that’s a component that’s contained in this bill, many of which obviously rely on very, very stringent timetabling and all of those sorts of things, whether it relates to the governing powers, which is the first component.

The reason why I’m touching on all of these is because it’s about the readiness of those multiple agencies to be able to give effect to what is contained in clause 2. Often, we do have the date as the day after Royal assent, but, fundamentally, Minister: is this a matter of having to change the date due to the fact that it’s now come and gone—why is that?

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (15:38): To quote the member, “Often, we … have the date as [being] the day after Royal assent”. This is a very common practice about commencement dates, and it avoids situations where, you know, from time to time you may set a specific date and the bill may not be passed by that specific date. I can think of one particularly relevant example of that that the member might be able to think of as well. So that’s the reason.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (15:38): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Associate Minister of Transport for his erudite response. I’d like to now make some comment and question around clause 1, which is the title clause. We do get a number of regulatory systems bills that come in. The interesting thing, of course, is that many of these matters, though, don’t relate to regulation. “Regulatory” could be seen as, I guess, a verb, in some sense; some might see it as a noun, but in terms of the title of the bill, has he given any sort of thought to any other aspects? Maybe he has; there’s a little chuckle in his step there. These are often not very contentious bills that come through the Parliament, and there is a reason for that. That’s why, I think, this was a bill that, certainly in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, passed with unanimous support and right through the Parliament up to this point as well. But often in this House, we hear about how we should call it, basically, what the label is going to be on the tin.

Is there any reason as to why it should be named anything other than the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill, in particular because—again, I won’t go through the multitude of agencies and different modes of transport that exist, but is he comfortable that this is the appropriate name for this bill?

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (15:40): Yes, I’m very comfortable. The name of the bill is the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill, because it amends parts of the transport and regulatory system.

Clause 1 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the Minister’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 574 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (15:42): on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I present a legislative statement on the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Third Reading

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Associate Minister of Transport) (15:42): on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I move, That the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill delivers on our Government’s commitment to the great city of Auckland. This is a great day for Auckland—particularly Mt Roskill, part of Auckland—and for New Zealand. This bill delivers our Government’s commitment to reform transport governance planning and delivery arrangements in Auckland.

These reforms are needed to lay the foundations for a higher performing transport system, contributing to the productivity premium that New Zealand needs from our largest city. The bill has two objectives: to increase democratic accountability for local transport decision making, and to strengthen long-term transport planning between Auckland Council and the Crown.

For the past 16 long years, Auckland Transport, an organisation governed by an unelected board—[phone rings]—has undertaken the local transport functions that local authorities usually perform elsewhere in New Zealand—I think that’s Wayne Brown calling for an overdue reform to the system. This has meant that Auckland Council has not been responsible for the governance of the transport system and the public, including the Auckland ratepayers, have not been able to have a direct say on transport matters through the ballot box.

Currently, Aucklanders’ trust and confidence in the quality of transport decision-making is relatively low. Restoring democratic accountability for transport decisions will make it clear to Aucklanders on who is making the decisions that affect their daily lives, provide incentives to undertake projects in a way that do not waste public funds, and helps ensure responsiveness to public sentiment.

Strengthened long-term planning between Auckland Council and the Crown is also vital. For too long, duplicative planning processes have occurred across transport agencies without a coherent overarching direction or vision for the future. As the primary funders of the transport system and the parties that the public rightly holds accountable for network performance, it is incumbent on both Auckland Council and the Crown to build a strong and effective partnership to plan investment priorities and set direction for the future. Since the bill was introduced in September 2025, the core policy proposals have remained largely in place. I consider that this reflects our Government’s strong mandate to reform the system, and also the support shown by Auckland Council for this bill.

The bill establishes the Auckland Regional Transport Committee—which I’ll refer to as the ARTC—a joint Government and Auckland Council Committee. The ARTC will primarily develop a 30-year transport plan for Auckland, which will set the strategic direction for transport in Auckland by establishing alignment and investment priorities between Government and Auckland Council. This bill shifts most local transport functions from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council. The council will become the road-controlling authority, undertake policy and planning functions, and will be responsible for most local delivery functions.

The bill reforms Auckland Transport itself into a transport council-controlled organisation—known colloquially as a CCO—which is solely focused on providing high-quality public transport services in our largest city. This will be a smaller and more streamlined organisation, and their mandate reflects the importance of public transport which connects communities, enables new housing supply and provides for economic growth. Within the council itself, the bill will confer specific transport responsibilities to local boards. Local boards will regulate specific local transport activities on local and collector roads in their area and that will help ensure that relevant decisions can happen as close to the community as possible and to provide local communities with the opportunity to have their say.

Now, the bill sets out that there will be a six-month transition period. Transitional provisions provided in the bill will help guide the shift to new arrangements while preserving the day-to-day flow of network operations and the delivery of capital investments.

There have been some amendments that have been made to the bill throughout these select committee process and throughout committee of the whole House. Those amendments largely reflect the recommendations from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I want to, once again, thank the members of that committee for their work on this bill. Those changes have focused on ensuring that the bill delivers the intended outcomes and is workable for Auckland Council, while still preserving the overall policy intent.

There are several themes to the amendments that I’ll run through very quickly. The first is to clarify the relationship between Auckland Council and the reformed transport CCO. Going forward, that split of public transport activities between those organisations, along with Auckland Council’s ability to set direction for the CCO, will be crystal clear. One amendment, for example, requires the council to specify in its long-term plan the exact activities that the CCO will undertake to support.

I could go on at length with the amendments, but we have covered those quite generously in the rather lengthy committee of the whole House stage. So what I’ll do is I will just acknowledge, finally, those who made submissions on the bill throughout this process. Thank you for the contribution that you have made, and thank you also to the Mayor of Auckland, Mayor Wayne Brown, and Auckland Council for their advocacy and support for this bill and their leadership in driving it through.

Overall, the bill paves the way for restored democratic accountability, with Aucklanders able to hold their elected members accountable for transport policies. It also signals a much closer transport partnership between Government and Auckland Council, something I’m sure we can all be supportive of. I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (15:48): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill at third reading. It’s always interesting where you participate in the first reading opportunity and then are able to watch a bill progress through its various stages to get to this point. I do want to acknowledge the collegiality of members around the House in getting to this point this afternoon.

This is a bill that has come about because Auckland Council formally requested that these changes be made. What drove that request, led by Auckland Mayor, Wayne Brown, in a large part was a desire to have more direct control over transport choices and transport decisions in our country’s largest city. What this bill will do is it will bring the transport decisions that are taken in Auckland into line with other ways in which all other communities around the country approach transportation decisions and actions that are taken as well. This is about restoring and ensuring that there is a level of democratic accountability and localism in the decisions that are taken for Auckland and for Aucklanders. It will mean that Aucklanders and elected members will have a stronger and greater say in the decisions that are taken and how their transport system will run.

Labour was very happy to engage very constructively through the select committee process, and I do want to acknowledge the submitters that were part of that process, but I also want acknowledge the work that Auckland Council and their elected members—plural—have done in terms of ensuring that what we have in front of us today is something that, from their perspective, will work for Auckland.

We are supporters, here in Labour, of localism, in a genuine sense, where councils are empowered to get on and do the work and to make the decisions, not to be sidelined by central government. That’s what this bill does seek to do. It doesn’t, however, mean that it’s only local government on their own. The way in which this bill is structured allows for a form of partnership in terms of the strategy and the direction-setting opportunities for the future of Auckland.

One of the things that is a change in this bill is the way in which the regional transport committee the Minister has just referred to will be set up and how it will be established. It will have three ministerial appointees, it will have three mayoral appointees, it will have a chair, and it will have three non-voting members—so a total of 10 members maximum—who will be part of this committee. It was important through the submission process that the mayor, in exercising their decision as to who the mayoral appointees would be, would still be required to consult with members of the governing body in Auckland. That is appropriate. It aligns itself with the specific mayoral powers that do exist elsewhere around the country in terms of the appointment of some of those roles, the establishment of a committee structure—that you yourself, Madam Speaker, will be very familiar with, and other members in this House. What this transport committee will do is it will provide the opportunity for democracy in action. It will allow for decisions to be taken that reflect the desires, the needs, the future planning in our country’s largest city.

This is an important piece of legislation because it also identifies that that group will be tasked with doing a few things. One of the most significant things will be establishing a long-term transport plan for Auckland, a 30-year plan, that will be agreed to by the decision makers in Auckland but also by the Minister of Transport from central government as well.

With one of the changes in terms of what the CCO, or the council-controlled organisation, that will be stood up as Auckland Transport, it will be solely responsible for public transport. I say that because that was a specific change that has been clarified through the committee of the whole House stage to make sure that, actually, the sole thing that the CCO will be focused on planning, preparing, and delivering will be public transport. That will be extremely important, particularly as the city continues to plan for its future, ensuring a pure focus on public transport. That being clarified is really, really important.

There is a role for local boards, and many in this House, particularly those from Auckland, will know that the arrangements in terms of local government for Auckland Council is a bespoke form of arrangement. Local boards are in existence. There are no local boards anywhere else in the country. There are community boards elsewhere in the country, but they certainly don’t have the financial capacity and, perhaps, level of responsibility that local boards in Auckland do have. In fact, I say that because many of the local boards are responsible for budgets that are perhaps larger than some other local territorial authorities elsewhere in the country. That’s not to diminish from the decision-making powers that community boards and others have, but it is a very strong signal that, actually, local boards in a community should be able to have a say in terms of what the transportation needs of local communities are.

What this bill does is it does exactly that. It will allow—or it will empower actually—local boards to make decisions and have greater say over the way in which local roads and the roading networks will be able to operate in their local communities. They will be empowered to make decisions around speed limits in their particular communities. They will be empowered to make decisions around parking in their local communities. They will be empowered to make decisions around active transport and the needs of their communities, which is very, very important.

One change that we see in front of us is around by-laws. When this bill was introduced, the approach was for by-laws to basically have the agreement of all of the local boards. What we heard through the submission process is that that, perhaps, could be an unreasonable tool or opportunity that some boards might have to stymie progress that would apply across the whole of Auckland. Where the select committee landed, which I think is a sensible place, is that, actually, what’s required is a majority of all the boards overall to allow for a by-law to be put in place, provided that the governing body is in agreement, of course.

One of the interesting things that came out of the committee stage—there were a few things actually, but one is just on standing orders. Later today, it’s likely that the House will debate a different bill that will make some potential decisions around how standing orders would apply. It is somewhat concerning that we would potentially, today, pass a piece of legislation that says that Auckland Transport as a CCO would be required to create their own bespoke form of standing orders, but we heard from the Minister in the committee stage that there is the option that that could be trumped by this other law that’s coming in to basically say, “Well, it doesn’t matter where you are in the country; you’re going to have a standard set of standing orders.”, which is something that we do not support on this side of the House.

What was important was also to clarify the fact that the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee would also be subject to the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act, because there was some clarity that was required around that. The other aspect, of course, was around, as I’ve touched on, the preparation of the 30-year transport plan. It is somewhat business as usual that the deal that’s been announced in terms of the Auckland City regional deal talks about a 30-year transport plan. That is just business as usual. That’s already on the radar. That’s what this bill delivers on, so there’s no new news yet in that particular space. The Minister himself has touched on the fact that there will be a six-month transition period.

One of the things that exercised the minds of members of the select committee was ensuring that when it came to staff that are involved in this process, there was a fair, transparent, and supportive transition process for those individuals, because we are talking about a complete change in terms of where the lines of responsibility would lie. When this was put to the Minister in the chair, the response was that there was an absolute level of comfort that Auckland Transport but also Auckland Council would be able to manage that process, and there was confidence there. It is certainly our desire and our hope that that is the case, because this was one point that was raised—certainly by the Public Service Association—around concerns around that. We do rely on the assurances that have been given that for staff that will be involved in this transition process, it will be very positive.

I want to finally just acknowledge all of those that have been involved in this process in bringing this bill to fruition but also in bringing this bill to conclusion. We have continued to support this bill. We think it’s in a stronger position. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (15:58): Kia ora. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party has long campaigned for improvements to public transport in Tāmaki-makau-rau. In fact, that’s how I joined the Green Party. I was campaigning for electrification of the Auckland rail network when the then Labour-led Government, which eventually did fund it, waited until pretty much their last year of being in power to fund it. We were campaigning with a range of mayors and the regional council to both Project DART and electrification. Following that, we had to campaign for the City Rail Link, which we’ll finally see opening later this year. The reality is that Auckland has been held back for some decades by not having sufficient investment in a rapid transit network and more local solutions, like safer speeds, school streets, and walking and cycling connections. But the last time I was in Auckland, I was able to get almost everywhere I needed to go on an e-bike or on the train, which is electric, which is a great situation right now, given that we are facing a fossil-fuel crisis and prices of petrol and diesel at the pump are going up and will be very high for an unforeseen amount of time. We just don’t know how long this is going to last. The single-biggest thing we can do to improve productivity in Auckland, and probably in many other parts of Aotearoa New Zealand, is to improve the ability of people and goods to move at lower cost. That means with fewer vehicles and that means investing in the complementary parts of the transport network that we didn’t—New Zealand unfortunately had subsequent Governments who didn’t focus on that.

Overall, the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill is OK. It’s like a mixed bag, right? Auckland Transport—the council-controlled organisation (CCO)—we never thought that was an ideal set-up for transport governance in Auckland. It was a National-ACT Government that put in place the Super City with the structure of the CCOs, and probably insufficient resourcing and representation for local communities across the Auckland region. There’s still issues with representation because city councillors have these huge constituencies and they’re not particularly well resourced to represent them. They do a fantastic job. People like Richard Hills, for example, absolute stellar representative and contributing to—and Shane Henderson. Shane Henderson is also really great, and Julie Fairey, but they have to represent over 100,000 people. It’s way bigger than an electorate, and they’ve less resource to do that.

Andy Foster: What about His Worship?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, actually, I’m a huge fan of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. I often agree with him, particularly when he derides the positions of Ministers like David Seymour and Simeon Brown. He’s able to say all the things that I can’t say. Because of who Wayne Brown is, he can speak the truth and get away with it, which is great. I love it. I love it when he talks sense about—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can we come back to the bill—back to the bill.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: That’s the thing, actually, Madam Speaker—that Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and his office did have some influence in this legislation. It was kind of an agreement between the Government and the mayor to set up this particular approach and change the way that Auckland Transport—like, their responsibility is now very limited to running public transport, and instead of having a board of a CCO, we have the ARTC—the Auckland Regional Transport Committee.

One of the main concerns that I have with the bill as drafted is that there’s a risk that it’s bypassing local communities in Auckland and over representing Government interests, because the appointees to the Auckland Regional Transport Committee are half from the Government of the day and the Minister, and half, really, from the mayor. It all depends on who the Minister and the mayor are, really. That’s not a very robust approach for a city of 2 million people where, to be honest, most people in general elections are not voting on local transport and urban planning issues. They’re voting on bigger picture vibes around the economy and the direction of the country and maybe national identity and what not. It’s really local representatives that should have more power and more funding to direct the investments in different types of transport solutions and how the city develops.

There should very much be a link between the spatial plan or the urban planning—we’re going through the process of replacing the Resource Management Act with the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill. There needs to be more linkages between the 30-year transport plan and land use because those things are fundamentally, inextricably linked—where people have the options to live, where they have to go to school, where they’re going to shop, where they’re going to work. All of those things are related to our urban planning rules. It’s not like travel and transport infrastructure is an end in and of itself. It’s enabling access to all the places people need to get to. Our plans fundamentally influence travel demand, and that influences the transport infrastructure that needs to be put in place. And, vice versa, the transport infrastructure we put in place influences the location of things, presuming the plans allow for it.

My main critique of this bill, though we are supporting it, and I think one thing that we’re going to have to watch very closely, is the representation of the regional transport committee. I would argue that we would all—Auckland would—get much better served by a structure that was more clearly locally elected and locally determined. I think that’s the missed opportunity of this bill, because this coalition Government is so focused on centralisation and a kind of top-down, Minister’s decree about what happens in different parts of the country. Despite campaigning on, in theory, some sort of spirit of localism, the reality of what the coalition Government delivers is often very heavy-handed central government control and influence over what local government is able to do.

I would argue that if we want better decision making—the Green Party supports the principle of subsidiarity—decisions are made at the lowest level at which they affect people. That means local government, who’s responsible for so much infrastructure. And it’s all interlinked; they’re responsible for transport and water infrastructure. They don’t have sufficient funding to do that. Maybe that is the expectation now because our transport budget is kind of, for want of a better word, going to be very, very depleted. We have less funding coming into the transport budget. We have an insane wish list of hyper-expensive, unfundable highways that the Government wants to pay for, and then, of course, local government has the real heavy lifting and responsibility to deliver public transport, walking, and cycling. At least half of all trips are on local roads, which are half-funded by rates and have increasing pressure on them because this coalition Government wants to cap rates increases while at the same time putting more infrastructure responsibility on local government.

They have to deal with decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure and a changing climate, which means far more severe and frequent storm events. If we were doing this as a Green Government, we would have far more funding and decision making given to—

Hon James Meager: I thought it was Labour-Green Government.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: We’ve never had a Labour-Green Government. There’s been a Labour coalition with New Zealand First, where the Greens were outside Cabinet and there was a cooperation agreement. We’ve never actually had a coalition Government, but if we had a Green Government, we would be giving more funding and power, more general taxation given down to communities and let them determine the infrastructure priorities that are best going to serve them. You could have Simeon Brown as your transport Minister, and that’s an absolute nightmare, because he’s got some really weird ideas that, frankly, you know—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Keep it parliamentary please, Ms Genter.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Of course, I forgot. People are very sensitive in the coalition Government, aren’t they? We couldn’t possibly say they have weird ideas—God forbid. Is that unparliamentary, Madam Speaker? I’m just asking if you’re ruling on this, because I’m sure that members opposite have said far worse things about other parties in this Parliament.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member’s time has expired.

SIMON COURT (ACT) (16:08): ACT supports the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill. It’s a great bill and restores, for the first time, the ability of Auckland to take control of its regional planning and link that up: where the city expects growth to occur with where it intends to fund infrastructure. Now, of course, local government hasn’t been able to get this right ever, so we don’t expect it to be perfect, but it’s a good start—it’s a good start.

Minister Chris Bishop and I are filling in some of the missing detail with resource management reform so that developers and infrastructure operators will also be able to build their infrastructure to meet development demand—on the basis that councils like Auckland will not have a right of veto over where people live and develop in the future., which is slightly different to where Mayor Wayne Brown thinks things are going. While he fancies himself as a president or a king of Auckland, actually private property owners and developers in Auckland feel they should be able to develop where their customers want to live, where businesses want to establish, and not live under a fiefdom or some kind of serfdom of Auckland Council, which is where we’ve got to. However, it will be incredibly helpful to have a spatial plan and a regulatory plan and an infrastructure plan that finally match.

Now, there is one thing that I want to address, which is that ACT proposed an amendment by my colleague Cameron Luxton regarding the provision for unknown Māori to be involved in the co-design of this regional transport plan, but no provision whatsoever for the business sector, public transport users, freight ports, or anyone else who’s a stakeholder in the transport system in Auckland to be a designer in the development of the plan. Now, that’s remarkable, the fact that Auckland Council apparently asked for that—they asked for that.

ACT’s position is that, look, there is already provision in the legislation for consultation with Māori. There is already a mana whenua engagement group around infrastructure, which, when I was an engineer at Auckland Council, I regularly presented to and we had great feedback about whether the infrastructure proposals were going to address their concerns, whether they were cultural or environmental concerns. It’s not really clear why Auckland Council would demand this provision. ACT’s primary concern is that not only does it not involve the actual road users and design of the plan; it also sets an expectation that some kind of secretariat or bureaucracy will be established at great expense to ratepayers and road users—who, no doubt, will be funding this thing—and, actually, isn’t necessary, because we can respectfully engage with all parts of the Auckland community through consultation provisions already established under the Local Government Act, under the Resource Management Act, which will soon be replaced with a system based on property rights.

All I would say is this: it’s heartening that the coalition Government, in its work on looking at Treaty clauses in all legislation, has identified that the parent legislation, the Land Transport Management Act, has a Treaty clause in it which this Government is proposing and instigating to remove. I would hope that, when that project has run its course, the participation clause—which is, essentially, providing co-design under massive bureaucracy at ratepayers’ expense—will also be looked at again. ACT’s made that clear that that’s our expectation. We’re happy to support this bill and to see it passed and to finally see Auckland Council and Auckland Transport combined to deliver the infrastructure plan that Auckland desperately needs.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (16:13): I’m delighted to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and, also, as the chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which considered this bill, to speak on what is the third reading. Look, it’s great—there are a few high-level things that this bill is all about. The first one of them is to, essentially, return meaningful control of transport in Auckland to Auckland and to Aucklanders and to the Auckland Council, rather than the model which was set up—what?—15 or so years ago. Uniquely, Auckland, our biggest city, our biggest local council, was the only council in the whole country which did not have this power. Something was wrong there; effectively, it was set up on a model of low trust.

If I might start in that place, and it was interesting listening to Simon Court, who said—what did he say?—“Local government hasn’t managed to get it right, ever.”, I think, was the quote that I heard from you. Now, I just would suggest to you that those who are in glasshouses should not be throwing stones, because there are plenty of times that Governments both on this side of the House and on that side of the House have not got it right, either. If you want to look at asset management, local government’s not great; central government is worse. If you want to look at long-term planning, local government is poor—not that poor; central government is way worse. In fact, how many long-term strategies and plans does central government have mapping out where we see New Zealand being in the next 30 years? The answer is probably none—probably none. The only organisation in central government land which is starting to do that is the Infrastructure Commission, and good on them. So when we are in glasshouses, let’s stop throwing stones.

The two great things that are here in this bill—the first one of them is that it actually says, “We trust Auckland Council and we want to work with Auckland Council.” I know Wayne Brown’s not that fond of Wellington—and I did check that with him: he doesn’t mean Wellington the city; he means Wellington the bureaucracy, Wellington the Parliament; he’s not that fond of those things. But this bill is about restoring some sense of trust to Auckland and working with Auckland, and I think that that is a great thing.

The second thing I wanted to say there is it establishes a council-controlled organisation (CCO), within this, instead of Auckland Transport—establishes a CCO. One of the bits which I don’t think got picked up earlier is that the council’s got to consult as part of its long-term plan on what the boundaries of public transport are. What is public transport? What does the CCO control; what doesn’t it control? Now, you might think that’s really obvious. I mean, see public transport, that’s the trains, the buses, the ferries—but what about, for example, bus priority on streets? What about bus priority on traffic lights? Who controls that? Is it the CCO that controls that, or is it the road controlling authority—i.e., the council? Those are legitimate conversations for the council to have with its community to say what fits where, what goes with the CCO, and what goes with the council. I just thought I’d put that in there. The other thing which I did talk about just momentarily there was long-term planning—the idea that is enshrined in this bill of establishing a 30-year transport plan. That is a really great thing to do.

Now, Julie Anne Genter said, “What is the Crown doing, involved in this? Why is it a 50-50 partnership between the Crown and the council?” Well, the reality is that the Crown actually provides more of the money than the council does. Actually, it’s really, really good for Auckland to have the Crown bound into that process. It’s a strong thing. It’s a good thing to do that. It’s not about one controlling the other; it’s a 50-50 partnership, and that is the way that it should be. Julie Anne Genter, you should be welcoming that. You talked about the principle of subsidiarity, but that does not mean localism—it doesn’t mean everything ends down at the local board level or down at the local community level; it means that decisions are made at the right level.

There is a lot in this bill about local boards. Sometimes, it is something that we—you know, local streets, what you do on local streets, the beautification of local streets slowing down local streets. If we put in a little bit more, not only can they build cycleways now; they can actually maintain them, because that wasn’t in the bill in the first place—that was a slight whoopsie. We fixed those sort of things. That’s what gets done at the local board level.

Then, there are other things that get done at the Auckland Council level, and there are other things which need the Crown to be involved in as well. One example—we were just having a bit of a conversation about that earlier—is this thing of, you know, on the highways there, you’ve got the on-ramps and many of them have got the traffic light system to allow you to get on and off and to manage that. Now, if you get that thing wrong, where does that traffic end up? It ends up backing all through the local road system.

I would say—and, Julie Anne Genter, I would like to remind you of this—that when we had the discussion not that long ago about time-of-use charging and congestion charging, what did we do as a select committee? I was really strong on this: we wanted to make sure, first of all, that councils across the country came to us and said, “If central government dominates this thing, then we are out; we’re not going to be involved in this.” So we pushed for that. We pushed with the Minister, and the Minister initially said, “No, no, no, no, don’t want to do that.” We pushed with the Minister and said, “You have to have a partnership. You have to have a neutral chair. You cannot have the New Zealand Transport Agency being the one that calls the shots.” So we changed that. We made changes to a piece of legislation to reflect that it’s a partnership and that we need to be working together on those partnerships.

So a 30-year plan. I just wanted to endorse the comments that Simon Court made about the design of this. In the bill—or what will soon be an Act—we have this process which requires strong consultation and open consultation with the whole community. That’s in there. Specifically, that actually includes Māori and that whole community, and that’s right and proper.

But then we’ve got, at the front end of that, before you even get to the consultation, you have this issue of designing it. At the moment, the designers are, essentially, the mayor and representatives, the Minister and representatives, and Māori. Now, Māori, in this instance, is roughly one-fifth of our population; it also includes people who are overseas. So we’ve got this large group of people who are now involved in the design of this, before consultation, which doesn’t strike as the smartest thing. We did have a go—Cameron Luxton and I—at the committee stage, saying, “Actually, we should really look at amending that so it’s actually practical and sensible.” It’s not there as practical and sensible; so we’ll just see how that one works out and whether—you know, we said, “Well, what about the Māori standing committee?”, which, as part of the council, statutorily, you could have done that, you could have said “iwi”, but that is not what the legislation says. So fixing some of those bits of legislation and making them more practical is, obviously, a very sensible thing to do.

I just wanted to finish off with the other point about the idea of localism. This is localism. It does help the council to plan long term. That point about long term: New Zealanders, I think, want long-term planning. I think that they want that across the board. They want to see this Parliament and they want to see this Government—they want to see any Government—think about the long term. Three years is hopeless. They don’t want the flipping and flopping between different sorts of Government; they want to see a long-term plan, a sense of direction, and a sense of purpose for the country.

We require that. We actually require, by law, councils to have long-term plans, and those are for at least 10 years. We require them to make strategies and they do that, and so they have a much greater sense of direction for where their district is going and where their region is going than we do as a nation, and that is something that we need to look at. For the legislation that we put in place today, maybe that is something we should look in that mirror about and do a lot more of, as a Government on behalf of the nation.

I’m just going to finish off by saying a big thanks to all the people who have participated in this. Thanks particularly to the select committee, thanks also to the submitters, and thanks particularly to the Auckland Council and the officials who worked assiduously on this. I think that they have given us a good bill. It’s a good way forward, and I think it will stand Auckland in very, very good stead.

There’s one other thing that I did remember, and which Simon Court mentioned, which, essentially, is the ability to be able to develop almost anything anywhere. He blamed Wayne Brown for saying that he wants development to go into particular places, and I would say that, actually, that’s fine, but there is one issue there. If you were to go and talk to the likes of the Infrastructure Commission and so on again—and it’s the point that I’ve made in this House before and that they’ve made before to us as a select committee, and Simon will remember this very, very well—they have said that growth at the moment pays for between 30 percent and 50 percent of the costs of growth. That means that the other 50 to 70 percent lands on the ratepayers, the taxpayers, the road users, the water consumers, and so on, and so growth is not paying for growth.

The other point that I am understanding now is that so often what has happened is that we have been, essentially, mining the renewal budget. When you depreciate something, you collect depreciation, and the idea is that that depreciation is supposed to go towards the renewal of assets, but so often what happens is that that growth not paying for growth has been masked by the depreciation on existing assets—which should have been used to renew those existing assets over time—going to pay for growth. Growth has not been paying for growth, and that is one of the reasons—

Simon Court: Councils—can’t trust them. Send the Auditor-General in.

ANDY FOSTER: Yeah, the Auditor-General should have picked that up—absolutely. Lots of people should have picked that up, but we haven’t, and that is one of the reasons we have an infrastructure deficit which looks as it does. We do need to do that long-term thinking. We need to make sure that our infrastructure funding system works well, as well.

I’m delighted to see that this bill has now got its final stage and will become law very, very shortly. I think that it will stand Auckland in good stead, and it has a lot of lessons for us, as well. I commend this bill to the House.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau) (16:22): E te Pīka, tēnā koe. Tāmaki-makau-rau is the city of whakapapa, of movement, and of many people whose journeys cross and converge every single day, and yet for far too long our transport system has not upheld its side of the relationship. In fact, it’s tagged as Tāmaki traffic woes, the peak-hour traffic, and it’s the butt of all jokes in Tāmaki-makau-rau.

The transport system has been utterly confusing, frustrating, and, too often, disconnected from the lived realities of our whānau and our communities. The people in Tāmaki-makau-rau have lived with a system where responsibility is unclear, where accountability slips between institutions, and where decisions that shape daily life are made far from the people who feel their impact. Even as Auckland Transport’s operational performance has improved, public confidence has remained fragile. Reporting over the past two years shows that the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau still struggle to understand who is actually in charge.

The bill is an attempt to restore balance and I do acknowledge that, and I acknowledge that these reforms do matter. They help to rebuild trust. They help to ensure that the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau can see who is responsible for the choices that shape their commutes, their neighbourhoods, and their futures, but—and it’s a big “but”—as the MP for Tāmaki Makaurau, I must also speak to the parts of this bill that fall short, particularly where Māori rights, Māori representation, and Māori outcomes are concerned.

Throughout the select committee process, Māori voices were very clear. Mana whenua, Māori organisations, local boards, and community groups all raised concerns. They told us that the bill as introduced did not adequately reflect the Te Tiriti principles. They told us that Māori representation at the governance level was not guaranteed. They told us that consultation alone is not partnership and that opportunities to embed Māori outcomes, protect cultural sites of significance, and retain Māori expertise were being missed. Healthy Families Waitākere highlighted that fragmented governance has already produced inequitable outcomes for Māori, for Pasifika peoples, and underserved communities in West Auckland. Auckland Council submitted that the bill misses critical opportunities to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to respond to the issues of significance for Māori in Tāmaki-makau-rau—that’s what the Auckland Council reported.

The select committee did strengthen this bill, and I do acknowledge that. The requirement for the Auckland Regional Transport Committee to establish and maintain processes for Māori to contribute to the 30-year plan is a step forward, and the explicit requirement, though, to consult with Māori is another, but these changes do not resolve everything. There is still no guaranteed Māori representation at the governance level, there is still no explicit requirement that the 30-year plan reflect Te Tiriti principles, there is still no assurance that Māori outcomes, Māori procurement, and the protection of wāhi tapu will be embedded in the new structures, and there is still no mechanism—this is really important—to ensure that Māori engagement systems built over many years are not lost in the transition.

These gaps really matter—they absolutely matter—to mana whenua, they matter for Māori communities across Tāmaki-makau-rau, and they matter for the integrity of our transport planning because when Māori are not meaningfully included, the outcomes for everyone suffer. Let me be very clear for this House: while my party, Te Pāti Māori, supports this bill, we will not let these issues fade. We will monitor implementation closely. We will push for stronger Māori representation. We will advocate for Te Tiriti - consistent planning, for the protection of Māori land and cultural sites, and for transparent reporting of Māori outcomes.

Tāmaki-makau-rau deserves a better transport system, one that does work, and Māori deserve a system that honours Te Tiriti. This bill is a foundation, but it is not the final word, and, on that basis, we commend this bill to the House.

MIKE DAVIDSON (Green) (16:27): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party—who are in support of this bill—to take a split call. We’ve all acknowledged that the current situation is not fit for purpose, with a lot of Aucklanders not having their voices heard on the way that the system works, especially when we have had a forward-thinking and progressive Auckland Council but with some of its decisions not actually being listened to.

This bill is a good step forward, but, as my colleague the Hon Julie Anne Genter mentioned, it was a bit of a mixed bag. I haven’t really been part of this process, and so I’ve been reading through quite a bit of it.

There are a few things that do stand out, and it’s been quite interesting. We’ve seen of late that, once again, there have been a few culture wars that have been stoked a lot, and we’re hearing a bit of a narrative about co-governance and having non-elected members on voting boards, but when we look at the appointments to the Auckland Regional Transport Committee, I haven’t heard the same angst from over on the other side of the House about the fact that the Minister gets to appoint three voting members. I assume that they won’t be elected members, and so we’re going to have the Auckland Regional Transport Committee, which will have a number of non-elected members. We don’t know whether they will be Aucklanders—we’re not too sure. That’s going to be up to the Minister of Transport.

Here’s a good example of co-governance that does excludemana whenua. It’s co-governance of a different type. It’s people who are not elected, but we’re not hearing anything from the ACT Party on that. Clearly, their issue with co-governance just belongs withmana whenua, and so it’s a shame, really.

I also looked at the mayoral appointments, and, obviously, the mayor will have to consult with the governing body, but at the end of the day, we know that the current mayor, Wayne Brown, is a very strong-minded mayor. He gets the final say, and so I’m sure that if he consults with the governing body and they don’t agree, I have a feeling that he won’t care much and he will put on to the committee the people whom he thinks are the best.

So you’re really going to have two people—the Minister of Transport and the Mayor of Auckland—basically, dictating what’s going to happen to Auckland Transport over a long period of time. Often we’ll find there’ll be mayors that don’t truly reflect what their councils want to achieve in the transport space.

I think, when we look through this bill, obviously, what it’s trying to do is create a bespoke solution for Auckland. We understand, Auckland is an extremely populous place with, I think, 1.8 million people living there now—far more than any other city in the country. But I think we’ve just got to be a little bit careful that we don’t create a solution for Auckland that jeopardises transport investment in other cities, with the bulk of the money going to Auckland. I say that with current concern with what is happening in the South Island right now.

We look at Canterbury. I assume the Associate Minister of Transport is very aware of what’s happening in Canterbury and the lack of funding that we’re currently getting in Canterbury. Canterbury represents 13 percent of New Zealand’s population. We contribute 15 percent of the vehicle kilometres travelled. But how much funding do we get in Canterbury? Just 5 percent—5 percent—of funding, basically, because all the funding is going to the North Island, especially Auckland. And we’re not saying that Auckland doesn’t deserve transport funding. We’re saying that Canterbury, the South Island, deserves its fair share.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can I ask the member to come back to this bill.

MIKE DAVIDSON: So what concerns me when we create a bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Can I ask the member to come back to this bill—

MIKE DAVIDSON: Yes, and I was coming straight back to the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Excuse me. Come back to this bill, please.

MIKE DAVIDSON: Yes, Madam Speaker. I was coming back to this bill, because what I was saying is what concerns me with this bill, with its focus on Auckland—creates a bespoke solution for Auckland Transport—is that, actually, we’ll see more and more funding going to Auckland and the transport system in Auckland, and therefore other cities across New Zealand will miss out on that needed funding. We’re seeing that right now with public transport projects cut all across the South Island. There is considerable concern with what is happening. So while the Green Party supports this, we are concerned with some aspects of it. Kia ora.

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Local Government) (16:32): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. What a great day it is for Auckland today—what a great day. We are restoring democratic accountability to transport in our biggest city. One-third of Kiwis live in Auckland, 40 percent of GDP, and these changes that we’re making today are real action after a long period of time of non-delivery. Aucklanders, at long last, are going to get back the power that they rightfully deserve in regards to planning and dealing with transport in their city.

I want to acknowledge the mayor, Mayor Brown, for his work and engagement on this. It is critically important that we have mutual respect and recognition between the relationship and that of Wellington and of Auckland Council in particular. The important aspect of this bill is we’ll see joint accountability and work between Wellington and Auckland Council to make this work a reality. It aligns the Crown responsibilities with Auckland Council, which is very, very important. Importantly, it brings home a promise that was made again to ensure that Aucklanders are in control of their destiny around transport. Transport congestion is a major issue. I’ll tell you what, on this side of the House, National have 17 MPs in Auckland. That is a significant representation. I can see them all around. A very fine and great group here. I’ll tell you what, finding solutions to the big issues such as transport congestion—

Shanan Halbert: Maybe in the North Shore electorate.

Hon SIMON WATTS: You can hear the member Shanan Halbert on the other side, harping away. But look, at the end of the day, delivery is happening on this side. What’s good for Auckland is good for New Zealand. I’m very pleased to commend this bill.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour) (16:34): Madam Speaker, thank you. That was an awful lot of exuberance for a Government bill that was mainly designed and drafted by the Auckland Council itself. But, nevertheless, you’ve got to take credit where you can get some, I suppose, if you’re this Government.

It’s a pleasure to stand and talk on the third reading of this bill; it’s the Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill. Just to sort of bring the tone down a little bit and recap some of the contributions that have been made to date, I think it’s very clear that it’s something that most of us can agree on, in so far as it’s a good piece of legislation that affords an opportunity for our largest city and for an incredibly significantly important part of New Zealand to have the type of governance arrangements that they need over their transport. As we’ve heard from several prior contributions, it was an unusual sort of situation that they ended up finding themselves with in the first place. It’s taken quite some time to find suitable remedy, but here we are with a bill that we’re happy to support that should, if all things go well—all things going as planned—deliver the types of benefits that are not just practical and tangible, but also in line with how other authorities in other regions are able to make those decisions for their transport needs and for what’s best for their constituents with regard to public transport and use of transport, and that can only be a good thing.

It is a bill that has indeed benefited from a select committee process. It’s always good, I think—and colleagues, we often talk about this, particularly whilst we’re on this side of the House—singing the praises of the select committee process and making sure, particularly while you spend that very short amount of time that we intend to in Opposition, that you make the most of that time and are able to afford yourself the opportunity to take a bill that will become a piece of legislation and whilst it might not necessarily have been your choice or it might not be exactly the way that you would have chosen it to come to the House in the first place, we are able to work our way through it, work collegially and collaboratively with members from across the House, and make some recommendations. This is an example of one of those bills that is now more workable, accountable, and is a much more balanced piece of legislation from the collective efforts from all of those members from all of those different parties.

At the core, this bill, as has been said, is about who makes decisions and who is accountable when things go wrong. As said, it is very good to be in the third reading, but at the beginning of this process, much was made about the impetus, perhaps, of how we find ourselves with this bill in front of us being a magic account of how Aucklanders would rise and make different decisions when it came time to vote in their local representatives, almost certainly as some members of the select committee thought they would because of their frustrations with decision-making about local transport.

Whilst I think that that’s probably highly unlikely and a little bit exaggerated, it does go to highlight the fact that that is what local democracy is about. We should be able to have local issues. We should be able to not sacrifice meaningful local everyday issues to a wider systemic kind of view of a system that does also have to integrate and does also have to work well together, but there are different levels of that local accountability to be able to make that happen. It’s important that the people that we represent, no matter in which type of forum, are able to know what decisions are made and by whom, so that they can hold those people to account.

The legislation delivers a clear shift, as has been said, towards a more democratic accountability in Auckland’s transport system. It returns key transport decision-making to those elected members. I would like to pick up on a comment made by the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Andy Foster, who has led a very good process, as he does on all of the bills that come to that select committee. He and other contributing members have mentioned that, of course, democracy is only as good as the systems that surround it and the constraints that constrain it. As my colleague Tangi Utikere noted, some of the democratic processes in Auckland are very different to the rest of the country. I think I was—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Some of the elected members are!

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Ha, ha! The Hon Dr Duncan Webb chipped in with “Some of the elected members are.”

Not everybody in the country would appreciate that Auckland has quite a different structure. I certainly know local elected members in the Christchurch region who are elected to community boards and who would regard some of what they do as being equivalent to those local boards, and they’ve been quite shocked to find that the local boards have a much different size in their budgets and a much broader decision-making sphere in front of them. That is important to take into account, because it’s been a contributing factor in deciding that there’s certain decisions within the Auckland transport framework that should be made at those very, very local levels, by the people who actually understand the issues of local commuting, parking—all of those types of things—because they’re ones having those interactions and conversations on the day to day with their constituents.

The Auckland Regional Transport Committee—the ARTC—obviously, this is what has been established through this bill, and the fact that it is now responsible and is able to design that 30-year integrated transport plan can only be a good thing. The fact that Auckland Transport is, now, also left with a very clear mandate for what it is that they are to do, and they are left with delivering—still a very important part of our transport system—the public transport services, and maybe even, as had been suggested by several submitters, making sure that those focuses are very clearly delineated, and that those accountabilities and responsibilities are different, could cause there to be a little bit more emphasis and oomph in both directions.

I would like to, also, pick up on something that the New Zealand First member Andy Foster said, when he expressed—and he wasn’t the only person; he was relaying some concern that was expressed through the select committee process—that some members had taken exception to the concept that consultation needed to happen with Māori. Whilst we aired that quite thoroughly at the time, and have landed where we’ve landed, I also would like to acknowledge that, often, we use language like that—we say, “You must consult with the public.”, and that doesn’t mean every single person conceivably who makes up the body of what can be thought of as the public needs to be accounted for; of course there’s a mechanism underneath that to be able to do that properly. I think, through the select committee process, we were reminded of the clear engagement pathways that already exist, and we presume the fact that Auckland Council were quite insistent that that be something that was maintained through this process can only mean, arguably, that they insisted that because it works well already and it functions. I mean, as human beings we don’t tend to continue to do things that don’t function. We don’t go out of our way to ensure that those mechanisms or those practices endure if they don’t serve that function. I think we can move on from that quite confidently, at last.

I think, overall, other colleagues have gone through the list of specific changes that were made through that select committee process; I won’t do that any further, other than to say, and to reiterate, that this is an example, as I said, of a bill that went through an appropriate process, was able to benefit from that process, and Labour is happy to continue its support and to see this bill turned into legislation.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (16:44): Today is a good day for Auckland, because once this bill becomes law, this bill becomes an Act that restores democracy, accountability, and local responsiveness for Auckland Transport decisions. After 16 long years, it restores democracy by ensuring that elected people are accountable for transport decisions. It ensures accountability by making sure that council is in charge of transport and that the council-controlled organisation is in charge of delivering public transport. It ensures local responsiveness by empowering local boards to make better and greater decisions on transport-related matters, and it empowers the council body to make such decisions, as well.

I wish to thank Mayor Wayne Brown, Minister Simeon Brown, transport Minister Chris Bishop, and my select committee colleagues on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for a wonderful select committee process. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): This is a split call—I call Shanan Halbert.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour) (16:45): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It does indeed feel like we’re going full circle and it makes me think, in 16 years’ time, which mistakes the National Party might want to go back and fix up. This is one of those examples where, back in the day, the National Party and the ACT Party established council-controlled organisations (CCOs), and here they are today, saying “Thank goodness elected members are back in charge of Auckland Transport.” Now, I remember listening to speeches back then, when the Labour Party at the time challenged the Government of the day to not continue with the corporatisation, with the CCO model that was in place, to protect elected members and democracy in our council systems and in Auckland Transport, and here we are. They have seen the light.

I think they have possibly seen the light because a number of us, any members of Parliament, any locally elected members in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, will know that it has been a challenging time with Auckland Transport. It’s been challenging for the public, and it’s been challenging for the organisation itself, because transport isn’t the same in the modern day as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Our great city has grown significantly to be 1.5 million people—one-third of this country. We need a transport system that actually meets the needs of modern-day people moving around the city. It needs to get on top of the congestion challenges. But, most of all, Mr Speaker—good to see you in the Chair, because, once upon a time, I know that you were the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and there were a lot of issues raised about congestion at that particular time.

The importance of this bill is that it has been really pushed by Mayor Wayne Brown. There’s been a lot of work done by Auckland Council and the mayor’s office. I want to acknowledge Stu Mullin and Sam Jaffe in the mayor’s office, who have done good work in the background to make this happen.

For those of you who might be on the Governance and Administration Committee and the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I go back to 21 May 2024, when I wrote a letter calling for an inquiry into the accountability of Auckland Transport. At that particular time, this Government hadn’t made any moves to address the call of Wayne Brown to bring Auckland Transport back in-house, to make them more accountable, and to ensure that the priority systems within our transport sector in Auckland were, in fact, taken seriously by this Government. I really appreciate that, at some point, the Government listened, that they actually adopted Auckland Council’s work to take forward as a Government programme of work. Good on you, because, at times, you do need to be a little bit humble and enable others’ ideas to come through for better outcomes for our city and for the people that live there.

Let’s also note, today, that while this is a significant change and a celebration for Aucklanders and Auckland Council, there is the reality that, under their watch, under this Government, they significantly cut back the contribution that our Government made to transport in Auckland. I understand, from memory, that it’s somewhere around $120 million, at the time, that has been taken out, particularly from our public transport fund. So, yes, we can tweak around the edges, but, without real investment, we aren’t going to get on top of our congestion woes. This Government needs to take seriously the needs of Auckland Transport, Auckland Council, and our transport systems overall.

It also moves into the theme of this Government with the regional deal; it’s a high set of principles, but there’s not much teeth. They’ve got some examples of work that is already under way, but it’s not meeting the needs of Mayor Wayne Brown, and it’s not meeting the needs of Aucklanders. While I support this bill, and I’m really happy that we are in the third reading and passing legislation today, I do encourage the Government to do more, to invest more, and to take Auckland seriously.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill) (16:50): The previous speaker mentioned that we’re going in a circle, but one thing he doesn’t understand is that at different times, different factors come into play, each shaping the decisions we make and the direction we go in. I think this is the reason why we’re here—to keep shaping our policy to fit into the modern day. One thing I’m sure of is that in 20 minutes’ time, Auckland Transport will be stepping into a new chapter. The bill will return the control of Auckland Transport back to Auckland Council.

What are the four key changes in this legislation? First, Auckland Transport will become a smaller council-controlled organisation focused primarily on delivering public transport services rather than setting transport policy. Second, Auckland Council will take responsibility for regional transport planning, policy, and funding, and strengthening the link between transport decisions and wider city planning. Arterial roads and the city centre will be the responsibility of the governing body of Auckland Council, made up of the mayor and 20 councillors. Third, an Auckland Regional Transport Committee will be established to develop a 10-year and 30-year integrated transport plan. Finally, local boards will gain greater delegated authority over local transport decisions. They will make decisions on local and collector roads, including setting speed limits, closing roads for events, parking management, and creating cycleways.

This bill restores democratic accountability to Auckland’s transport system and puts decision making back in the hands of Aucklanders. Today is a great day, full of opportunity, progress, and the promise of what is ahead. I commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (16:52): I want to talk a little bit about how we got here, how we probably should have got here a lot sooner, and explain for people at home how this fits within a framework.

I’ve been living in my area in Mount Albert, in the same house, for well over 35 years now. There was a problem in our city, because it was so broken up. We had all these little cities—and those had some advantages. They were very local, in some ways. There were good things about being local. I remember having the issue of the super-city raised and the breakthrough that was seen to be by people here because it was going to allow a lot more central planning—it was going to unlock so much potential from Auckland to have everything joined up in that way.

Some of that happened, but there were some disadvantages. I heard my friend across the House—when Shanan Halbert was talking about the issues when we brought in this institution, Auckland Transport (AT), and we did over-centralise—and he was saying, maybe that was Rodney Hide’s fault. Well, I’m not sure it was just Rodney Hide. I think it’s a style that we get into, where we think that we’re better at this than anyone else. I take Andy Foster’s point that we’re certainly not. We need to make sure that we’re always integrating the local into these things where it matters.

Today, we have a situation where we are reallocating responsibilities, and I’m glad to see it. I can see the sense in our council having a much greater planning role and these things being done in collaboration with us rather than a domination of central government in that process. I can see how this integrates with the city deal, and it allows us to look at the planning that Auckland should be doing of its own community. I disagree absolutely fundamentally with Simon Court about the advantages he sees in people being able to just build everywhere, etc. I can see that this is all about Auckland being able to plan its own future in a way that may be much, much better for Aucklanders. I can see the benefit in the local boards being empowered in the way that was actually envisaged when we first put together the idea of a super-city. They were supposed to have a lot more power, and now they will have some power in the system. They will be given power over certain local roads.

I just want to turn to the reality of what that means for my electorate of Mt Albert. I think one of the things I noticed most when I picked up this role was how many complaints there were about AT. They were frequent! They were enemy No. 1 for a lot of Aucklanders. It was at the level of just complete frustration where, with everything that seemed to be going on, there was no way they seemed to be able to get a resolution to a problem. I have been out with lovely people who are doing this job for AT, telling them about the most minor areas that need changing—the kind of stuff that makes people’s lives hard; where a traffic island has been put in the wrong place; where the lights don’t give people the right to turn right when they should.

It is really, really hard for constituents to put up with that for ever and ever and not really be able to get anything changed. It seems a little bit random that the way that it gets changed is by me walking out with some people from AT to tell them to watch traffic drive over a traffic island because that is the only way through—to show them a particular place where there is a parking spot that stops traffic flowing. That just seems a completely random way of doing business.

I’m hoping when I see this, and I see the new structure, that Auckland Council will have the part of the puzzle that makes sense to them, Auckland Transport will have the puzzle that it makes sense for them to have, and central government will also have a part to play, but it will be the right part. I’m very much looking forward to seeing local boards with some more substantive responsibility for something that they do know about best.

I have raised concerns and issues during the committee of the whole House stage about the idea of an Eden Park precinct. I think it’s a good one; it’s around a national stadium; and this is where it’s really important that we plan effectively to use that. But I still don’t have answers to the questions about how it will work beyond the precinct area that is going to be part of the framework. We don’t know where that precinct area is yet, and we don’t know what’s going to happen beyond it, where the traffic, when it is stopped around that precinct, tends to go and park. I think there is an issue there, and I’ll be following it up for my constituents.

I’d love to see things like a bridge across Sandringham Road, which will allow people to go from the railway station, where they are hopefully all coming without their cars, and that will be part of the City Rail Link. I’d love to see a footbridge across there so that we don’t have to stop traffic on that road, and I’ll be taking up that kind of local issue with the appropriate new part of this. I think that’s likely to be council, in this situation. I will be very much aware that this is an issue where the whole country benefits from the unlocking of that venue, but the community is the one that will need to be looked after locally in terms of a bridge like that. I would really like to make sure that people in those zones like the Eden Park precinct—and I actually live in that precinct. I think it’s really important that they get a chance to have their say on how that’s structured and that they aren’t locked out, but I actually think that that is very likely in this new scenario, where there is more focus on the local.

I am very keen to see this work. I will do everything I can do in my area, and I would just like to plead that those people who are now looking at their roles differently and are aware of where they sit in it—remember that it hasn’t been an easy run for Aucklanders who have found Auckland Transport impenetrable and frustrating, and it is really important that, this time, we get it right and we put people absolutely at the heart of each of those areas of responsibility. Whether it be the public transport system or whether it be the decision about what to do on local roads, I think it’s really important we listen to people.

Finally, I just want to talk about the issue of intensification, because it’s coming to my area. That’s just more houses. I can see this piece of legislation working really well when it comes to building public transport around those houses and with those houses and planning for our city in a way that means that those houses aren’t just houses, but they’re communities. I can see that happening. I had a constituent write to me recently, talking about how she wanted to see more bikes and she needed more walking zones. She has little children, so speeds are an issue. I’m hoping all that will be enhanced by this. I would like to ask those involved in this new structure to keep at the top of their minds that building of community and that potential. It’s not just about productivity, which is very, very important; it’s about building wellbeing—communities where people can walk, they can cycle, and they have community space in these spaces. I am thrilled to see this piece of legislation come through. I’ll be making sure that my constituents are able to use the mechanisms in it to get what they need to have a nice life in my electorate. Thank you.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (17:02): It’s an absolute pleasure to be the final speaker as we are ending the parliamentary process for this bill and sending it out to the beautiful New Zealand public so that they can feel the positive effects of it in the coming months. For too long, Auckland Transport has been a law unto themselves. I’ve seen my local board members being blamed, frankly, for decisions made by Auckland Transport that beggar belief. Right now, my office is dealing with a couple of situations where Auckland Transport has decided to put a bus stop in front of people’s driveways.

What, essentially, this bill will achieve, which resonates very well with myself in terms of thinking about my constituents in Takanini, is transferring Auckland Transport back under Auckland Council, where decisions on local roads are going to be made by the local members elected by local people. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill

Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (17:04): I move, That the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill and the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

These bills are about making it easier for New Zealanders to get on with building businesses, creating jobs, and growing their incomes. And while we’re at it, we’re making it harder for criminals to exploit our financial system. For too long, our anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime has asked too much of the wrong people and not enough of the right ones. It has burdened legitimate businesses with excessive compliance, while struggling to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated criminal activity. These bills fix that. They shift the system back to first principles: focus on risk, target harm, and get out of the way of productive activity. Because every hour that a small business spends ticking boxes is an hour not spent hiring staff, investing in new ideas, or growing their businesses. That matters, because growth is not some abstract economic idea. Growth means more jobs, it means higher wages, and more opportunities for New Zealanders.

At the heart of these reforms is a more practical and proportionate approach. A single supervisor with the Department of Internal Affairs will replace the fragmented three-supervisor system that created confusion, delay, and inconsistent guidance. Businesses will have clearer rules, faster answers, and greater certainty—the kind of environment that supports investment and innovation. Planning for the transition to a single AML/CFT supervisor within the Department of Internal Affairs is already under way and is on track to go live on 1 July this year, subject to the passage of these bills. The changes to the regime itself reinforce that same principle of less duplication and more clarity. These bills create a genuinely risk-based approach that directs effort where it is needed most. That is what good regulation looks like; not more rules, but better rules.

The Government should not be an overly cautious overseer that treats every risk as a reason to regulate. It should be a partner in enabling New Zealanders to succeed and focus on the most serious risks. When we default to asking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” in even the lowest risk situations, we end up building systems that penalise ambition and discourage innovation. These bills take a different approach. They ask, “How do we stop real harm while backing people to get on and create value?” This is how we build a more dynamic economy, that is how we encourage innovation, and that is how we lift incomes for working New Zealanders.

Of course, none of this comes at the expense of enforcement. In fact, it strengthens it. By reducing unnecessary compliance for low-risk activity, we free up resources, both for businesses and for regulators, to focus on detecting and disrupting serious criminal behaviour. That is what fixing what matters looks like in practice.

The supervisor and levy bill also enables an industry levy to support the system’s long-term sustainability. An effective AML/CFT regime must be properly resourced to provide guidance and detect crime. The introduction of a levy as part of a hybrid funding ensures the system can function as intended over the long term, and also reflects the public and industry benefits of the system.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the select committee, the officials, and submitters, whose input has helped sharpen these reforms. New Zealand cannot afford a system that slows down the productive economy, while failing to stop crime effectively. These bills strike a better balance that supports growth, encourages innovation, and protects the integrity of our financial system. There are practical, targeted reforms that will make a real difference: less red tape, more opportunity, and a system focused where it counts. For those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (17:09): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is the second bill—in fact, second and third bill this afternoon—that we’ve seen looking at, essentially, financial crime, having just looked at the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill. We’re gratified that the Government is taking seriously the issue of money-laundering and the financing of terrorism—money-laundering, in particular, because obviously the issue with illicit drugs in this country is pretty much out of control, with methamphetamine use and presence in the community skyrocketing. It’s kind of enforcement 101 to follow the money, and so if we can have a more effective anti - money-laundering (AML) framework, then all well and good.

We also support the genuine idea of regulation which is proportionate to the risk, but I do want to express some caution that risk-based regulation becomes a bit of a mantra and it is misinterpreted by officials to say, “Get rid of regulation.”, because good regulation, particularly in this area, is absolutely essential. We support this bill, but these bills largely lower the bar in terms of obligations. The Minister’s speech—at least the first half of it—was pretty much focused on making it easier, saying that there were excessive requirements under the existing legislation and making things practical and proportionate and just a long kind of list as if to say that our anti - money-laundering rules were an awkward impediment to the doing of business.

Now, we agree that every time you look at a rule, you want to say, “What’s the problem? Is this an effective fix and is there a better alternative which is less onerous?” All good questions to ask, but across Government we’re concerned that there’s a principle or an underpinning value that getting rid of regulations is good, full stop. So we just want to make sure that when we approach a question like this, we approach it thoughtfully and carefully. Having said all that, we support this bill. We think it’s appropriate to make it easier for people who are low risk to move money between entities and so on.

So the Minister, in a previous stage of this legislation, looked at family trusts. He noted that there are hundreds of thousands of family trusts, many of which will be doing extremely innocuous transactions, buying a new house, and whilst they might not have previously gone through an AML know-your-customer procedure, the current law would require them to bring their passports along or so on and so forth, and, in fact, they’ve been at the bank for 30 years and it’s not in question.

Having said that, we also need, I think, to make sure that the rules are sufficiently flexible so that where there is some aspect of a transaction which is unusual, even though it fits within the low-risk category, it should trigger further investigations. Most good entities, banks, financiers, lawyers—the good ones—will do that anyway.

But if we look, for example, at children’s bank accounts, sure, children’s bank accounts are a good thing, and if you’re giving them 10 bucks or 20 bucks a week or whatever it might be, or even a bit more, if you’ve got a bit of money and you want to teach them to save—

Hon Cameron Brewer: Be a bit more generous.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, I’m simply not, but the point is that if we see a child’s bank account and all of a sudden it’s got $30,000 dropped into it for the third occasion, then we need to think, “Hang on, that’s really unusual.” Maybe they’ve got lots of generous aunties and uncles, but it’s also possible that someone is putting that money in it and using it to launder drug money or some other thing.

Let’s just make sure that when we approach these questions—because this is a really important tool. Of course, the worst possible outcome would be that we change the rules and people with nefarious intent will spot the changes and go, “Great. There’s a little ray of light.” The money will follow the weakest path, the path where it’s most likely to be undetected, so let’s make sure that we don’t create a pathway for illicit money that then funds the drug industry, the illicit drug industry that in this country is out of control. Let’s make sure that we do that right.

Of course, the other point that’s going on here is this levy. Essentially, it’s another tax that this Government’s imposing—imposing it on the businesses like banks and lawyers and real estate agents. They’re going to be taxed to fund the work of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in this area. Now, I can understand a little bit of cost recovery there, but the point of money-laundering is it’s, essentially, detection and enforcement, right? That is very much a public interest matter. No one expects a levy on retailers for police costs for addressing retail crime, so why should you tax financiers for addressing financial crime? We’ve got to be really careful there.

Now, I get that it’s an easy win. No one minds too much if you ask a bit more of banks and lawyers, but I think we’ve got to be cautious when we’re funding something which is a public interest matter where the benefit of the activity actually falls across society as a whole—the absence of financial crime and money-laundering and what have you—and yet you put the impost on a narrow section of society, because whilst it’s easy when it’s banks and lawyers, I worry that we’ll look elsewhere and before you know it, there will be other industries which are perhaps less able to bear the cost.

Of course, the other point—again, which we support—is the rationalisation of the entities that are undertaking this work, putting all of the functions into the Department of Internal Affairs. Certainly, as I understand it, there were reports that pretty much accepted that depending on who your regulator was, whether you were regulated by the Reserve Bank or by DIA or by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), you’d be getting different advice. Now, I always have trouble when you’ve got the same law administered by different agencies and they’re all giving different advice. You’ve got to kind of ask what’s going on there and why is it that agencies seem to think that they can almost tell industry what the law is on the basis of their interpretation when they issue a guidance document or a policy document or an operational document of some kind.

Bringing it together in DIA is good, but that transition needs to be well resourced because this is not form-filling. It requires not only good record-keeping but also some significant forensic financial skills, because one transaction alone is probably innocuous, even if it’s a large and unusual one. It may well be able to be explained, but the question is: what are the other related transactions? What have the parties to that transaction done in other guises elsewhere? The kind of data matching and forensic accounting that needs to go on is not something which you can just pick up and do. We need to make sure that the expertise that exists in all of those organisations, particularly the FMA, comes over into DIA who then is able to run a really robust, world-class anti - money-laundering framework because it’s a really important thing to do.

Good to see that financial crime, funding of criminal enterprise, particularly drugs, is on this Government’s agenda. That’s a good thing. We support that and we will look with interest to see how this piece of legislation is implemented.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green) (17:19): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to speak on both the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill and the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The Green Party will be supporting both bills.

To start with, I do want to thank the Minister for her engagement throughout this committee stage, particularly her due diligence and her transparency, and also the fact that she made what for many may sound like two very technical and potentially boring bills really interesting and exciting. It was a great committee stage, and it was one of the few instances of associated bills that we have seen here in the House, and yet it’s important to note that the committee stages were done separately. There were a number of, I guess, humorous incidents where people in the committee did get the two bills muddled up and we had to kind of move things around a bit.

In terms of these two bills, they are two out of the four bills that were introduced as part of the AML/CFT, which I will use as an abbreviation for the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, because otherwise it is a lot to—yeah, try saying that five times fast. With the AML/CFT, these two bills are bills Nos 2 and 3. We did pass the first bill, and, as we’ve been told by the Minister, there will be a fourth one coming.

In terms of the first one—the AML/CFT amendment bill—one of the first things to note, which we discussed as part of the committee stage, was the fact that the commencement date for this bill is happening after the Royal assent, whereas the commencement date for the subsequent bill, which is the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, is happening on 1 July. I thought it was an interesting conversation with the Minister around why they are different dates and about the requirements for the different dates, particularly in light of the fact that the supervisor, levy, and other matters amendment bill requires additional processes and also systems to be set up within the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) to make sure that it does function by 1 July. That was an interesting observation, because that wasn’t the case when the legislation was first introduced.

In terms of the first bill, the definition part is something that we did spend a little bit of time on because, again, there were certain exemptions that were given and it was really important for Parliament and for this House to be able to seek clarifications from the Minister both in terms of the definition of a beneficial owner, but also in terms of the definition for, I believe, the exemptions granted for trust and company service providers. So that was something that was discussed at length.

I think, for me, the crux of this particular bill that was really interesting was around—and there was a definition I will mention later on in terms of suspicious activities in the second bill. But in this first bill, the insertion of the definition around stored value instruments is a really important one, because one of the things that we do see is while some of the money-laundering and also financing of terrorism that’s happened from a monetary perspective, we do see more money-laundering happening by other avenues. While the stored value instruments talk about portable devices, but it also includes things like gold, silver, precious metals, and precious stones, the portable devices are those that contain monetary value that is not a physical currency. It’s really important in light of a drastic increase over the last decade of the use of cryptocurrency.

The example that we used as part of the committee of the whole House stage was around NFTs—non-fungible tokens—where the NFTs, for example, are something that was hyped up quite a bit over the last few years, where there’s suddenly a huge inflation in its value and it got shrunk at the same time. But with NFTs, one of the issues we do see there is once you are in that kind of system, it kind of disappears, they are very hard to trace, and it has been used as a mechanism for money-laundering. The issues with NFTs, of course, and also with cryptocurrency are around the underlying blockchain technology that is used for a lot of that as well.

So it is really good to hear from the Minister that, for example, something like that is on the agenda and will be considered more seriously as part of this package, because, again, when we are looking at legislation, legislation sometimes is hard to catch up with the advances that we’re seeing in technology. So with something like this, we are hoping that there is able to be better agility and better ability for our agencies both domestically but also internationally to be able to respond to blockchain technologies and changes in the way that money-laundering is done at a global scale.

I think, finally, in terms of the first bill, it’s also something that was brought to our attention as part of this select committee stage by the Minister that the Minister has put in two additional amendments which takes up certain sections from this bill to be inserted in the other bill—censure being an important aspect of that. As I mentioned in my second reading speech, formal warning was something that was reintroduced into the bill as part of the select committee process, noting that while formal warning is more proactive, censure takes more of a punitive and punishing mechanism. That is something it’s important for both to retain. Censure has been moved from one bill to the other. That’s an important aspect from the select committee stage as well.

Now, moving on to the second bill. One of the first things that we mentioned, again, in terms of suspicious activities and in terms of what we are looking at, the example that I gave in the second reading around Lafarge cement, which is a subsidiary now of the Swiss cement company Holcim, which also operates here domestically, is: how then do we look at suspicious activities when you are looking at something that is a subsidiary of another company? How is the way that DIA, potentially, will be able to, with the tools they have, analyse or counter some of those—is really important. Again, this is something that was good to hear from the Minister on some of the reassurances around how things like this could be held accountable and the way that things could be traced if a parent company, for example, is implicit in a lot of these actions. Again, Lafarge cement was part of a landmark case in France regarding the countering of terrorism in Syria and surrounding areas. Again, this was something that was important for us to tease out in part of the definition for clause 7 of that bill.

Additional ones to mention as well in terms of this, obviously the most important part of the supervisor levy and other matters bill is the reduction of three supervisors to one. That was a key component of this. The three supervisors currently are the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), and of course DIA. It’s important, also, to note that there was a lot of disagreement or dissent from the RBNZ as well as the FMA around, I guess, in some ways, the removal of both of them as part of this process and retaining with DIA. One of the conversations we did have with the Minister is around how that expertise from the RBNZ and FMA is able to be transferred over to DIA. Again, it was good to hear that that is something that has already been considered by the Minister and that is something that will be taken on board as part of the expertise and potentially moved over to experts within DIA.

One of the other comments that the RBNZ made—and this comes down to the levy component—was the idea that this is a costly structural change. But it’s important to note that while the levy has been introduced—and it’s good to see a tiered levy based on the level of risk that foreseeable they may produce. So banks, potentially, will have a higher bracket of levy than other areas. It’s also important to note that the legislation kind of specifies that only a portion of the costs will come from levies, whereas there’s a baseline understanding that the public interest aspect will still be funded publicly and by budgetary implications as part of, I guess, Vote Internal Affairs.

Finally, although there are definitely things that are important for us to keep an eye on and see how they progress—things like secondary legislation, code of practices under the chief executive, that is something we’re looking forward to as part of the review process with our financial action task force in 2028. That’s something that the Minister has also given reassurances around in terms of how that review will potentially review this whole AML/CFT package on the whole. With that, the Green Party is comfortable with where both bills landed and we’ll be supporting both bills.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini) (17:29): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s really good to get to this stage of these two bills. I’m looking forward to seeing the positive effect, as well, that these bills will have going forward. It’s really important, like the Minister mentioned in her third reading speech moments ago, that this will be helping New Zealand grow as a whole. Essentially, what this bill does is it strengthens the laws around anti - money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. It does this by simplifying the system, by reducing red tape and unnecessary burdens on businesses—which is very important to us in the National Party—and still making sure that authorities are given better and practical tools to recognise risks and tackle crime. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Minister of Customs) (17:30): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the two bills before the House—to save everyone a bit of time, I won’t name them. As a New Zealand First MP, it is behoved on me to remind everyone that New Zealand First is a party that is founded on some very basic pillars, and two of those relate specifically to this bill, which are building a prosperous nation and protecting communities and country.

It is encouraging to me to hear the speeches across the House today recognising the impact of organised crime and that money-laundering is the critical component. The work that I have been doing around organised crimes in recent months is focused particularly on this concept of “follow the money”. Criminals will not commit the offences if they can’t profit, and the more we can do to pursue money and prevent money from being taken from our economy, from ill-gotten gains, is really important. I would like to commend the Associate Minister of Justice for the hard work she has done in navigating this complex area.

The important component which I think is worth mentioning is the concept of the single supervisor. As has been mentioned, this is not about weakening our response; it is actually clarifying our response. It is that actually putting a single supervisor in charge will ensure that we have great clarity and that, therefore, we can respond where risk exists, rather than a blanket response across all activity, and that is what we had in place prior to this legislation.

It is really encouraging that we have some real clarity around this space, that we have the opportunity to focus our resources on a single-supervisor accountability and that the sector—both those trying to do business and grow our economy—will have greater clarity and that we are sending a much clearer message around the funding of terrorism and money-laundering, that we are going to be risk proportionate and responsible in our approach. Therefore, New Zealand First is happy to commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (17:32): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to take the second call to support my very studious colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s contributions on the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, which is being read in association with the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. These two bills are a part of a suite of four bills. One bill has already gone through the House, and these are the next two to move through the House.

Procedurally, it was different—for the parliamentary nerds that are watching the House at this last hours—to see that, although we’re reading these two bills together in the third reading and did so also at the second reading, when we were in the committee of the whole House stage, we were considering them separately, as well, and that led to a little bit of humorous confusion amongst members. It was good to have a Minister that was engaging, good to have a Minister that was open to actually having a discussion as members across the House tried to tease out some of the inconsistencies, if they were that, if this was a normal process—so, for example, the differences around commencement dates that needed to be synced up between the two different bills, to make sure that when these do receive Royal assent that, actually, these things will be able to move forward effectively.

There was a considerable, interesting debate around the supervisors, reducing it from three to one. We originally—still have—had one supervisor from the Reserve Bank, one with the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), and one with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), and so this will be reduced down to DIA. We know that there were concerns at some of those different agencies, where they wanted to retain that role within their organisation, but what we did discuss at the committee of the whole House stage is that it would be more effective and more efficient for that to happen within one organisation. That’s going to be happening in DIA. We were given assurances, actually, that the people or, at least, the skill sets in those other two organisations will be migrated over into DIA, so some of the concerns that people have—well, actually, an organisation like the Reserve Bank has a very specific skill set and so do folks within the FMA, so knowing that those skill sets will be migrated over into DIA is a source of comfort. Also to note, as well, is that there is going to be a two-year review period. Maybe the House got it wrong and we’ll know that within two years. So, possibly, adjustments could be made at that two-year period.

There was a really interesting debate that we had around some of those different skill sets. I think one of the members from the Labour Party talked about how money-laundering could happen, used to happen, and probably still happens around real estate agents, as well. That was an important part to make and important to alert the Minister that, actually, this is also one of those areas of expertise that experience should be migrated over into that single supervisor role, as well.

Along with the awareness around stored portable devices—we are in a very changing world. Things are not just showing up on USBs; NFTs are also an issue, the rise of cryptocurrency. Making sure that we have a system that is dynamic can actually capture that. Moving through the system is also really important, as well.

The point around subsidiary companies, I think, is an important one. Dr Lawrence Xu-‍Nan did talk about the case with the Lafarge cement company, who were found to be financing terrorism in Syria and closely related areas. I think that would be an area of future work for this framework to make sure that, well, actually, if this is happening within our jurisdiction, something needs to happen there. I would recommend to the House, to the Minister as well, to make sure that that’s something that happens, because we don’t want that happening on our watch.

The Greens are very comfortable with these bills. It is really important that we do have a robust framework, that there are checks and balances. Being able to tease that out in the committee of the whole House stage was incredibly important. These were two bills read together, in association, in this third reading. They were back to back in the committee of the whole House stage. I think that one more bill will come through the House, so we look forward to that, to making sure that we have a comprehensive suite which has those checks and balances. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (17:37): These bills taken together address a serious concern for New Zealand. That is why it’s great to have all parties in this Parliament vote in favour of this bill. With that, I commend it to the House.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East) (17:38): Thank you. I am taken to my feet a little earlier than I expected after such a succinct offering from the member on the other side of the House—not necessarily a criticism. Not necessarily a criticism when it’s an offering from the other side of the House; sometimes the more succinct, the better.

However, on this occasion, we are speaking in agreement and speaking on the Anti-‍Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, as well as the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill. Even this week, with the similarity of both the subject matter and also the titles of those bills, there was, in fact, at times, confusion in the House from members around which bill we were speaking on.

There was no confusion, though, about the importance of the issues around how we can regulate and monitor both money-laundering, or the potential for money-laundering, and also the very important financing of terrorism—how we can monitor and be across that issue, because we know that, in both instances, there are very real harms as a result of both. As lawmakers in this House, we have a responsibility to ensure that we are stress testing the futureproof legislation that we have been moving through the House this week.

The reason that we’re doing it is to aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness, to reduce the compliance costs, and also to simplify the laws that we put in place so that they can be not only risk-based but also so that they can be agile and nimble enough to shift and adjust, as the risks that they seek to address and mitigate are also very nimble.

As you would have gathered from previous contributions in the House from this side, we do support this bill, and that is around the introduction of a single supervisor for the anti - money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. We do also, though, think that it’s very important not to confuse this as an issue of cutting red tape and at the same time losing some of the very vital tools that we have to address organised crime. We know that in New Zealand we’ve got a problem currently with drugs and with crime, and we’re seeing drug use, particularly methamphetamine—those use stats—really heading in a dangerous direction. The better the tools we have to monitor and control and crack down on the illegal drug trade in this country, the better.

We also can see that we’ve got a number of existing and new sectors that are shifting and changing the way that they transact and the way that they operate, so this is an enabling legislation to assist new tech and new initiatives. But we also have a duty of care, when we are putting in place something that is an enabling legislation, that we don’t lose sight of the structure and framework that still is required in law to make sure that bad stuff doesn’t happen, to put it very simply. I guess one of the challenges is that we need to decide and we need to agree what “low risk” is, and that process isn’t straightforward.

It’s been good to be able to work through this legislation in the House this week, and, particularly in the committee of the whole House stage, to give it some real scrutiny with the Minister in the chair. I actually would like to thank the Minister for the generosity of the answers and the engagement that she provided through that committee of the whole House process. It was a very good backwards and forwards exchange. We were able to make fulsome contributions both around the content of the legislation but also any of the areas of the legislation that we were a little unsure or unclear of its intention or its wording. The Minister was very good at providing substantial answers back in regards to those, which was appreciated and unfortunately isn’t a process that we always get with that committee of the whole House. It’s not always as good and robust a conversation as it was in this instance.

One of the areas that we sought, or that I specifically sought, clarification on was around the supervisor, because in the bill as it sits, it didn’t explicitly name the supervisor. There was, obviously, an assumption on everybody’s part of who the supervisor would be, but it wasn’t explicitly named in the bill. There was some discussion around that and also some slightly, I thought, ambiguous wording in clause 5(2), where it talked about “for the time being”, the responsibility—which I thought felt a little a little loose and imprecise, but we did get a good assurance from the Minister about why that was.

One of the other things that we really wanted to dig into in Part 1 was around clause 6, talking about verification of identity requirements. A lot of people talk about wanting fast and frictionless transacting, and the risk when you do that is that fast and frictionless can also mean that there are no fingerprints, which makes it very hard to see who is doing what in a financial transacting context. But in probing that further with the Minister in the chair, we were able to clarify that this is actually borne out of a frustration that customers who are going back to the bank on multiple occasions to carry out relatively routine processes were being compelled to provide their identification and go through that rigorous process every time. That felt a little unnecessary and had led to some frustrations that bank staff were bearing the brunt of, which didn’t feel very fair.

One of the other areas that we looked at specifically, and I’m just trying to find it here, because it was quite an interesting one around the powers that it was giving and—yeah, here it is, here. In clause 21(5), we were talking about the ability to get information from people if they thought that there was a contravention of the Act—for the supervisor to be able to get that information—and, really, whether this was summons power, or to what extent it empowered the supervisor to be able to get that information. Similarly, in clause 21(8), inserting section 132(3A), there was a section around search powers. We did well on some questions there around the extent but also the limitations and what that was comparable to.

One of the points—and it’s my final one. I notice I’m just about out of time, which is a pity, because I feel like I could probably get another 10 or 20 minutes of questions based on the robust conversation that we had with the Minister in the chair. But, on—

Dan Rosewarne: Clause 32.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: I haven’t even got time to get to clause 32. Hopefully, there will be a colleague that does.

It was really around the question of the term “dwellinghouses” being used in the legislation in new section 133A and about not having power to enter dwellinghouses, and, really, seeking clarification on what a dwellinghouse was, because I’ve lived in lots of different things; I’ve never called them a dwellinghouse. Also what we know is that a number of people live and work in the same environment—so the definition of when that goes from being a dwellinghouse to being an office. We also know at the moment that a number of people live in cars in this country, so the question there was whether someone’s car could be counted as a place of work or a house or a dwellinghouse.

On balance, happy to support the legislation, grateful for the opportunity to debate it, and important that we continue to with issues as important as this.

Hon CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour) (17:48): Some 10-minute calls feel like 10 seconds and some feel like 10 hours. Some even feel like 10 days. I’m not going to add to that last performance, other than saying with this anti -money-laundering third reading that it exactly exemplifies what this Government is all about: reducing business compliance costs, improving regulatory effectiveness and efficiency, continuing regulatory compliance with related international obligations, and providing sufficient funding for the regulatory system, and, of course, one single supervisor. Get the Department of Internal Affairs, Financial Markets Authority, Reserve Bank of New Zealand—taking it down to one. I commend the bill.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour) (17:49): It’s pleasure to take a call on these two bills at the third reading. The Minister started off the debate. She highlighted that too much of the wrong people and not enough of the right people are getting the attention, and that’s 100 percent correct. She also highlighted that modernising the regime was long overdue. During committee of the whole House, I really did appreciate the to and fro with the questioning. I had a couple of questions around the strategy in clause 32, I think it was, or maybe—was it 36? It was one of those two clauses.

Because strategy, it needs internal coherence, it needs internal validity, it also needs some external validity, and it needs to flank with other strategies in the system just as well.

So I really enjoyed the to and fro with that, and also the other questions that came out from around the House, particularly around that clause, whether it was 32 or 36—I can’t quite remember. But the Hon Dr Duncan Webb eloquently highlighted that illicit drugs, they are out of control in New Zealand, and any legislation that helps curb that is very important and also curbing the criminals—the white collar criminals—that sit at the top of some of this criminal architecture and curbing a lot of that illicit behaviour, And then, also, around children’s bank accounts and, as the Hon Dr Duncan Webb highlighted, getting $20 in there for mowing the lawns for a child, that’s expected, but if there’s a $30,000 contribution for a child mowing the lawns, then I’ll be asking some questions, particularly if that $30,000 was going in there every week that they mowed the lawns. These are the things that this legislation really aims to counter.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan—there were a couple of doctors actually contributing in this debate.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Not proper doctors.

DAN ROSEWARNE: You said that there, Dr Duncan Webb—your words, not mine.

But Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, as only an academic can do, spent about two minutes highlighting that these two bills are two of four bills. But on a serious note, he highlighted that the crux with this bill is addressing those other financial instruments that can be used for illicit activity. We went through a couple of them: Cryptocurrency comes up a lot; but the other one was—what is it?—non-fungible tokens. You might be aware that a couple of years ago they did peak in price and then they declined in price pretty quickly, so it looks like they’re, probably, a passing fad. Criminals might use those alternative pathways to store money, and this legislation really helps address that. Then also, other devices that we kind of know about: USBs, cloud storage—that’s a new thing that criminals are increasingly using as a vector for illicit activity.

I would also just highlight that this legislation is extremely important, and it would have been good to get some more substantive calls from the other side of the House, because, it’s their legislation; we’re supporting it—it has broad support—but it would be very good if they could help round out these contributions so it’s not just this side of the House doing the lion’s share of the work.

The other thing I just want to highlight, the red tape was often highlighted, like in previous readings. Now, anti - money-laundering and the countering financing of terrorism and the legislation behind it, is not red tape; it’s designed there to protect people, it’s designed there to protect our most vulnerable in our communities, and so it really needs some significant attention.

In summary, it’s a good bill and I 100 percent commend it to the House. Thank you.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (17:54): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of these two bills that we are speaking on our third reading of.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Which one’s your favourite?

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: It is a useful—which one’s my favourite? I think the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is the most favourite of them all.

The reason that these are good is that they both reduce the burden of administration on businesses and those who are trying to legitimately raise capital or other financing, while still protecting and detecting criminal activities. This is well supported across the House, and I also add my honorary doctor’s very endorsing—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You’re a proper doctor.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Just to correct my colleagues here saying, “I’m a real doctor.”, actually, those who are Doctors of Philosophy are the real doctors and those who are medical doctors are doctors by convention and are given an honorary title. So I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): On that intriguing note on academia—this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 12 May. Have a productive week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.56 p.m.